By Brian Howey

BLOOMINGTON – It was his seventh and final mile, heading down South Walnut Street when a motorcyclist preparing to saddle up in a parking lot saw U.S. Rep. Baron Hill walk by.

 “Thanks for all you do,” Jason Evans-Groth called out from inside his helmet.

 Hill smiled, walked over and shook the man’s hand. The congressman is in a tough reelection battle in a hellish year for Democrats. The congressman had preached to his base all day that the pundits were spewing far too much gloom and doom.

 A few minutes later as Hill marched on with his staff and this writer several yards behind, a man in an SUV drove by and yelled out, “You suck.”

 So even in this liberal nook in the sprawling 9th CD – a true 50/50 district that has seen several races since 1994 go down to the wire – the split in opinion seemed apt.

 Hill is seeking a sixth term in seven elections, losing only once in the Bush-Daniels year of 2004. He faces a different foe than perennial opponent Mike Sodrel. Republican Todd Young is pressing Hill with a tailwind behind him, though he has yet to close ranks with the embittered Sodrel after edging him out with 35 percent of the vote in the three-way May primary. “It’s a little weird,” Hill says of not running against Sodrel. “It’s an adjustment. I don’t know much about Todd Young.”

 On this day the Republican National Committee targeted Hill as part of a 40-district, $22 million assault. Hill is ardently defending what has been a tumultuous two years. He broke with many Democrats in his district in April 2008, endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Indiana primary.

 He staved off a fourth and final Sodrel challenge that November with 58 percent of the vote. As the Bush presidency waned, Hill voted against the TARP bailout of Wall Street, but backed the Obama stimulus in February 2009. The following fall, he voted for the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade legislation. And the capstone of controversy came with his March vote for the health reforms.

 “After that vote, I sleep well at night knowing that people with pre-existing conditions can be covered, that your insurance coverage will follow you, that the doughnut hole has been fixed, that small businesses will get a tax cut for hiring people. Does anyone want to get rid of that?” Hill asked. “I can tell you who does: My opponent.”

 And now on a campaign trail littered with briars, liars, fires and brimstone, Hill is battling back. He left an emphatic marker at the Indiana Democratic Convention in June when during a fiery speech, Hill boomed, “I’m glad we passed health care. They want to repeal the thing. Let’s have that debate. Bring it on!”

 At that point in June, Public Opinion Strategies had Hill leading Young 41-34 percent in a poll conducted on behalf of the Republican. But more troubling were a number of Rasmussen Reports polls that revealed close to 60 percent of Hoosiers favor repealing the health reforms and about 50 percent are very motivated. But Hill had $1 million cash on hand as Young worked to replenish his primary-exhausted coffers.

 Back in 1990 when State Rep. Hill challenged newly appointed U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, Hill announced he would walk the entire state from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan. With great fanfare and a stuffed folder of earned media along the way, Hill jumped into Lake Michigan at the end of the journey.

 “The polls showed I was down by 34 percent,” Hill recalled. But soon after his plunge, Mason-Dixon released a poll showing him 8 percent down. He would lose to Coats by that same margin. Hill attributed the bounce to his walk.

 In this campaign, he will walk 250 miles. He’s getting a ton of press coverage.

 Hill walked into the Monroe County Democratic headquarters just off the Indiana University campus around 11:30 a.m. Waiting for him was Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan and about 25 activists and campaign volunteers. “These people are making 1,000 calls a night,” Hill beamed. “They are canvassing every weekend.”

 “This is going to be a tough election,” Hill told the Democrats. “There’s a whole lot of hurt out there. And here’s the deal: all the polls are showing the Republicans are more energized by 20 percent. We’ve got to make a thousand calls a day,” he said.

 Hill told the story of showing up at Obama headquarters in Columbus in July 2008 on a Wednesday afternoon. He found 10 volunteers making calls, including a woman who had never before been part of a campaign. Obama’s political wing – Organizing for America – has identified 330,000 Hoosiers who voted for the first time in 2008.

 “Where is she today?” Hill asked. “Is she going to vote? We need to find her and get her to the polls. If we do that, we’ll be just fine.”

 In the 9th, it just may come down to that.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

KOKOMO – Dan Coats came of age politically when he emerged from Dan Quayle’s shadow during the thrust of the Reagan Revolution. He is the only Hoosier not named “Lugar” or “Bayh” to hold a U.S. Senate seat since 1977. He is undefeated. He has been married only once.

 And he surprised just about everyone when he reemerged as a candidate on Ground Hog’s Day – 12 years after having last held elective office and 18 years since he was last on a ballot. He had decided to take on U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh after the Republican field failed to raise money and Coats was alarmed at the direction of the country under President Obama. When the news got out, former Sen. Phil Gramm dialed him up to inquire how his “second marriage” was faring. It was a joke, of course, Marcia Coats had fully signed off on his return to senatorial politics.

 In late 1998, Coats stopped by for a final chat. After eight years in the House and 10 years in the Senate, he wanted to move on. He was tired on the constant need to raise money and the nastiness of the process that was careening toward impeachment of President Clinton. And there was the senator’s son – Evan Bayh – waiting in the wings to reclaim his father’s Senate seat.

 

After our conversaton, Coats walked out the door, only to return. “I could have beat Evan Bayh,” he said before walking away. Was this to be “unfinished business,” Coats acknowledged, “To be candid with you, a little bit.”

 ”I had committed to term limits. I wanted to honor that commitment,” he said. “But I did feel bad that in a sense I opened the door and turned a Republican seat into a Democratic seat.”

 Thirteen days after Coats decided to run, Bayh retired. After an aide called him with the news, Coats was thunderstruck. “I can’t believe it,” he said about 12 seconds later.

 As Coats pondered a return to politics, he was warned that things had changed since he last ran in 1992. “I had former colleagues that called and said, ‘This is an entirely different ball game. You sure you want to do this?’ We went in with eyes wide open.”

 Had the decision come in a normal way with months of planning, Coats would have done things differently. “It was the last thing I was considering,” Coats said. “I would have taken a number of steps earlier if I thought I was getting back in preparation for that. We have this second home in North Carolina and I certainly would have sold that.” Within weeks of his return, Democrats posted a YouTube video of Coats talking about retiring to North Carolina.

 And it has been eye opening. Back in 1992, the Internet was still in diapers. When he left office, newspapers and TV stations were just turning to the Internet. Now there are blogs run by “journalists” without degrees and with agendas.

 ”The most major change is the Internet,” he explained. “The ways and means of communication and the access to information is so extraordinary. There’s no filter. You can take anything you want to say, make any allegation and you can make it anonymously. There’s no editor you can call and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ Or ‘here’s my story.’ “

 Indications of the change came almost immediately. Earlier in the day on Feb. 2, Bayh told a group of visitors in his Senate office that he had to “go deal with a German ambassador.” Howey Politics Indiana broke the news about Coats that night and called Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker for a comment. He responded by reciting Ambassador Coats’ ties to Bank of America as a lobbyist.

“I can tell you the difference between the former campaign (1992) and this one is people like this guy,” Coats said, pointing to Pete Seat, his communications director. “You give him a piece of news, he gets on the Internet and he’s all over it. You type in ‘Lobbying Disclosure Act’ and ‘Coats’ and boom! That information is there. It is revolutionary. So when Parker heard I was doing this, boom, he went to the Internet and I think he had that stuff in an hour.”

 Another sea change is the “I gotcha” dynamic. “It’s not what you stand for, who you are, what you did, or your resume,” Coats said. “It’s we’re going to catch you making a mistake. And we’re going to blast that and that’s going to be our campaign.”

 Any candidate playing at the congressional level has to be aware of the “Macaca” moment, as Sen. George Allen learned in 2006. “Everywhere I go there is a camera on me recording,” Coats said. “It used to be you’d call a press conference, the press would show up and that was your message.

Today it’s what door did you enter? What restaurant did you eat at? I’ve had people outside my house. I’ve had people checking to see when I come home. I’ve had people posing as journalists at a Republican event.”

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

KOKOMO – It had been an intriguing 72 hours before Gov. Mitch Daniels took the stage at the Highland Park band shell here on a steamy Wednesday night. With a Newsweek reporter in tow, Daniels was on the stump for his first political priority: electing a Republican Indiana House.

 With him stood Kokomo Councilman Mike Karickhoff, one of about 25 challengers Daniels recruited in order to overcome a 52-48 Democratic majority in the House that had stomped most of the governor’s reform agenda.

 ”A reporter asked me what keeps me up at night,” Daniels told a crowd of about 250 people. “I sleep very well,” he said, but instead of counting sheep, “I just count all of the states I’m not governor.”

 

On Sunday, Daniels appeared on Fox News Sunday and told host Chris Wallace that he is “open to the idea” of a presidential run. But, he said, “My attention is entirely fixed on the challenges — and I think opportunities — facing Indiana.” Asked about what conditions might prompt him into the race, Daniels said, “Chris, you live in a world of secret agendas and code words, but not all of us operate that way.” Republicans like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Mike Huckabee must effectively address the nation’s fiscal health, with the economy now careening toward that dreaded “W” recession. “I’m hoping we will have people step forward and really hit those things head on,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be one of them, but there are lot of ways to contribute to that debate.”

 Daniels also took a shot at the Obama administration when he was asked if he supported the stimulus. Daniels responded, “Really don’t. It amounts at this point in time to asking the citizens of responsible states like ours to subsidize those places who have been more reckless. It’s probably not going to help the economy. It’s this notion of a sort of a trickle-down government. You pour a few more bajillion dollars in the top of the funnel and maybe a little demand and a few private-sector jobs will fall out the bottom. It’s really not the way to do it.”

 In the ensuing 48 hours, Daniels found himself in an uncharacteristic brush fire, as Indiana reporters dusted off a letter from last February when Daniels joined 46 other governors asking Congress to extend enhanced federal Medicaid match rates. His staff said he signed the letter as a “team player.” He told a reporter, “I have made the same point over and over, that borrowing money from the Chinese and spending it on government is not effective. My clear recollection is saying I’d only sign a letter that says don’t add to the debt, and I thought that letter made it plain.”

