State Political Profile: Indiana
U.S. Senate
Republican Sen. Dick Lugar, one of the most popular politicians in state history, appears poised to stroll to a sixth straight term. He faced no challenger in the May 2 primary, and Democrats had nobody on the ballot. Democrats have until June 30 to field a candidate, but party officials have said for months that they are focusing their attention elsewhere.
"I think everyone recognizes that Senator Lugar would be a very tough person to beat," said state Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker.
Lugar has won his past three elections with more than two-thirds of the vote, and his popularity is still running high at age 74. A statewide telephone poll in April 2005 by The Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis television station WTHR put Lugar's approval rating at 72 percent, with 84 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats giving him a positive nod. As of this April, he had more than $3.8 million in campaign cash.
When he announced the run for re-election in April 2005, he said the U.S. needed to become more energy independent by looking more closely at its resources such as biomass and clean coal technology. He also said the nation's economic outlook should be a top priority and that local, state and federal governments need to live up to the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Lugar is highly regarded on Capitol Hill and back home for his work shaping agriculture policies and as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His knowledge of world and military affairs has made him a favorite guest on the Sunday political talk shows. His work with former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn to dismantle nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union has earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination every year since 2000.
House
Two congressional contests in southern Indiana are among the nation's most closely watched races this year as Democrats try to reclaim the House. Some political reports have called both races a tossup.
In the 9th District, Republican Rep. Mike Sodrel and Democratic challenger Baron Hill will face off for a third time in November. Hill defeated Sodrel in 2002 but lost the seat to him in 2004 by fewer than 1,500 votes. It was the first time an incumbent had lost an Indiana congressional race in a decade.
Sodrel had raised about $846,000 as of April 12 and Hill had raised about $795,000. Both predicted on Primary night May 2 that interest groups would likely pour additional money into the district through commercials or attack ads.
"We'll probably draw some national attention that we'd rather not have," Sodrel said. "This is the first time in my memory that southern Indiana was of any interest to anyone in California."
Hill said candidates don't control ads paid for by interest groups, but he noted the ultimate choice lies with voters. He hopes people will vote for him if they think the country is moving in the wrong direction. "If money was the most important factor, Ross Perot would be president," Hill said. "It's going to be the voters of the 9th District who are going to make the decision."
In southern Indiana's "Bloody 8th" District nicknamed for its history of close, contentious races neither Republican Rep. John Hostettler nor his November challenger, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Brad Ellsworth, had a primary opponent. Hostettler, who does not accept money from political action committees, has raised more than $118,000, but Ellsworth has raised more than $680,000.
Hostettler, a Christian fundamentalist who has rankled some moderate voters, has never gotten more than 53 percent of the vote in six elections, and voters in the district are notoriously fickle: In four successive elections in the 1970s, four different congressmen were elected. But Hostettler's conservative views on God and guns have been popular in rural parts of the district, and he has won before after being outspent. Jon Jennings, his Democratic opponent two years ago, spent nearly $1.5 million about three times that of Hostettler. But he only got 45 percent of the vote to Hostettler's 53 percent.
Ellsworth, who joined the Sheriff's Department in 1982, has been a popular sheriff since he easily won election in 1998; he was unopposed in 2002. He was thrust into the national limelight in November after a deadly tornado killed 23 in southern Indiana. But he has drawn some criticism over Internet photographs showing his 19-year-old daughter drinking alcohol at Indiana University, where she is a sophomore.
Ellsworth hopes to capitalize on a potential Republican backlash, and claims that Hostettler has been inside Washington, D.C., too long to identify with voters' concerns. "I'm going to be a listener," Ellsworth said. "I'm going to be a more effective voice in the district than my opponent. And it won't take me 12 years."
In northern Indiana's 2nd District, two-term Republican Rep. Chris Chocola faces a rematch with attorney and small businessman Joe Donnelly. Chocola defeated him 54 percent to 45 percent in 2004, but Donnelly says this campaign year is different.
"The country is in a different position," Donnelly said. "All you have to do is look and see what's going on around us. Three-dollar gas with no good plan to fix it, deficits as far as the eye can see, a situation in Iraq where our troops have performed miraculously and have done a tremendous job and the leadership in Washington has let them down at almost every turn."
Legislature
Although the narrowly divided House will once again be the true legislative battleground in this election, for the first time in years there also is a spotlight on the Republican-dominated Senate.
There is little talk of Republicans losing control of the Senate, since they have a 33-17 majority and so many safe districts. But there will be a changing of the guard in who leads the chamber because longtime Senate President Pro Tem Robert Garton suffered a stunning primary defeat to a little-known, social conservative attorney.
Garton had led the Senate for a state record 26 years and had never faced a primary opponent since first being elected in 1970. His opponent, Greg Walker, painted him as being in office too long and criticized him for backing special pension and state health insurance benefits for lawmakers. He also blamed him for letting an anti-abortion bill die this year.
Garton has pledged to serve out his term and remain pro tem until the November election, but a power struggle to succeed him as leader already is brewing among Senate Republicans. The social conservative ranks in the caucus have grown in recent years, and even if one of its members does not get the top spot in a caucus vote after the election, they are sure to have a strong voice in the choice.
Control of the House will be up for grabs as it has been for many consecutive elections. Democrats ruled the chamber for eight years before 2004, when Republicans won a 52-48 majority.
Republicans say they have helped lead Indiana toward economic recovery by passing incentives for businesses and economic development, and have helped reform state government under the leadership of Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who was elected in 2004. Together, they enacted a two-year budget that they say will help erase what was a $600 million deficit by the end of the budget cycle in July 2007.
But Democrats claim plenty of ammunition, and their biggest weapon may be Daniels. Most Republicans supported his push for statewide observance of daylight-saving time, which has been a highly emotional and divisive issue for years. Numerous attempts to make the change had failed over three decades, but Daniels lobbied hard for it and it gained final passage by the bare minimum of votes needed in the House. A freshman Republican in a swing district switched his no vote to yes to push the bill over the top. He did it after pledging to constituents a few weeks earlier that he would never vote for such legislation. Only a handful of Democrats voted for the bill.
It took 51 of the 52 House Republicans to pass another highly controversial Daniels' proposal this past session. It will allow Daniels to lease the Indiana Toll Road in northern Indiana to a private, Australian-Spanish consortium for an upfront payment of $3.8 billion. The companies will then operate the highway and collect its tolls for the next 75 years if the deal which would be the largest highway-privatization project in the nation is finalized in June.
Republicans say the $3.8 billion will help pay for numerous highway and other transportation projects and create tens of thousands of jobs. But all House Democrats voted against it, saying it was a sweetheart deal that will lead to increased tolls. They also said the state should not turn over a major public asset to private companies, especially foreign ones. A statewide poll by The Indianapolis Star in March two weeks before the bill was passed showed that public sentiment was on the Democrats' side. Sixty percent of those surveyed said it was a bad deal, and only 30 percent supported it.
The same poll put Daniels' approval rating at 37 percent, with many residents objecting to the pace of change in state government during his first 14 months in office. A poll a year earlier had his approval rating at 55 percent.
--Associated Press
