Primary season is in full swing and most of the action, at least for federal races, seems to be on the Republican end. I think I’m one of the few residents of IN-04 who isn’t running for Congress. There is also a lot of activity for the Senate race, IN-05 to challenge incumbent Dan Burton, and IN-08 to take advantage of Brad Ellsworth’s departure and challenge presumed Democratic nominee Trent VanHaaften.
Initially, I’d meant to turn this into a run down of all of the primary races, but that’s a lot of work, so I’ll just discuss the Senate for the moment.
Writing for the Indianapolis Star, Mary Beth Schneider summarized the responses of Republican Senate primary candidates on three major topics. Don Bates wants to change social security, particularly for people under 40 (not sure what those changes are, exactly) and cut federal salaries by 5%. Richard Behney, somewhat unhelpfully, says “everything is on the table.” John Hostetler is unwilling to cut military expenditures but everything else is fair game. And, The Once and Future Senator, Dan Coates, perhaps inevitably, goes retro bringing us Republican budgetary hits of yesteryear such as a balanced budget amendment and the line item veto. (My memory is fuzzy here, but I seem to remember the line-item veto being struck down as unconstitutional.) Marlin Stutzman likes those but also threw in the new anti-earmark panacea.
On illegal immigration, as you might expect, they’re all against it. Bates wants to round ’em all up and deport them immediately. Behney added a gratuitously violent metaphor, suggesting that if you try to sneak in through the back door you’re likely to be shot. Coats was a little more bland, being the son of Swedish immigrants, apparently (do we have his birth certificate?) Hostettler suggests that we go after the companies hiring illegal immigrants (a “drain the swamp” approach, I would suggest.) And Stutzman, like the rest, emphasizes “securing the borders.” No word on how any of them will do this with their insistence that government needs to be smaller and we cut spending across the board.
On gays in the military, Bates seems to be out of touch. He says the President should listen to military advisers, that he wouldn’t have implemented “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the first place, but now that it’s in place, it shouldn’t be repealed. In fact, top military commanders have recently said that don’t ask, don’t tell should go. Behney had an answer that was refreshingly honest and suggests that he’s someone folks might want to pay attention to, even if they ultimately disagree with his positions and choose to vote for another.
He said he’d been in the Navy. “I served with gay men and gay women,” he said. “Quite frankly, I’ve known gay men and women that I would trust with my very life. . . . As long as you can do the job, I think you should be allowed to serve.”
Coats, once again, goes retro, embracing the idea that gays should serve secretly in the military, thereby, somehow, alleviating sexual tension in the ranks. Hostettler wants to root out gays in the military and disallow them from serving. Stutzman wants to avoid controversy by ignoring it. (As Bullwinkle’s pal, Rocky, liked to tell us, “that trick never works.”)
Hoosier Advocate cites a poll that the Once and Future candidate, lobbyist and North Carolinian, Dan Coats is currently leading the pack with Hostettler coming in a close second. Stutzman is apparently fairly close. None of them has a commanding lead in this poll, Coats pulling in 29%, Hostettler at 26%, and Stutzman pulling in 18%. Abdul isn’t necessarily convinced of the soundness of the polling, but says that, in any event, it confirms his sense of how the race is going. There is a lot of wiggle room though, with almost 20% undecided.
Not that anyone is going to take political advice from me, but it seems to me that Coats and Hostettler are damaged for the current political environment. Coats is the GOP establishment. He is a lobbyist. And, he hasn’t really been a Hoosier for quite some time. Hostettler is a closer bet because he stuck to his ideological guns (no matter how misguided), but the fact remains he was part of the D.C. clusterfuck in the early 00s. I still figure Stutzman to be the Republicans’ best bet, but maybe that’s because I don’t know a whole lot about him. After that debate, Bates and Behney warrant closer watching than I would have anticipated.
Just an aside since I confined this post to the Senate race, but Thomas Langhorne, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, always provides outstanding coverage of the southwestern Indiana political scene. In this case, he is writing about the debate between candidates for the Republican nomination in IN-08.
All of these guys are ego-driven clods with the possible exception of Behney, and I only give him a pass because I don’t know much about him.
In any case, Coates will win — The once And Future Senator, that’s hilarious — because of name recognition alone. Nobody in Indiana who votes Republican gives a shit, and most of them probably don’t even know or care, about Coates’ current profession or dwelling place. They know who he is and they don’t know who the other candidates are. Except Hostettler, of course. Maybe if were to buy an RV and tour the stare…
Interesting commentary. I agree with you that Richard Behney is one
to watch. What you see is what you really get. He is not a professional politician. He is a person who was frightened by the
changes he saw in this country and is trying to do something about it.
He is refreshingly honest. I am not a Republican. In fact, up until about 10 years ago, I was one of the few liberals in my family. I did not
leave the democrat party–it left me. Now, I don’t recognize it. I am supporting Richard because he has been endorsed by Independence Caucus. He has been vetted as all candidates should be. There are
a lot of us who have never been actively engaged in politics until now and we want change. We want a constitutionally limited government.
I like the changes I’ve seen in our country, by and large. I can do a ton with my phone; and my food choices are a lot better. I guess I liked the Internet boom era of the 90s. Some folks – and I have no basis for knowing whether you would be one – don’t like the gradual equalization of gays, ethnic minorities, and women in our society, but it hasn’t bothered me at all. Domination by white, male, heterosexual Christians isn’t any kind of natural order; just a coincidence of history, mostly.
The erosion of the middle class bothers me, but I don’t see tea party types speaking to middle class economic issues very much. They talk about lower taxes, but we already have one of the lower tax burdens compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
And, just for what it’s worth, I’ve never seen a former Democrat mistake “Democrat” for an adjective. That’s usually something of a political gang sign usually signifying antipathy for the Democrats. “Democratic” is the adjective.
It seems that the best option for Republicans in the upcoming Senate races is to just vote for Brad Ellsworth. I wouldn’t say he isn’t a democrat but he isn’t a party-line democrat for sure. He already catches a lot of flak in Washington for being an individual and doing what he thinks is best for the collective and not just his party. I’d say Republicans as a whole would be better served by a guy like Ellsworth than any of these blowhards (Minus Behney as I have no idea who he is or what he stands for, so I can’t comment).