 Democrats cried foul, saying he flip-flopped, noting that the $1.2 billion in stimulus funding had propped up the Indiana budget on Medicaid and education funding. “He used the stimulus money to prop up the budget, so it’s basically political doublespeak,” State Rep. Phil GiaQuinta told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. “If his heart isn’t into it then maybe he shouldn’t take the money.”

 Another twist came when Anne Murphy, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, sent a letter to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services saying that the governor’s Healthy Indiana Plan should be incorporated into the health care reforms. It contrasted with Daniels emphatic criticism of the health reforms, prompting him to freeze enrollment into HIP shortly after President Obama signed the reforms into law.

 What became clear is that presidential politics – with a potential candidate playing to a national audience – can complicate the task of governing back home.

 The governor continues to send mixed signals. On Wednesday he met with about 400 people in Muncie, did a ribbon cutting on a Major Moves funded road in Fort Wayne, heralded 350 new jobs in Huntington from an Ohio company moving in, met with Hoosier Conservation Corps workers, and then attended a graduation of inmates in a faith-based program at the Miami Correctional Facility.

 He told the Kokomo audience that the day amplifies what “sets Indiana apart. I think we’ve gained on these goals.”

 But then he added, “There is so much to do when I’m back in private life.”

 So this is a presidential flirtation. And it’s a three-legged stool. The first leg is to help candidates like Karickhoff defeat Democrats to retake a majority and form a new nucleus of reform-minded Republicans in the House. Howey Politics Indiana has 12 seats either projected as a Republican takeover or are in tossup up, and 11 are held by Democrats. To achieve these goals, “We really have to have people with new ideas,” Daniels said. “That’s why I asked Mike Karickhoff to run.”

 The second step begins in January if Daniels achieves his majority. He is then poised to push for education and local government reforms. It will come during an excruciatingly tough budget year as the state’s reserves drain away.

 And lastly, next Spring after the legislature goes home, if the jobs are still sparse, the economy drifts and no Republican reaches the cone of inevitability, a presidential campaign would be built.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

TERRE HAUTE – I’ve traveled to more than 25 Indiana cities and towns this summer, from Angola to Rising Sun, from Michigan City to Peru and the one thing that is on everybody’s mind is jobs. Or as the 1992 Clinton campaign so succinctly summed it up, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

 As we enter the dog days of August in this blistering summer of discontent, the Indiana and U.S. jobs pictures are strikingly familiar. Unemployment has hovered around 10 percent for months and the tentacles of the Great Recession of 2009-10 have ensnarled thousands of families. Dozens of my friends and acquaintances have been impacted economically in many ways.

 With the homestretch of the 2010 campaign that starts on Labor Day just over the horizon, a new poll by Bellwether Research statistically backs up what I’ve been hearing: the jobs buck stops with President Obama and not Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. The fascinating aspect of this is that these two politicians – so similar in so many ways beyond party and ideology – may be intertwined as we close in on 2012.

 Bellwether – which polls for Daniels – was in the field in Indiana on July 20-25 and interviewed 800 likely voters, calling both landlines and cell phones. It shows the national right/wrong track numbers at 30/57 percent, while the Indiana numbers were nearly inversed at 49/32 percent. President Obama’s approve/disapprove numbers stood at 44/50 percent (identical to many national polls), compared to 65/28 percent Daniels.

 ”Voters are making a clear distinction between President Obama and the federal government and Gov. Daniels,” said pollster Christine L. Matthews, who is a Kokomo native.

 As for interest in the November election, 47 percent rated it “10″ on a 1 to 10 scale. Among those affiliated with the Tea Party movement, 65 percent rated it a “10″ as well as 61 percent of 2008 voters for presidential candidate John McCain. Ominously for Democrats, only 36 percent of 2008 Obama voters rated it a “10″ posing the same dilemma the party faced in 1994 when it lost Congress for the first time in 40 years. Base vote suppression is a very real dilemma for Democrats.

 That dynamic is in play on a generic Indiana General Assembly question. Republicans held a 45-31 percent lead over Democrats – which control the Indiana House 52-48 – but among likeliest to vote (those participating in three out of the last four elections) the gap stood at 54-26 percent, and it was 35-24 percent favoring Republicans among independent voters. Among Tea Party affiliates, it stood at 72-8 percent favoring Republicans.

 Daniels support stands out in several aspects. His approve/disapprove numbers among African-American voters stood at 69/18 percent, among Obama voters at 56/36 percent and among independents at 63/28 percent. “There isn’t a Republican in a state or in Congress who has those kinds of numbers among African-Americans,” said Matthews. It is that reason that Daniels is the center of presidential speculation, though a decision on that front won’t come until after the 2011 Indiana General Assembly.

 A Daniels challenge to Obama would be fascinating. Both are excellent orators with vivid retail politics skills. They write their own speeches and TV ads and both have broken political molds within their respective parties. But they approach government from opposite ends of the spectrum (except for education reform), as their stances on health reforms and the auto bailouts revealed.

 The Bellwether poll hits at a time when President Obama is aggressively pushing back. The BP oil spill crisis has ended. Obama is reminding voters that the economic woes, the Wall Street and auto bailouts began with President George W. Bush, along with a legacy $1.2 trillion deficit. He’s been in Michigan and Chicago touting the auto recovery, which has seen the Big 3 begin to turn profits. Obama said in Detroit last week that his new administration was backed into a corner “with very few choices.”

 “If we had done nothing, not only were your jobs gone, but supplier jobs were gone, and dealership jobs were gone and communities that depend on them would have been wiped out,” Obama said to Chrysler workers. “You are proving the naysayers wrong, all of you. They thought it would be impossible for your company to make the kind of changes necessary to restore fiscal discipline and move towards viability. Today, for the first time since 2004, all three U.S. automakers are operating at a profit; first time in six years.”

 Obama’s political wing – Organizing for America – has a strategy for getting back in the game. OFA has identified 333,000 first-time Indiana voters who came out in 2008. There are eight staffers in Indiana Democratic headquarters who are working to reengage them in congressional races involving Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Joe Donnelly, Tom Hayhurst and Trent Van Haaften.

 The lesson from 1994 is that base suppression can kill a majority in Congress and the Indiana House. And that the buck stops with the president and not the governor.

By Brian Howey

NASHVILLE, Ind. – So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.

There are a handful of politicians who in the mid to late span of their careers achieve what we call “statesman” status. Doc Bowen and Lee Hamilton were examples of this here in Indiana. A statesman establishes a political cred to the point where he stands above normal political activity. When Lugar won his sixth term in 2006, he was unopposed by the Democrats – something that rarely happens above the Mason-Dixon line. “Let’s be honest,” said Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker in 2006. “Richard Lugar is beloved not only by Republicans, but by Independents and Democrats.”

 A statesman achieves such status not simply by winning elections with landslide margins, but by achievement. In the case of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an Indiana senator achieved at the head-of-state level. For the first time in history of mankind, an arch rival is scrapping the arsenal – in this case nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – of another. The WMD of the Soviet Union was the most sinister in humanity.

 And this work is not done.

 Just last month, the Nunn-Lugar Act was responsible for six strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, six ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, four nuclear weapons transport train shipments secured, and 48 metric tons of Russian chemical weapons agent neutralized.

 The WMD stockpiles have been eliminated from countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Albania.

 There remain cesspools of other odious threats that if delivered into the hands of terrorists could wipe out a city or a stadium, something Lugar articulated back in 1995. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet may be because of the work of Sen. Lugar. And on this count alone – along with his work on hunger or keeping democracy viable after corrupt Philippine elections 30 years ago – a seventh term for Sen. Lugar, even at age 78, makes sense.

 Particularly to someone like me, who traveled with Lugar to five countries and as far out as Siberia three years ago. Despite having 25 years on me, the guy was indefatigable. I was exhausted by the 4 a.m. wake-up calls, 19-hour days and late dinners. The day after Lugar returned, he was presiding over Foreign Relations Committee meetings with top generals flying in from Iraq.

 The Republican ankle biters from the right were indignant when Lugar announced he would vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. They were also upset that he voted for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

 State Sen. Mike Delph, who may be looking to challenge Lugar in the 2012 primary, chided “Sen. O’bama” (sic) on his support of Kagan. “Some have suggested that Senator Lugar’s support of Elena Kagan is an act of statesmanship,” Delph wrote on Facebook. “And that those of us expressing concern are partisan and lack an understanding of Separation of Powers and harbor sour grapes being on the losing side of a Presidential election. If that is true, then why didn’t the media criticize Sen. Bayh or then Sen. O’Bama for voting against Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Alito?”

 Delph told the Indianapolis Star, “Elena Kagan, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, are all very liberal. None of these individuals is worthy of Hoosier support as they are all out of step with Main Street Indiana. He needs to be mindful of how people in Indiana view these nominees.”

 Lugar pointed to his Sept. 12, 2005, statement during the Roberts confirmation: “The Founders were at pains to emphasize the difference between the political branches – the Executive and the Legislature – and the Judiciary. Their concern about the potential dangers of passionate, interest-driven political divisions, which Madison famously called the ‘mischiefs of faction,’ influenced their design of our entire governmental structure. But they were especially concerned that such mischiefs not permeate those who would sit on the bench. Otherwise, they warned, ‘the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice,’ and ‘would stifle the voice both of law and of equity.’

 “I believe that each of us in the Senate bears a special responsibility to prevent that from occurring,” Lugar said.

 As Lugar dusted off that statement, WIBC conservative talk radio show host Greg Garrison was blasting him for having the audacity to vote for Kagan, whom he sophomorically described as a “communist.”

 So Lugar might well be confronted with the “mischiefs” of politics in 2012.

 Some on the right call him a “RINO” – Republican In Name Only. This comes in a year after which Lugar opposed President Obama’s stimulus package, the health reforms, the Wall Street bailout, and was skeptical of the handling of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. This has brought disappointment from the center and left who hoped Lugar would be the GOP bridge to Obama.

 Lugar has – as a true internationalist – backed Obama’s efforts in reaching out to Islam, particularly after the President’s 2009 Cairo speech, and the START Treaty. The START treaty was a major whipping boy in the recent Republican Senate primary as the field tripped over themselves to appeal to the other wing of traditional Hoosier politics – isolationist right – as opposed to internationalists like Lugar, Hamilton and Ambassador Tim Roemer.

