In honor of the upcoming DST switch over, I just took a glance at Troy “I’ll never vote for it” Woodruff’s 2005 campaign finance report and apparently Indianapolis loves him! (Newer readers may not know that Rep. Woodruff was the last and deciding vote that let the Daylight Saving Time legislation squeak by. He voted for DST after having promised his constituents he would “never” vote for it.)
Reviewing the personal contributions of $500 or more, I don’t see any from his district. He received about $26,000 in personal contributions above $500 in July, primarily on July 22. Of that, about $7,000 came from 7 or so individual Baker & Daniels attorneys.
His biggest contribution was $10,000 from the Indiana Realtors PAC followed by $6,000 from the Indiana Rural Electric PAC followed by $5,000 apiece from the Indiana Manufacturers PAC and Scott Jones of Carmel. A couple of businesses out of Vincennes gave sizeable contributions – specifically Bestway , Bomac Equipment, and KMA LLC gave a combined $8,000. Those companies all seem to be tied together in that Clarence McCormick is (or was) chairman and CEO of all of them. (According to the linked site, Mr. McCormick is also heavily involved with the Indiana Chamber of Commerce which, of course, pushed hardest for Daylight Saving Time.)
Readers may recall the July fund raiser that apparently raised so much Indianapolis cash for Rep. Woodruff as the one that got the Governor into a bit of an ethics scrape for using the State’s RV for fund raising purposes until he was cleared by his handpicked Inspector General.
It seems to me like a legislator might be less responsive to his constituents if the bulk of his campaign money is coming from Indianapolis.
Nice bit of digging!