Some of the races are very preliminary still, but here are how the Congressional races are shaping up:
IN-01: Mark Leyva leads the GOP pack to take on Pete Visclosky. But it’s a 4 way race, his lead is slim, and only 17% of the vote is in.
IN-02: Joe Donnelly will be challenging Chris Chocola in November. Encouraging for the Democrats is that, with 80% of the vote counted, there have been 28,000 Democratic ballots in the 2nd District versus about 25,000 Republican ballots.
IN-03: Tom Hayhurst will be challenging Mark Souder. Using the previous ballot analysis, things might be fairly grim for Dr. Hayhurst in November. In the 3rd District, there have been about 11,000 Democratic ballots versus 37,000 Republican ballots with about 50% of the vote in.
IN-04: It’s not a lock at the moment, but with 60% of precincts reporting, David Sanders has just under 50% of the vote, while his opponents in the Democratic primary, Darin Kinser and Rick Cornstuble have about 25% apiece. The winner of that will challenge Steve Buyer. Again, the Republican advantage in terms of ballots is daunting — about 40,000 R versus 10,000 D.
IN-05: Still a toss up for the Democrats, but at the moment Katherine Carr is leading. The winner will take on Dan Burton.
IN-06: Barry Welsh will be taking on Mike Pence. Congratulations Barry. The ballots in the 6th District are breaking 20,000 D versus 40,000 R.
IN-07: Eric Dickerson will be taking on Julia Carson.
IN-08: Brad Ellsworth will be taking on John Hostettler. There were no primary challengers to either of these candidates.
IN-09: Baron Hill will be taking on Mike Sodrel. This one should be encouraging to the Dems with about 31,000 D ballots versus 19,000 R ballots having been cast with 57% of the precincts reporting.
Doug how did the ballots in the 8th shape up. How do these compare with 2004, 2002?
As disappointed as I was to see Gretchen Clearwater do so badly, I was happy to see Welsh clan up in the 6th and I was excited to see Hill, Donnelly and Ellsworth draw significantly more votes than Sodrel, Chocola and Hostettler. With any luck, the 3 of them will be ex- congressmen after November. Barry’s going to need a lot of work to beat Pence but he deserves all of our help. What a great representative he’d make– for the 6th, for Indiana and for all America. If Republicans really do care about values, they should give up on Pence.
Neither Ellsworth nor Hostettler had primary challengers in the 8th District, so I was unable to see how the ballots stacked up in that district.
Joe Donnelly did a good job winning his primary while keeping an eye on the bigger picture: beating Chocola in the fall. Joe spent very little and is still in a very good place going into the summer campaign season.
When considering turnout, it is important to note that many still blow off the importance of a primary. For instance, here in St. Joseph county there were only a few races with two or more contestants for an office. The rest were running unopposed. That tends to affect turnout. Also, we had a veritale monsoon from 5am-noon. All in all, we Democrats did pretty well.
I think Donnelly is hitting the right note for St. Joseph County by linking Chocola to Daniels right out of the box. The SBT reported that
“According to Donnelly, issues such as the leasing of the Indiana Toll Road and the switch to daylight-saving time have helped convince the electorate that ‘the politicians in charge have not listened to the people.'” and it further reported that “Donnelly said he thinks district voters believe that Chocola could have intervened in the unpopular Toll Road decision by picking up the telephone and calling Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.”
Allow me to reinforce my earlier post. Anyone who has the ability to bring President Bush into town for a fundraiser, on more than one occasion, has the influence to go to one of his cabinet members or a bureaucrat down the line and influence the toll road issue or the time zone issue, if his constituents demand it. You cannot boast of your influence and connections in D.C. and then claim you had “no role” in this debate at the same time.
Or, to quote the eminent political philospher Getty Lee (again), “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
But,Chocola did play a part in the time-zone issue. In a November issue of the SBT(I cannot remember the exact date) Chocola said that in the interest of time zone unity St. Joseph County should drop their petition for Central time. If he wanted to stay neutral he would have said nothing, that would have shown neutrality. By taking sides, he ended his neutrality. Plus why side with Elkhart County when a majority, not only St. Joe, of the counties in his district wanted Central time.
Doug,
Actually, drummer Neil Peart wrote the lyrics to “Freewill”.
Nevertheless, this Alex Lifeson worshipper says “good reference”. :)