 Spencer Ackerman observed, “Lugar’s brand of moderate internationalism is a dying one in an increasingly bellicose Senate GOP caucus. Take a look at the 2003 vote on the last nuclear reduction treaty with Moscow. Enough GOPers who voted for it are still in the Senate to provide for ratification — John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), I could go on — but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the Senate GOP leader, didn’t even vote on a Bush administration priority. And enough of the newer, smaller class of GOP senators are either further to the right or disinterested in bipartisan foreign policy when cobbled together by a Democratic president as to raise questions about to who goes along with Lugar’s exhortations.”

 He added, “Lugar’s backing will get the treaty out of the Foreign Relations Committee, something that was hardly certain as recently as last month. The administration also has the lever of Ronald Reagan’s fulsome quotes about seeking a nuke-free world to use against recalcitrant GOP senators. ‘My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially, and ultimately to eliminate, nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat’ (Reagan, 1988) is just one example among many.”

 “If not,” Ackerman continues, “it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen. It’ll be a statement about the collapse of what used to be a bipartisan international priority, most fervently advocated by the most sainted GOP president of all.”

 Can Lugar be defeated in the Republican primary?

 This would be a fool’s errand or a narcissistic plot to gin up statewide name ID for a future run.

 Any challenger would come up against the Lugar political machine that pioneered voter lists, and an incumbent with a 60 to 70 percent approval. The Lugar apparatus has so many legions of loyal allies – Gov. Mitch Daniels the most influential – that any challenge would have to be viewed as almost comical.

 One challenge from the right would virtually guarantee another, and the two or three will hack at each other for that 25 percent (perhaps much less) of the John Price/Eric Miller wing of the party.

 Thus is life in the factions of mischief.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

RISING SUN, Ind. – The news out of Kokomo was the sign of the times. As Senate Republicans filibustered an extension of jobless benefits this past week, there were 300 new Chrysler job openings in the City of Firsts. And there were 3,000 applicants.

 On the day the events in Kokomo played out, Indiana announced that its jobless rate had increased a tenth of a percentage to 10.1 percent. In Kokomo, 14.2 percent are now out of work and June was the third month in a row the rate increased. If there was a silver lining in all of this, it was that Fayette County replaced Elkhart County as leader of the unemployed, signaling that the RV industry is beginning to make a comeback. The RV industry is usually the first one to plunge into a recession and the first to come out.

 It seemed almost cruel to the 2.2 million Americans and tens of thousands of Hoosiers to not extend the jobless benefits during this hot, steamy summer when few jobs exist. Visit just about any Workforce Development office and you’ll hear the same story: folks have pounded the pavement looking for jobs and not many can be found. You might know some of these folks.

 The Republicans have made a simple political calculus: the worse the economy is, the better they will do in the November mid-terms. They see President Obama with a 43 percent approval rating in Indiana and nationally during the Great Recession of 2009-10. If the story sounds familiar, it is. During the summer of 1982, President Reagan’s approval stood at 42 percent.

 Republicans are couching their opposition to the $4 billion jobless extension in terms of the deficits, which stands at about 10.6 of the gross domestic product. When President George W. Bush came into office in 2001, it was -1.25 of GDP and it rose to 9.91 percent of GDP in 2009 when he left, or $1.2 trillion.

 ”We’ve repeatedly voted for similar bills in the past. And we are ready to support one now,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “What we do not support – and we make no apologies for – is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control.”

 Thus, we find our most conspicuous born-again deficit hawk. McConnell wasn’t so concerned about deficits during the Bush ramp up.

 And there is U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House. “This election is going to be a referendum on the borrowing, spending, bailouts and takeovers of this liberal Democratic Congress and administration,” Pence said on Monday. “But it’s also going to be about a competing view of the future. Before this election, you can be assured the Republicans are going to produce a bold and compelling agenda for the American people that will be in stark contrast to the big government agenda of this Congress and this administration.”

 Pence declined to outline the policy plan. “Stay tuned,” he said.

 But he was forthright in pushing back against Obama and Democrats who are accusing Republicans of being indifferent to the struggles of the jobless by opposing an unemployment bill. “The American people are tired of deficits, debt and runaway federal spending in Washington,” Pence said. “Democrats in Washington and this administration just don’t get it. Democrats in Congress are about to get a much deserved lesson in the consent of the governed.”

 The problem with this statement is that the Republican born-again deficit hawks had no problem waging two wars that were kept off the books, passing the Bush tax cuts that were never paid for, and making the biggest entitlement expansion since the Great Society with the Medicare prescription drug plan that was passed on the eve of Bush’s 2004 reelection. Pence did oppose that for deficit reasons, but most Republicans were willing participants in the scheme.

 So the Republicans have come out against the jobless extension. But they hem and haw when they blast Obama for planning to end the Bush tax cuts next year.

 Ask a Republican how extending the Bush tax cuts will be paid for and how it won’t contribute to the deficits and clear answers are elusive.

 President Obama has called the budget deficits and the $13.2 trillion national debt as “unsustainable” this week. He forged the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last April.

 His political problem this fall is that the stimulus package he won shortly after stumping for it in Elkhart was too small, even at $800 billion. While the administration says it saved between two and three million jobs, the jobless rate stands at 10 percent both here in Indiana and nationally.

 That’s why Hoosiers are likely to vote against incumbents this November. Some are worried about the deficits.

 But it really, really is the economy, stupid. It really comes down to jobs. Deep down, even born again deficit hawks know this.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

 By Brian Howey

ZIONSVILLE – Think back a century. After Elwood Haynes had rolled his horseless carriage out into the dusty streets of Kokomo, American society was transformed. But it came with a cost.

 America would spend trillions of dollars to retool wagon and bicycle shops to build these carriages or “cars.” We would pave our streets, put up stoplights, create interstates in the ensuing six decades. Life changed in dramatic ways just as the skyline along Interstate 65 and State Road 43 has changed over the past year in Northwest Indiana as hundreds of wind turbines have popped up.

 That’s what we are facing today as the U.S. Senate takes up landmark energy legislation. There is an extremely narrow window – the next two weeks – that provides the dramatic scenario for the best chance of a landmark energy bill to emerge from the U.S. Senate. It is an opportunity that may not present itself again for years if not decades.

 But multiple Senate, utility and environmental groups tell me that bills by U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman are unlikely to pass. Any bill debated will likely not include the carbon cap President Obama sought.

 “The number of votes for Cap-and-Trade are slipping,” said John Goss, who heads the Indiana office of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s nowhere near the 60 votes,” particularly after the death of U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va.

 “This is our best chance in a decade,” Goss said.

 Andy Fisher, spokesman for Sen. Lugar was skeptical anything will pass. He said that if Majority Leader Harry Reid gets a bill to the floor, “There will be debate and some consensus. But I just don’t see how the process will get 60 votes. I don’t think this is in Reid’s agenda due to a number of factors, including Reid’s own reelection.”

 Fisher agrees that “change is going to happen in every part of the energy spectrum.” He added that there is more chance of a bipartisan bill next year. “I think there is actually strong bipartisan interest in an energy bill. There is not bipartisan interest in a climate bill.”

 Beyond the Senate, Fisher said there would be a huge gap between anything the Senate passes and the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House. “Just given the political climate right now, a conference with Waxman-Markey would not be popular in the House. Most don’t want that vote to come up.”

What happens in the Senate (or doesn’t) could have an impact on the way Indiana powers itself as well as what consumers (industry and homeowners) pay for power.

 One utility source told me that consumers could easily face energy cost increases in the 25 to 40 percent range due to the legislation. The source, however, acknowledges that it already faces increasing demand and the need to refit or rebuild most of its generation stations. NiSource, for instance, counts its newest generation plant at 25 years old. Before the days of Obama, industry sources were saying that Hoosier consumers were facing daunting rate increases.

 Indiana utilities warn of the costs associated with transforming the state’s aging power generation plants into clean coal technologies, scrubbers, or conversion from coal to natural gas. The state and investors have already anted up for ethanol and wind power, neither of which would exist without heavy government subsidy and have the reliability of coal. Utility sources say that studies have shown wind power to have about an 8 percent reliability standard, compared to 85 percent for a coal fired plant.

 What Indiana does have is a lot of biomass – particularly hog and cow manure that could represent what was once deemed waste turning into brown gold.

 Gov. Mitch Daniels has been critical of Cap-and-Trade, saying that capping carbon wouldn’t “lower the thermometer by a half a degree in 50 years.” He has said the cost of businesses like high-energy-using steel plants and foundries could put them out of business or force them to move.

 Goss says that is shortsighted and cites “overwhelming scientific evidence” that Indiana and the rest of the world are facing climate change dilemmas. He said that cold water fish such as trout and salmon may be gone from lakes and rivers over the next 30 years in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan if current climate trends continue. The Audubon Society is reporting “dozens of species of birds new to areas north of the Ohio River.” Gardening, planting and frost tables are changing, with seed companies placing Indiana in southern climates.

 With wrenching change comes opportunity. An electric utility that may be forced to spend hundreds of millions to switch from coal to natural gas fired plants or clean coal could also find hundreds of thousands new consumers with thousands of cars and trucks that will be plugged in at night instead of visiting a gas station once or twice a week.

 If Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will. Change in energy is inevitable.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN – Evan Bayh and family spent part of last August floating down the Colorado River deep in the Grand Canyon pondering his future.

 “No television, no cell phones,” Bayh told me. “It was great. Just a time to get away and think about life and the future. This had been on my mind for quite awhile. This had been on my mind since January – not this January but a year ago January.”

 Just as President Obama was taking the oath of office, Bayh was telling Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senate Campaign Chairman Bob Mendendez that a reelection bid was “not a foregone conclusion.”

 It had been a whirlwind of two years with his own presidential campaign, the abrupt rise of Barack Obama, and the entrenched Hillary Clinton campaign. Bayh dropped out of the presidential race in December 2006, backed Clinton in the primaries, and after Obama secured the nomination, the junior Hoosier senator streaked atop the veepstakes lists. When the nomination went to Joe Biden, Bayh’s chances of returning to executive governance faded.

 When the senator returned to the Grand Canyon rim, he had decided to end his U.S. Senate career.

