Governor’s Race

Here we are, just a few weeks from the primaries, and I know very little about the Democratic gubernatorial candidates. For months, I have told myself that I’d get up to speed on them, and still I haven’t. The shiny, shiny Presidential campaign has apparently distracted me from the more mundane – though probably more important to our day-to-day lives – governor’s race.

Admittedly, I haven’t been making a great deal of effort to get to know these candidates, but if they haven’t seeped into my consciousness, I suspect they have a long way to go in terms of making the average Hoosier aware of their campaigns.

On the Republican side, we know they’ll be running against Mitch “Central Time” Daniels, seller of the Toll Road, privatizer-in-chief, and steward of Indiana’s economic hot streak. He’s going into soft, fuzzy campaign mode and has really dialed things down in the last year or so. We’ll see if Hoosiers view him as My Man Mitch, his campaign persona; or remember Lord Mitch, the Autocrat, his governing persona.

The Democratic candidates are Jill Long Thompson and Jim Schellinger.

Long Thompson was born in raised in north-eastern Indiana and, according to Wikipedia, holds a Ph.D. in business from IU and was a professor before entering politics. After unsuccessful campaigns for Senate and Congress, she was elected to represent Indiana’s 4th Congressional District from 1989 – 1993 before she was defeated by Mark Souder who still represents the area (promises about limiting himself to 6 terms, notwithstanding). After she left, Congress, Long Thompson served as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development under the Clinton administration until 2001. Since then she has a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and has most recently served as CEO and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy.

Schellinger is a native of South Bend who earned his architecture degree from Notre Dame. He went to work for CSO Architects and became president of the company. I think we can characterize him as “successful Indiana businessman.” His public service resume is obviously thinner than Long Thompson’s. But, time working for the government obviously shouldn’t be the only factor one considers in a candidate. So, some time in the future, we’ll get around to talking about what the candidates figure to do for Indiana if elected.