 Upon his return to Washington, Bayh was scheduled to meet with President Obama in the Oval Office to talk about the senator’s top priority – deficit and debt reduction. “During that meeting I asked the President if I could have two more minutes of his time,” Bayh said. “This was the first week in September and I told him I had decided that I was not going to run for reelection.”

 Obama was surprised. “He asked me, ‘Are you 100 percent sure?’ and I said, ‘I’m 98 percent sure.’ And that was my mistake.

 “He seized upon that 2 percent over the next – oh, however many months that was until February – I must have talked with him and met with him a number of times. I met with his Chief of Staff (Rahm Emanuel) a number of times. They tried to convince me to seek reelection. I felt like I owed it to him to take that seriously.“

 “It was just a hard decision for me. I love what I’ve done. I love serving the people of Indiana. I just concluded that 12 years in Congress was enough,” Bayh said.

 He had fashioned the classic pros/cons list. But when the President is asking for reconsideration, it changes the dynamic.

 “I felt that with respect to the President I should think about it. It was a difficult decision and, frankly, I procrastinated. I would decide by Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving came and went. I’ll decide by Christmas and then Christmas came and went. Finally it was the deadline that forced me to make the decision and I did. So that’s how it all transpired,” Bayh said. “There was no master plan to time my decision in a way that was going to prevent a Democratic primary. There could be nothing further from the truth.”

 Bayh said that it was the assessment of the Obama team that he had the best chance at reelection. Even with the difficult political environment facing Democrats, Bayh’s pollster was telling him he had “more than a 90 percent chance to win reelection.”

 What it really came down to was where his heart was. “My views are just more moderate than many members of my caucus,” Bayh acknowledged. “That means that on a whole host of things” he was being pressured to fall in line. “Things that if I were calling the shots, we would not be doing. The caucus system really works against independence.”

 Now after two terms as governor, two in the U.S. Senate, Bayh has reached middle age. “I’ll be 55 in December, which I’m still young enough to do other things, including doing more than one thing,” is how he puts it. “I can have a significant impact, whereas if I waited until I was 61 or 67, which isn’t that old, but chances of really being able to fashion a second career are just not as great.”

 There is no doubt that between his time as governor and that in the U.S. Senate, it is the former rather than the latter that brings out the better side in him. As a governor, he says, “I was accustomed in public service to making decisions and taking a more significant role in the decision making process as opposed to be merely one out of 100. So the satisfaction I derived came out of making a bigger impact on people’s lives was simply as an executive.”

 And this is where we stand today: with one affirmative sentence, Evan Bayh – the boss of Indiana Democrats – could alter (and potentially dominate) the 2012 governor’s race.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – I’ve been writing this column since 1985 and I don’t recall ever talking about the treasurer of state race. The office is that of bureaucratic function and in my mind shouldn’t even be elected. It should be part of the governor’s appointed cabinet.

But this year we have a fascinating race between the Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock and a 28-year-old Democrat from South Bend named Peter Buttigieg (pronunced Boota-judge). Buttigieg is a Rhodes Scholar and studied economics at Oxford.

Mourdock is best known for his attempts to derail the Chrysler-Fiat merger, a case that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court during the summer of 2009 when the U.S. auto industry teetered on the brink. When the merger occurred, Mourdock believed that Indiana police and teacher pension funds were getting “ripped off.”

“Twenty-nine cents on the dollar for people like that is not ‘just compensation’ at all, but the government says they have to abide by it,” said Mourdock, spelling out the basis for Indiana’s lawsuit. “This is the first time in the history of American bankruptcy law when secured creditors received less than unsecured creditors. And that ain’t right!” he said.

Mourdock said he was doing his “fiduciary” duty and spent more than $2 million to pursue the lawsuit that ultimately the Supreme Court said “had not carried the burden” of proof.

Buttigieg is critical of Mourdock’s attempts to stop the Chrysler-Fiat merger, which, if it had occurred, would have forced Chrysler into liquidation. He questioned Mourdock’s wisdom for investing Hoosier pension funds into Chrysler stock, which was rated “junk” status at the time of purchase. “Indiana’s government bought junk bonds for its pensioners” then “acted surprised when they lost value,” Buttigieg said.

The Democrat noted that, “If successful, the lawsuit would have shut down Chrysler. Chrysler directly employs about 5,000 people in the city of Kokomo alone, and is responsible for tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue for the state, as well as over $3 billion in supplier business. The lawsuit would have destroyed these jobs and this revenue at the worst possible moment: in mid-2009, Howard County unemployment was approaching 20 percent. One think tank estimated that 100,000 jobs in Indiana alone depended on quick and orderly proceedings for GM and Chrysler.”

And Buttigieg added, “Had the treasurer won the lawsuit, then Indiana would have actually received less money than in the agreement he was protesting. In the rescue negotiated between the government and the other 99 percent of the bondholders, Indiana pensions were to receive 29 cents on the dollar. The federal court found that in liquidation, the pensions would have recovered far less. Indeed, one likely reason the suit was rejected was that in bankruptcy court, a plaintiff is not entitled to bring a case actually demanding less money than he is already receiving. For this reason, the lawsuit itself would seem to conflict with Mourdock’s fiduciary responsibility as treasurer.”

When my Franklin College intern Brittany Brownrigg asked Mourdock why he purchased the Chrysler junk bonds, he responded, “We bought those bonds hoping to be a part of their success. Yeah, absolutely I would do it again and I would have no choice but to do it again.”

Mourdock acknowledged the case has become a “double-edged sword.” Some of you will admire his stand on principle, even if it could have cost the state tens of thousands of jobs. Others will see him as a political opportunist, taking a swing a President Obama at a time he orchestrated the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies instead of allowing them to slide into oblivion.

“I probably have more name recognition than anyone who has ever served as state treasurer because of my involvement with the Chrysler bankruptcy last year,” Mourdock said. “It opened up the topics I get to talk about. It allows me to talk about the big picture of the economy, not just in Indiana or the United States but globally.”

Mourdock said that he believes his involvement with the Chrysler case will be a benefit to his campaign. “I think that is very much going to play in our favor. I think most Hoosiers were opposed to seeing our pensioners getting ripped off, which is exactly what happened.”

In speech at the Democratic Convention last Saturday, Buttigieg saw the issue playing differently. “For most of us in the Hoosier State, impatience is an unfamiliar mood, because we by nature are patient people,” he said. “Our state was built on three great disciplines – the discipline of the farm, the discipline of the factory, and the discipline of the family – each inspiring patience in its own way.”

“We have run out of patience for ‘get rich quick’ schemes, wild speculation and reckless investments,” he continued. “No one can explain to me why the incumbent treasurer put our trust money in junk bonds and mortgage-backed securities, as if our state pensions were some kind of Wall Street hedge fund.”

So, Hoosier voters, you have an interesting decision to make about who will be our next treasurer.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – When I called Brad Ellsworth on Tuesday he abruptly answered the phone and joked, “It was a whole lot simpler when I just picked up the phone at the sheriff’s office and it was 5 o’clock in the morning.”

 But this was U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, now the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, running in one of the more intense and controversial political environments ever. Republicans are already taking aim at him over the health reforms and the variety of bailouts, most, ironically, that were initiated under Republican President George W. Bush.

 So how is Ellsworth going to navigate these twisted issues? Health care, for instance? “I’ve had mixed reaction,” the former Vanderburgh sheriff said. “I have had no less than hundreds of meetings and thousands of phone calls and correspondence going back and forth. I’ve got to tell you it was a diverse response: people who were all for it, people who were all against it. And so that became my goal to dissect it and make the best decision I could on what I felt was best for the state and the country.”

 He recalled his first congressional campaign when people were telling him something had to be done. “It was a good first step. It’s not perfect. There will be tweaks; there will be fixes as we go along. I would have liked to have seen something more incremental. When you have something that big, it becomes ripe for misinformation and when people get misinformation they get scared. As more people dissect this they are more satisfied.”

 Ellsworth participated in a 5,000 person tele-townhall sponsored by the AARP and found seniors warming up. “Early on they were talking about death camps and panels, but now they are talking about closing the donut hole and pre-existing conditions and things that it will do.”

 How about the auto bailout that Bush proposed but Republican Dan Coats has opposed? “What I started to do was calling people back home,” Ellsworth said. “Probably the most convincing call I made was to Toyota, which has a plant in my district at Princeton. They said we had to do this. I asked them why and they said you have to understand that their suppliers were also the suppliers to GM and Chrysler and if they went out of business in an abrupt manner, and the suppliers went down, they would go down also. That was pretty convincing.”

 Ellsworth likens it to a “Thelma & Louise” going over the cliff scenario versus “putting a parachute on the back of the car and floating down in a slower, orderly manner.”

 “They still went into bankruptcy, they formulated that and then they came back up. GM has paid back their loans,” Ellsworth said of GM and Chrysler. “I don’t think there’s any question that it saved jobs. Toyota is getting ready to call back.”

 And the stimulus? Ellsworth traveled to Elkhart with President Obama in February 2009 and supported it. “This country was on the verge of a depression. Everybody agreed we needed to do something. Nobody wanted to spend that much money. But look at what it did. A third of that – and most people don’t bring this up, they talk about the $780 billion – were tax cuts that went right back to American citizens. I have no problem giving tax cuts back to businesses. A third of it was propping up the states, including Indiana. It was keeping uninsured benefits, health care benefits. A third was projects.”

 And TARP, the Wall Street bailout? “Again, we have to put this in context,” Ellsworth said. “This was when President Bush came to Congress and said the economy was going off the cliff and we had to do something to prop it up. That’s pretty convincing. My constituents had all their 401Ks, all of their investments, in peril.”

 Ellsworth said he called people in the “financial world” from Evansville and Terre Haute. “I trust those people. I didn’t call one soul on Wall Street. When small businesses couldn’t get loans, I was getting calls every day. They were locked up, frozen up, and that was costing jobs.”

 He bucked President Obama on Cap-and-Trade. “The President called me and said, ‘Can you vote with us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not. It penalizes us.’”

 Ellsworth has taken some flak for running as a sheriff. He doesn’t dismiss his congressional career, but he sees his police skills as an asset in the bizarre world we call Washington. “I never asked anybody what their politics was when I was sheriff,” Ellsworth explained. “I just went out and tried to resolve their problems. I didn’t take everything at face value. I separated people and interviewed them separately. I tried to get to the real story. If I had someone who came in and gave me one side of the story, I’d go find someone on the other side. It’s like an investigation. It’s trying to get down to the truth and make a decision.”

 Yes, decisions. Tough, complicated decisions.

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – Just as I let my subscription to Site Selection Magazine lapse, here we are with a jobs controversy.

It comes with another spike in the “Mitch for Prez” speculation with laudatory articles in the Weekly Standard, op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and health reforms are “my worst nightmare” at the American Enterprise Institute.

Make no mistake, however, about one four letter word that will have a huge impact in this election, and the next and the next: jobs.

And here we find the finely calculating Daniels administration hitting what the governor would call “a rough patch.”

This occurred in late May when WTHR-TV began running promos showing empty factories, breezy farm fields where new plants were supposed to be built, and the governor rapidly walking away from TV cameras at a recent Indiana Economic Development Corporation meeting. Investigative reporter Bob Segall was telling us that “at least 40 percent” of the jobs the IEDC said were coming … aren’t.

Our two Mitches – Daniels and Commerce Secretary Mitch Roob – are off their “A” game on this one. The testy governor told WTHR, “You seem to have a blindingly clear view of what is perfectly obvious. In a recession, a lot of businesses have to change their plans.”

 OK. Got it. That makes sense. I suppose just about everyone reading this has had to make some adjustment due to the Great Recession of 2009-10.

But when it comes to jobs, this is not an area where you want to fudge. It’s hitting too many families up close and personal. Particularly with former auto workers who are now selling paint at Lowe’s, greeting folks at WalMart or working at $8.75 per hour jobs at one of Indiana’s new call centers or warehouses.

The Roob part of this has been a PR disaster. I wasn’t the only one shaking my head at his hubris on the WTHR report. “We don’t share it with the public. We don’t release it to the news media. That’s confidential information,” Roob said of metrics surrounding tax breaks and the resulting jobs.

“People in Indiana — the businesses of Indiana — feel very strongly that their relationship with state government is between state government and that company.” (Wince!)

Remember, this comes with the state’s jobless rate blinking at or near 10 percent for more than a year now. With the governor’s job approval hovering around 60 percent, it’s pretty obvious many Hoosiers are willing to cut him some slack. They see the bigger picture.

And there was this part of the WTHR report: When 13 Investigates did receive the records it requested, wage, tax credit, employment, and job realization information had been crossed out. “That’s not a mistake,” Roob said. “That is a competitive weapon that companies believe can be used against them by their competitors.”

For an administration that displays itself as a defender of the taxpayer, they now appear to be telling us that when it comes to our tax dollars and their jobs deals, it’s none of our dang business.

This has simply handed Speaker B. Patrick Bauer “Exhibit A” in why the House should stay Democratic; why divided government provides a check and balance.

I awaited the reaction to the Segall report and for more than two weeks, there was hardly any, until the Indianapolis Business Journal reported last weekend that Bauer had filed an information request to see the data. And we’re hearing from the two Mitches that somewhere between 8 and 13 percent of the jobs didn’t materialize.

And this is a story that has the potential of getting away from the normally media savvy governor. Just yesterday it was front page fodder for the Indianapolis Star, the Evansville Courier & Press, Times of Northwest Indiana and the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. The wires will spread it even further. So at this writing, the administration is setting itself up for a big hit.

It’s also worth noting that this is not the first time Roob has been enmeshed in controversy. His tenure at FSSA ended with the administration’s biggest black eye to date over how it automated the state’s social safety net. The state and IBM are now trading billion dollar lawsuits. The solution was to move Roob over to Commerce.

This is not the only jobs trouble Daniels and the Republicans could face this fall if Bauer and the Democrats play their cards right. On the week that Chrysler/Fiat announced a $300 million investment in Kokomo, Daniels, Treasurer Richard Mourdock and even State Sen. Marlin Stutzman are telling us why those are bad deals and comparing it to the bankruptcy of the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes. That may sell well on Wall Street (which received its own $780 billion bailout), but how about Main Street in Kendallville?

Maybe they are seeing internal polling that says that stance on the issue is playing their way. My gut tells me it’s a recipe for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN – Just over a year ago on June 4, Howey Politics Indiana’s weekly newsletter began with this dire report: “General Motors and Chrysler are in bankruptcy. The Chinese are buying Hummer. An Indianapolis GM plant is closing. Indiana has gone through turbulence with the auto industry it helped forge before, with names like Stutz, Studebaker and Dusenberg falling by the wayside in past rough patches. But there has never been a week like this.”

With the jobless rate hovering around 10 percent, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock would unsuccessfully battle U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagen in the U.S. Supreme Court over the Chrysler/Fiat merger, saying “Indiana retirees and Indiana taxpayers have suffered losses because of unprecedented and illegal acts of the federal government.”

There was the peculiar silence of Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Sens. Evan Bayh and Dick Lugar as the Hoosier auto sector, numbering between 111,000 and 140,000 workers, stood at the brink. Daniels praised Japanese companies, saying that they “get it.”

And we reported: The gamble of Obama’s presidency will play out on Hoosier soil.

Fast forward to June 2010: the state jobless rate is at 9.9 percent. President Obama’s approval rating is 43 percent in Indiana. He is wildly unpopular here for the health reforms which will add about 500,000 Hoosiers to insurance plans provided by private companies. The stimulus plan he pushed in Elkhart during his first trip as president brought the state $4.2 billion, which helped stave off a tax increase. It created about 5,000 jobs while saving hundreds of teaching positions from the chopping block.

Many Hoosiers believe there should have been no bailouts of the auto companies, Wall Street or the stimulus. I believe that if nothing had been done, Indiana’s unemployment rate might be 5 to 10 percent higher than what it is today.

I’ll get into the health reforms and stimulus packages in future columns. Today, it’s worth noting what Obama did in Wakarusa in August 2009. Obama announced $2.4 billion in highly competitive grants “to develop the next generation of fuel efficient cars and trucks powered by the next generation of battery technologies all made right here in the U. S. of A.”

This came after he ushered General Motors and Chrysler through fast-tracked bankruptcies. So what kind of bang for the buck did Hoosiers get?

Going into this crisis, the Indiana auto industry employed somewhere between 110,000 and 140,000 people in the sector, including many auto parts suppliers.

Since the “new” GM and Chrysler emerged, General Motors, which is 61 percent owned by the federal government in return for a $50 billion bailout, has paid back 10 percent ($6.7 billion) five years early. GM has added 700 jobs and a third production shift at its Fort Wayne truck plant; 245 jobs and $111 million in investment at the Bedford power train plant; and 300 jobs and $364 million at the Marion stamping plant. It will close a 650 employee stamping plant in Indianapolis, though the Indianapolis Star reports there is a prospective buyer. That is a net gain of 595 jobs, with a multiplier of three to four times that in the state’s sprawling auto parts sector.

Chrysler has rehired 1,583 workers at its casting and transmission complex in Kokomo while making $343 million in investments there. So there are 2,178 GM and Chrysler jobs, and as many as 6,000 related jobs in the parts sector that exist in the state since Obama initiated the expedited bankruptcies.

While Cummins Engines in Columbus laid off 194 workers earlier this year, in January U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu visited and announced the selection of nine projects totaling more than $187 million to improve fuel efficiency for heavy-duty trucks and passenger vehicles.

What about the electric car sector that Obama hoped to seed at Wakarusa? This is even more promising. The Indiana electric car industry has received $400 million in federal grants, including $39.2 million for Navistar’s eStar venture. Enerdel, with plants in Indianapolis, Noblesville and Greenfield and 300 employees, received $65 million.

The Th!nk car, which will use Enerdel lithium-ion batteries, is setting up an assembly plant in Elkhart. Bright Automotive at Anderson was awarded a big U.S. Postal Service contract to develop and test electric mail delivery vehicles. Carbon Motors is planning a 1,500 employee plant in Connersville for its futuristic police cars.

Carbon Motors CEO William Santana Li explained in 2009, “If the White House is listening, Mr. President there are a few thousand people here in Connersville that just declared the official turn-around of the United States of America.”

While GM and Chrysler aren’t out of the woods yet, this is far better than the economic disaster we were bracing for a year ago. I liken it to 1910, when Hoosier bicycle and wagon shops began converting to make those new horseless carriages. In the next couple of decades, they created tens of thousands of jobs and an event we call the Indianapolis 500.

With fresh minds and bold ideas, history just might repeat itself.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN – With the official nomination of Brad Ellsworth for the U.S. Senate, the Republican and Democratic field appeared to have been set for the 2010 mid-term elections until U.S. Rep. Mark Souder’s stunning resignation in May. Howey Politics Indiana is forecasting that three House seats – the 2nd, 8th, and 9th – and possibly the Senate race will be in play in October and November. All of these seats are held by Democrats and in a worse case scenario for that party, if the GOP can stage a sweep, it would be a reversal from 2006 when the three House seats flipped the other way.

Polling this winter and spring has revealed deep suspicions for incumbents and estimates of losses for President Obama’s Democrats have ranged anywhere from a typical 25 seats in the Rothenberg Political Report to up to 100 by Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics. There were several 125 and 90 seat swings in the U.S. House late in the 19th Century, which is the what the founding fathers had intended. The House is to reflect the current mood of the country. The historic anomaly came when Democrats controlled the House for 40 years until the last bring tidal wave in 1994.

Polling bears out deep dissatisfaction. The Real Clear Politics composite on Congressional job approval stands at 21.4 percent approval and 72 percent disapprove, with a CBS/New York Times poll on April 5-12 putting the numbers at a historic low – 17/73 percent.

The RCP generic Congressional vote stands at a 42.4 percent for Republicans and 41.6 percent for Democrats, most recently tied at 46 percent by Gallup (May 3-8) and a 45-40 favoring Democrats in a May 7-11 Associated Press/Gfk Poll. An ABC/Washington Post poll on April 22-25 had Democrats up 48-43 percent while a May 3-8 Rasmussen Reports Poll had the Republicans with a 44/38 percent advantage. So the generic polls have been all over the map.

Neither party is in particularly good standing. The AP/Gfk poll had approval/disapproval for Congressional Republicans at 31/65 percent and 37/61 percent for Democrats.

What has been consistent are the right/wrong track numbers. The RCP average is 34.7 percent right direction and 57.6 percent wrong track, or a -22.9 spread.

So the people are not happy.

Many believe that President Obama’s first mid-term will be a referendum on his brief tenure. The RCP composite has 47.8 percent approving and 45.9 percent disapproving, or a +1.9 percent spread.

U.S. Rep. Dan Burton was renominated with just 30 percent of the vote against six challengers in the 5th CD. Many believe if the challenger field had been one or two candidates, he would have been defeated. Former congressional members Dan Coats (39 percent) and John Hostettler (20 percent) in the Republican U.S. Senate race and Mike Sodrel in the 9th CD (30 percent) failed to post robust numbers.

Sean Trende asked in an April 14 analysis for Real Clear Politics, “How bad could 2010 get for the Democrats?” His answer will have them shuddering.

“Let me say upfront that I tend to agree with analysts who argue that if we move into a ‘V’-shaped recovery and President Obama’s job approval improves, Democratic losses could be limited to 20 or 25 seats,” said Trende. “That said, I think those who suggest that the House is barely in play, or that we are a long way from a 1994-style scenario are missing the mark. A 1994-style scenario is probably the most likely outcome at this point. Moreover, it is well within the realm of possibility – not merely a far-fetched scenario – that Democratic losses could climb into the 80 or 90-seat range.

If that kind of scenario is born out, not only do U..S. Reps. Baron Hill and Joe Donnelly go down (as well as Ellsworth in the Senate race and State Rep. Trent Van Haaften in the open 8th), but you’d start to see U.S. Rep. Andre Carson get nervous.

While President Obama is taking a beating over the BP oil spill, the die is not cast on the Congressional races. Many felt the GOP had a great opportunity to pick up the Democratic seat of the late Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. John Murtha in May, but lost by a big margin.

Ellsworth will be fascinating to watch … if we can find him. He has won two sheriff and two congressional races by landslide margins but recent polls show him down to Republican Dan Coats by double digits while a recent Rasmussen Reports poll show that 63 percent of Hoosiers favor repeal of the health care reforms.

Ellsworth is running statewide for the first time, abruptly starting his Senate race in February, attaining the nomination in mid-May and then … well, we haven’t seen much of him. It is a scenario strangely akin to Jill Long Thompson’s 2008 gubernatorial nomination win which was followed by seven weeks of a disappearing act.

No Hoosier Democratic candidate can disappear and expect to win this November. Their towering challenge is to mount a vigorous defense of the health care reforms and seek to motivate the base. If they fail, November could be brutal.

The columnist is publisher of www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

“Last summer I wrote that I hoped the end of the war could be a gigantic relief, but not an elation. In the joyousness of high spirits it is easy for us to forget the dead. Those who are gone would not wish themselves to be a millstone of gloom around our necks.” – Unpublished column by Hoosier writer and World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle, found in his pocket on April 18, 1945, the day he was killed on the island of le Shima.

FRANKLIN, Ind. – On this Memorial Day, along with all of our brave citizens who have defended our country or made the ultimate wartime sacrifice, I’d like for you to remember the 1,113 journalists who have been killed over the past decade.

They’ve died in the obvious places where war flares like Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo. But increasingly they are being assaulted or being killed while doing their reporting duty, in places like Russia, Mexico, Nepal and Honduras.

On April 18 – 65 years after Hoosier journalist Ernie Pyle was killed by a Japanese sniper – reporter Azmat Ali Bangash of Pakistan’s Samaa TV was killed by a suicide bomber. Forty-eight hours earlier at Quetta hospital cameraman Malik Arif was killed in the same manner while another five journalists were wounded.

On Jan. 7, Valentin Valdes Espinosa, a reporter for the Zocalo of Saltillo newspaper, and two other journalists were intercepted by two trucks full of gunmen, according to the International News Safety Institute.

Espinosa’s body – bound, gagged and bearing five bullet holes – was found with a warning note to others who might take on the drug traffickers. Or there was Patient Chibeya, a cameraman for Radio Television Nationale Congolaise who was gunned down in front of his home by seven armed men in military fatigues.

 I write of these brave men and women at a time when the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is poised to close Ernie Pyle’s boyhood home in Dana due to the budget cuts ordered by Gov. Mitch Daniels. This is a tough call because all sorts of other departments and programs are taking a hit during the Great Recession of 2009-10.

The purpose of this column isn’t to beg the governor and legislators to keep the Pyle home open. However, we wouldn’t consider closing a monument honoring the Civil War dead or those on the USS Indianapolis. But that’s what we’re about to see happen to the historic birthplace of American soldiers’ best buddy and a great American journalist.

It perhaps underscores the state of journalism; it’s been a brutal year for journalists here in Indiana as well as across the country. Many big urban newspapers are in bankruptcy, including the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. Many editors and reporters have been forced to take unpaid furloughs and deep pay cuts. Many of the best who know the history of their communities are fleeing the profession.

What the free people of Indiana need to keep in mind is the fact that journalists are key to keeping them free. Many of you don’t trust the government. Without a free press, government will run amok and when this occurs again, then truly the tree of liberty will need to be watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Increasingly filling the news void are bloggers, many who are untrained journalists with an opinion. Think about the consequences of trading degreed journalists and impartial analysts of information with Internet bomb throwers and rumor mongers.

I cannot begin to express how dangerous this is for the country. A recent American Journalism Review study found that just 355 newspaper staff reporters are covering the 50 state capitols full time – more than a 30 percent decline. As the newspapers and TV stations cut back, the more latitude there is for the corruption. Many of you will remember in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the FBI was raiding Indiana Statehouse offices and several lawmakers went to jail.

A vibrant 4th Estate prevents and exposes scandal. In times of war, journalists like Ernie Pyle, imbedded with troops on the front lines, convey the horror and write of the brave who leave their small towns and farms and fight in places like Khe Sanh, Normandy, Fallujah and the Korengal Valley.

Since 2003, we’ve watched 258 journalists die during the Iraq War and a steady drum beat of unarmed writers, photographers and audio guys have passed on: 30 so far this year, 133 in 2009, 109 in 2008, 172 in 2007.

In that unpublished column found on Pyle’s body, he wrote, “There are many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world. Dead men by mass production – in one country after another – month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer. Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous. Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.”

So here we are: Ernie Pyle’s historical home in Dana is on the chopping block and the journalism industry is just trying to hang in there and can’t come to the rescue.

The columnist is publisher of www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – I first met Mark Souder when he was running for Congress in 1994. For most of the past 16 years these columns have been written perched on an antique “HoweMCo” sewing table purchased at Souder’s shop in Grabill. There was a long interview in the ancient school house there as Souder discussed in detail his bid to upset U.S. Rep. Jill Long that year.

 Souder was a mainstay of the Gingrich Revolution. He was not only right of center, he was a lecturing legislator who often made moral judgments when many saw large swaths of gray. Sixteen years later, 15 of the 73 Republicans elected that year have been tainted by scandal and divorce.

 In an infamous video – headlining on YouTube for the past 24 hours – Souder told staffer, Tracy Meadows Jackson, with whom he was having an affair, that while he favored sexual abstinence, he wasn’t sure any method really worked. “I personally think I should have abstained from the hearing,” Souder quipped.

 It was just last month that I called Souder to get an update on his primary race against Bob Thomas. What I thought would be a quick three to five minute conversation turned into a 45-minute stream of consciousness as he darted on and off the U.S. House floor casting votes.

 It was an anguished conversation. Souder said he was “miserable” and that the nature of his campaign with Thomas “sealed” his decision that this would be his last term. Little did I know that lurking beneath Souder’s tormented psyche was the extra-marital affair that would end his political career with a shocking resignation this week. When I talked with him, the possibility of a sex scandal was the last thing I would have pondered. Throughout Tuesday after word of the resignation leaked out, there was a torrent of reports like the one in the Washington Post that Souder was meeting Jackson at boat ramps for “trysts.”

 Souder said in a Tuesday e-mail to me that much of the speculation is wrong. But he added, “It did evolve from my original intention to just resign from the nomination to resigning from Congress. Renee Howell, my chief of staff, did play a key role along with leadership in establishing how painful the process would be. No one ever had any proven evidence for a story, and the rumors were wild and mostly wrong.” Souder added that he was “sick of the pressure” and explained “There is a story behind who was applying the constant trafficking in the story. Not sure exactly what story, but it is clearly a mixture of revenge and opportunism.”

 It was a bizarre swirl of power and sexuality coming from the most unlikely source. And for the third time this year, a Hoosier Member of Congress is calling it quits for family concerns: Rep. Steve Buyer due to his wife’s illness, and Sen. Evan Bayh who cited the same poisonous environment that Souder did, with his wife bound to be a campaign issue. If the worst case scenario for Democrats emerges this year, more than half of the Indiana delegation could change by November.

 Souder certainly had an air of moral judgment. But on the most momentous case of his career – whether to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about oral sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky – the Fort Wayne Republican was maddeningly ponderous for his supporters and even his family. He would be one of the few Republicans to vote against Articles I, II and IV on the Clinton impeachment. He did vote for Article III – the obstruction of justice charge.

 “Obstruction of justice was a combination of a series of things,” Souder told Howey Politics shortly after the December 1998 vote. “It was clear he (Clinton) attempted to get the gifts back” he said of items that had been given Monica Lewinsky. “When you added it all together there was a pattern of trying to stop justice from being done.”

 But as for the first two articles, Souder poured over documents and commiserated with U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays. “We were both unnerved. It didn’t meet the standards of impeachment,” Souder said.

 Souder took a pounding from the Weekly Standard, his staff, his family and then-4th CD Republican Chairman Don Clark, who ironically was convicted of sex crimes.

 The end of the Souder political saga is racked with irony. His own family had pushed him on the Clinton impeachment. They were not present when a teary Souder told the press he had “sinned” against his God and wife. He never lied. In fact, Souder came excruciatingly clean.

 Long a fiscal conservative, his abrupt resignation will cost the counties in the 3rd CD hundreds of thousands of tax dollar to conduct a special election. An ardent Republican who worried about losing the seat in 2012 if he didn’t run, the 3rd CD is now a big plum hanging in front of Dr. Tom Hayhurst, the Democrat nominee.

 And perhaps most ignominiously, Souder now joins the pantheon of sex scandals: Chairman Wilbur Mills, Gov. Mark Sanford, Gov. Elliot Spitzer, Sen. Gary Hart, Sen. Larry Craig. John Edwards, and, yes, even Bill Clinton.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – When compiling my first fall Indiana House Horse Race predictions and then receiving the Rasmussen Reports poll on the U.S. Senate race, the potentially immense impact Evan Bayh’s retirement decision has on the Senate race begins to sink in.

 For Indiana Democrats, it could be a disaster.

 The Rasmussen Reports poll from May 5-6 has Republican Dan Coats leading U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth 51-36 percent. Now, one of my favorite lines has been to not place too much importance on polling in April and May. If we had done so in 1992, we would have expected a President Perot.

 But even at this early date, what is unmistakable is that a once relatively safe U.S. Senate seat in the Democratic column may be slipping away. At the Coats victory party on Election Night, the room seemed flat and uninspired. The Coats candidacy is not a wellspring of grassroots activism and emotion. But many believe the Coats candidacy scared Bayh out of the race.

 Bayh certainly would have had an intense reelection battle and I suspect he was looking at internal numbers showing that his landslide days have abated. But even in an environment hostile to incumbents, and considering the history of one-time presidential candidates coming home and losing, Bayh probably was looking at a victory in the 5 to 7 percent range instead of his customary 25 percent. Ellsworth has had to put a campaign together on the fly and many are openly wondering about its outreach to African-Americans, Latinos, labor and the news media. It hasn’t been pretty.

 Whatever Bayh saw, the fact is that he has left his party in dire straits.

 Ellsworth’s 8th CD certainly would have been in play in the fall. But as part of the Bayh retirement dominoes, it also is on the endangered list for Democrats. HPI probably would have had the race in a “Leans” Ellsworth category until Dr. Larry Bucshon could demonstrate that he could match his establishment support and pick up that of the Kristi Risk Tea Party wing. I rate it as a “Tossup.”

Bucshon could be one of the few new faces the Tea Party has been seeking, and his will be a voice that can articulately speak to the health care reforms that, in the Rasmussen Poll, find 59 percent of Hoosiers favor repealing.

 So there are a U.S. Senate seat and a U.S. House seat on the post-Bayh endangered list.

 Now look at the Indiana House seats. HD76 is an open seat now that State Rep. Trent Van Haaften has migrated to the 8th CD. The Democrat domino is State Sen. Bob Dieg, who is making a rare move from the Indiana Senate to the House. But the Republicans have a great candidate in educator Wendy McNamara and so a once “safe or llikely” Democrat seat goes into the “Tossup” zone because it is open, the GOP candidate is strong, and the environment is decidedly Republican.

 So there are a U.S. Senate seat, a U.S. House seat, and an Indiana House seat at “Tossup” or worse for the Democrats.

 Until Bayh’s last appearance on the ballot, he had long coattails for the Indiana House candidates, usually taking three new House seats with him. The wardrobe has changed. Ellsworth is wearing a tuxedo T-shirt as opposed to evening wear. When you go through the Indiana House Horse Race list, there are three Democratic seats that we believe are likely to head into the GOP column (held by Reps. Nancy Michael, Ron Herrell and the open seat of Vern Tincher). So there goes the House. It was poised to go anyway, but Democrats at this milepost are looking at a sieve.

 There are another three or four Southern Indiana House seats in addition to those already discussed (held by State Reps. Gail Riecken, Paul Robertson, Bob Bischoff) that are out of the “Safe” and “Likely” Democratic column and into the “Leans” category. Seven Democratic seats are in “Tossup.”

 So the tally is now a U.S. Senate seat, a U.S. House seat (and we haven’t even touched on the Bayh coattails as related to U.S. Reps. Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill who will be in a “Tossup” race next week) and now perhaps three to six Indiana House seats in play … and this is a potential disaster.

 But you can’t pin all the blame on Evan Bayh for a tsunami scenario. What you can blame on Bayh is the 11th hour timing (on Feb. 15, President’s Day) and the Chinese fire drill that followed, as well as that Democratic primary ballot that didn’t even have the U.S. Senate race listed.

 This gets into base motivation and voter intensity. The Democrats lost those elements in 1994 and paid a dear price. The fact that 30 Democrats on the Central Committee will make the Senate nomination call is old style, paternalistic politics. Now add the high support for health care repeal, President Obama’s 43/58 fav/unfavs and this is, at this point (to be charitable) one fine mess.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

FRANKLIN, Ind. – When Dan Coats re-emerged on the Hoosier political scene last Feb. 2, he had already made the decision to run on the merits of his career that included two Senate victories, four U.S. House terms, an ambassadorship to Germany, and a close brush with history when President George W. Bush nearly made him secretary of defense just months before Sept. 11 2001.

 Coats refused to attack his primary opponents, figuring that he would need to close ranks with supporters of State Sen. Stutzman, Richard Behney, John Hostettler and Don Bates Jr. That paid a dividend two days after the primary when Coats and the challengers came together for a unity session. If the mud had been slung, such a unity event would have taken more time, which is already a fleeting commodity.

 Such restraint on the mud is becoming a hallmark of Indiana’s most successful political figures. Sen. Dick Lugar, Gov. Mitch Daniels have won by staying positive. So has Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who won the 4th CD nomination by not following his opponent into the ditch.

 There was a dearth of public opinions polls during the campaign, but internal Coats polling by Public Opinion Strategies showed Coats with as much as a 30 percent lead. The campaign, however, tried not to raise expectations and refused to go negative, choosing to trade a blowout victory for party unity.

 “He pledged to support whoever won and he said that from the very beginning,” said Coats campaign strategist Kevin Shaw Kellems. “The conventional wisdom in Washington was that the Indiana Senate primary would be a nail-biter. Washington was wrong again.”

On Tuesday, national pundits and Republican pollster Christine Matthews told Politico, “If I were the Coats people, I would say anything less than 55 percent is unacceptable. If he comes out with less than 55 percent and manages to squeak by, he looks bad.”

 He ended up with 39 percent, still 10 percent more than his closest competitor in Stutzman. 

The campaign wasn’t buying that and Coats squarely looked toward a race with U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth. He traveled to Evansville the day after the election for an “in-your-face” swat at the Democrat, who will be handed the nomination on May 15 by the Indiana Democratic Central Committee in a power play orchestrated by lame duck Sen. Evan Bayh.

 “In light of the damage that President Obama’s policies have already done to the United States of America, as Hoosiers we cannot afford to be any part of this,” Coats told a somewhat subdued crowd at the Downtown Marriott at 9:45 p.m. on Election Night. “We cannot and we will not stand idly by and watch as our personal liberties are diluted, our national security diminished, and our fiscal health destroyed. And we absolutely cannot afford to elect someone to the United States Senate who will enable this radical move to the left.”

 Coats then delivered a broadside at Ellsworth, saying, “Folks, anyone who has voted to reappoint Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House cannot be trusted to protect Indiana’s interests. This is going to be a pivotal and a healthy exercise in democracy because the choice will be very, very clear – the differences between the two philosophies are indeed dramatic.

 “Congressman Brad Ellsworth and I are going to offer Hoosiers two very different views of the direction our country should be taking.”

 The Ellsworth campaign released this statement Thursday night: “I know Hoosiers are frustrated with Washington,” Ellsworth said. “I am too. That’s why I’m running, because we need folks who will listen and work together to get things done no matter what party you’re from – that’s been my approach as Sheriff, in Congress, and it’s what I’ll do in the Senate. Over the next six months, I’ll keep listening and give Indiana a clear choice in this election. I’ll keep working for everyday Hoosiers and their priorities and not the big special interest lobbyists in Washington.”

 Stutzman attempted to ride a wave of endorsements from the American Conservative Union and U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and came close to matching Coats’ TV buys in the final week.

 But it was the anemic fundraising by Stutzman and Hostettler (who reported only $37,000 on his first quarter FEC report) that alarmed state and Washington Republicans and drew Coats into the race.

 Coats’ entry may have been enough to force a dispirited Bayh to retire. Bayh allies said he had pondered retirement after his presidential and vice presidential bids faltered between 2006 and 2008, only to find President Obama’s dynamic change creating a potential political firestorm back home. Bayh managed his father’s 1980 campaign that lost to Dan Quayle. He also faced the prospect of his wife becoming a campaign issue after she made $2 million by sitting on the boards of companies like Wellpoint, which had dramatically raised insurance rates just as the Obama health reforms entered the homestretch into law.

 Now with Coats the GOP nominee, he will directly challenge the Obama presidency and take aim at a Democratic Senate seat that, going into 2010, many assumed was safely on the ruling party’s ledger.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN – U.S. Rep. Mark Souder was on the phone with me while darting in and out of the House chambers casting votes on Wednesday afternoon. He was in the midst of spending an uncharacteristic $400,000 to fend off auto dealer Bob Thomas, who moved into northeastern Indiana’s 3rd District to take a shot at the incumbent who knows a thing or two about national waves. Souder was swept in on one in 1994.

 “I think we’re going to be fine,” Souder said of his primary prospects, pointing to winning two recent Tea Party and 9/12 straw polls in New Haven and Goshen – events he did not attend. “But I’ve been miserable.”

A few minutes later, he was talking about this likely being his last hurrah, depending on potential committee chairmanships. “I was thinking this was going to be my last term,” he said as he described his opponent’s relentless attacks over bailouts and cash for clunkers. “This just sealed it.”

 With his father and brothers dying in their 50s of heart attacks, and his doctor warning him about stress, Souder talked of barely seeing his grandchildren. It has, he said, been stressful dealing with the Obama presidency as a conservative, even though his primary opponents are portraying him as a liberal big spender.

 If he wins the primary and defeats Dr. Tom Hayhurst in the fall, Souder said it would make sense to retire, so that the next GOP nominee won’t have to run in the coming Republican president’s first mid-term in 2014.

 I remembered my first conversations with Souder in his Grabill antique shop during the last big wave of 1994. But this election year has become one of the more bizarre election sequences in recent Indiana history. Next Tuesday, we’ll learn a great deal about where this state stands politically.

 The banner headline from the era is that U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh walked away from a position many assumed he’d have for as long as he wanted. Ascending to the Democratic Senate nomination is U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who will be officially selected by the Indiana Democratic Central Committee on May 15. The rank-and-file Democratic primary voter will not get a say. This was a power play by Bayh, who many assume will come back and run for governor in two years.

 We saw three former members of Congress – Dan Coats, John Hostettler and Mike Sodrel – re-emerge after many assumed they were part of our past. Coats and Hostettler are seeking the Bayh Senate seat, and Sodrel is seeking a fifth matchup with U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, but he first has to defeat Bloomington attorney Todd Young in the primary. Young has raised an astounding $450,000 and is trying to make the case that it’s time for new leadership in Washington.

 We’ve seen a number of indicators – most recently a Pew Research Poll – that shows only 22 percent have any faith in our leadership in Washington. In a Rasmussen Reports poll, 33 percent say the country is headed in the wrong direction, only 24 percent say the federal government can adequately monitor the Wall Street barons that put us on the brink of an economic catastrophe in September 2008, 73 percent believe Goldman Sachs committed fraud, and only 32 percent are confident policymakers know what they’re doing about the economy.

 It is fascinating, then, at this writing that Senate Republicans are seeking to block Wall Street reforms the way they did health care

 In this setting, if you’re U.S. Reps. Dan Burton or Souder – facing well-funded Republican primary opponents – you’ve got to be concerned about the throw-the-bums-out mentality. Burton has six primary opponents who have out-raised him. Only two Republican county chairmen in his district support his reelection. There have been scores of defections by county sheriffs, commissioners, legislators and mayors in his district. He was “endorsed” in a TV ad by actors from an Ohio ad agency.

 Burton may win a 15th term simply because he has so many primary opponents.

 In Souder’s primary, the Republicans have raised and spent more money than the four Republicans trying to defeat Dan Coats in a statewide Senate race.

 As we come into spring, Republicans are stirring at the blood in the water after President Obama signed the health reforms into law and the jobless rate hovers around 10 percent.

 But things are starting to improve. Home sales are up. There are indicators that companies are beginning to hire again. The American auto industry was in near collapse a year ago. This past week, GM announced it would hire 245 workers at Bedford and Chrysler is adding 339 at Kokomo.

 Souder took heat for backing President Bush and to some extent Obama on the auto bailout. Since then, GM has paid back a government loan five years early and added more than 1,200 jobs at Fort Wayne and Marion.

 Yes, it’s been a strange, volatile year. Who knows how the final chapters will be written?

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

INDIANAPOLIS – When it comes to the Republican U.S. Senate race, Curt Smith has had vivid relationships with four of the five candidates. He helped launch Richard Behney’s campaign and he’s worked with State Sen. Marlin Stutzman on marriage legislation with the Indiana Family Institute. He’s been Dan Coats’ Senate state director and congressman John Hostettler’s chief of staff.

 When it comes to the Senate primary, Smith is making it clear whom he supports: Dan Coats.

 ”When Dan called me and said he was getting back in the race, I was very excited because I know a little bit about the Senate having worked there for six years,” Smith said. “I know how senators interact with one another. I am thoroughly convinced that Dan Coats would be the best possible senator from Indiana. That’s not to take anything away from John Hostettler. John is a smart guy. But the House of Representatives is wholesale where groups and blocks come together to advance legislation. The Senate is retail. You’ve got to have ‘Triple A’ people skills on legislation to get votes on your issues. I just don’t think John Hostettler is as well suited for the Senate as Dan Coats.”

 The Senate primary is a presumed race between the two former Members of Congress, though Stutzman has won the endorsement of the American Conservative Union and U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint. A fifth candidate, Don Bates Jr., has asserted that unlike Coats, Hostettler and Stutzman, he has no government experience and, thus, has not been “part of the problem.”

 With Hostettler, who he met at a 1994 Promise Keepers convention, Smith explained, “John’s used to putting coal in there and getting electricity out of here and that’s not always how the legislative process works.” Hostettler graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute and was an engineer at Vectren before he ran for Congress. “A lot of times you need to bring the people skills in. You have to advance the conversation.”

 ”It’s not only because Dan’s been there before and served years in the Senate; it’s his people skills, his ability to reach out to folks. He can do something with someone who was as far to the left as Ted Kennedy and not compromise his principles and not give the store away,” Smith explained. “He has the skills to negotiate with people who think differently; to blur the ideological lines and look for consensus. Dan Coats will make the logical argument and establish the principles, but he knows that the art of persuasion includes a human dimension. Dan is going to connect with people.”

 ”It’s tough seeing John Hostettler having those kind of people skills,” Smith continued. “I think John has this notion that the Senate is where you go and reflect. Because you have a six-year term it’s the longest horizon in government, it’s not a deliberative and reflective body as the Jimmy Stewart movies would suggest. The reality is the United States Senate is as reactive as the House, it just reacts differently.”

 Asked for examples, Smith pointed to Coats work to revamp the U.S. tax code in 1986 and his pioneer efforts on what he called the Project for American Renewal that eventually formed the structure for President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives.

 On the tax code, Smith explained, “Dan secured a promise from President Reagan in a meeting with House Republicans. Dan almost single handedly was responsible for doubling the dependency exemption.”

 As for Hostettler, Smith explained, “I just see John as a guy who makes the case and then he says, ‘You decide.’ Sometimes you’ve got to do more than that. You have to stay with it, be passionate and make the message. It was hard to get him to return media calls. He did not want to do fundraising. He did not want to meet with some of the constituent groups.”

 There’s another element to Smith’s perception that Coats would be the better Republican nominee over Hostettler and that has to do with the 2006 election that Hostettler lost to U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth – the presumed Democratric Senate nominee – by 22 percent.

 Howey Politics Indiana reported in October 2006 that Hostettler essentially gave up on that race, citing several high level Evansville Republicans. Smith recalls, “I sent you an e-mail saying you were crazy.” But in retrospect, Smith explained, “I don’t really know what happened in 2006. I did not see him as giving up. I saw him as being fatalistic.”

 That 2006 loss – the biggest by an incumbent that year – is in Smith’s mind Hostettler’s greatest liability. “The really tough question for John Hostettler to answer in his Senate campaign is why should he be the one to carry the Republican Party’s banner when he lost to Brad Ellsworth by 22 points?” Smith said. “That’s the question and I don’t think John has a good answer.”

 The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.

By Brian Howey

FRANKLIN – The question I began asking in 2002 was this: Do we need township government?

 Thus far, it is an answer that no one has adequately addressed, though the Kernan-Shepard Commission recommended their demise.

 There are, of course, suspicions that the township system is riddled with inefficiencies, corruption and a lack of accountability. The last several weeks have added to the raft of anecdotal evidence that there are widespread problems.

 Let’s deal with the big one that came out earlier this month when reporter Eric Bradner of the Evansville Courier & Press revealed that the surpluses of the 1,006 townships rose from $215 million in 2008 to $263 million after the latest State Board of Accounts report. This increase comes after the Great Recession of 2009-10 when one would have expected a sizable increase in poor relief in a state where the jobless rate has hovered around 10 percent in that time span.

This comes as the state, cities and counties are staring at dramatic revenue declines. Either the townships aren’t helping that many poor, or they are simply taxing and hoarding too much. Then there are more incidents of bad behavior.

 The former Knight Township trustee in Vanderburgh County, Linda Durham, was arrested for theft and official misconduct after it was determined she spent taxpayer dollars on concert tickets and utility bills, according to the Courier & Press. In neighboring Warrick County, Boon Township Trustee Richard Pryor was arrested on a drug charge after a traffic stop, but the Courier & Press reported that the Indiana State Police are investigating unauthorized reimbursements of $69,000 uncovered by an SBA audit.

 Last week, the Jefferson Township Trustee in Brown County, Angela Jones, was asked by her advisory board to show her books for the first time in 20 years. Two decades! The inquiry revealed that she had built a shelter on her property, ostensibly for township fire department fundraisers, though the fire department didn’t even know it existed. This township, with less than 4,000 population, had a $781,000 surplus in 2008.

 In Washington Township in Indianapolis, Trustee Frank Short spent $20,000 to deny a $700 poor relief request.

 When township reform came up during the 2009 Indiana General Assembly, proponents for their demise stood in the Senate and revealed the mismanagement and corruption, but provided no metrics as to how widespread the problems were. This came as we learned of dozens of cases of theft, lack of phone numbers or signage at township offices, nepotism and other irregularities.

Center Township in Indianapolis spent more money on its own utility bills than what was spent helping the poor with their bills. Most of Marion County’s townships failed to meet even basic state required financial reporting. The House African-American caucus was silent. Why? Are their political foot soldiers more important than an equitable safety net for the poor and a good deal for the taxpayer?

 In 2010, House Ways & Means Chairman Bill Crawford offered up a bill requiring referendums on whether individual townships should exist. Had that ruse passed, it would have created a bizarre patchwork of government.

 Since I began asking whether townships should exist, I have retreated from the notion that we should wipe out the entire layer. Like cities, I believe a 21st Century Indiana should have classes of counties. In some counties, it might make more sense to have poor relief handled in the township by a trustee annually accountable to the county council.

 So my thinking has evolved to this: abolish the urban townships that already have city and county layers of government. Keep the rural townships in “second or third class counties” (first class counties would be mostly urban; second class would be suburban; third class rural) for poor relief, but, as Kernan-Shepard recommends, bring them into a county alliance for public safety. Abolish the township advisory boards – whose members are paid to attend four meetings a year – and make the trustee accountable to county councils.

 Here’s another observation: Gov. Daniels made a big mistake in not having township or county representation on the Kernan-Shepard Commission. It just left him and reform proponents open to the whole “power grab” argument.

 In rural Indiana, you get nowhere when there’s the perception that Big Brother is trying to ram something down your throat from Indianapolis. There has to be a buy-in from the locals who still embrace the Jacksonian principles that were there when many Indiana counties were created.

 In the case of the township system, not only has there been no buy-in, but just about every player in the mix – be it the reformers or the stasists – have done a poor job in making the case for reform or maintaining the status quo.

Here’s a final thought: Where is the Tea Party in all of this? I hope they are taking notes.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.