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Wednesday, 15 August 2012 21:51 |
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by Brian Howey
ZIONSVILLE, Ind. – In my three decades of covering Indiana politics, I have never seen anything quite like Richard Mourdock’s U.S. Senate campaign.
To his credit, he aptly picked up on the brewing Tea Party unrest, articulated a case against U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, and convinced three national groups – Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the National Rifle Association – to pump more than $4 million on behalf of his campaign.
The result was a stunning 61-39 percent upset of Lugar, with Mourdock basing his candidacy on attacking the concept of “bipartisanship.”
The old Nixonian axiom of run to the right in the primary, run to the center in the general, seemed to be a cogent path for Mourdock. While my Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll in late March showed Lugar easily leading Democrat Joe Donnelly 50-29 percent, Mourdock and Donnelly were tied at 35 percent. If Mourdock moderated his pitch to a degree, he could position himself to pick up the needed independent and even moderate voters. He already has the Tea Party base in his pocket, but even in Indiana, you have to carry moderate Republicans and independents to win.
Mourdock views his victory as an ideological one, but Howey/DePauw polling revealed that only 15 percent voted for him based on the Tea Party agenda. Most believed that Lugar was too old and had been in Congress too long.
But in the days after the landslide over Lugar, Mourdock’s campaign sent a fundraising letter out to Hoosier Republicans that raised some eyebrows and had the heads of Lugarites shaking.
"Conservatives scored a tremendous victory in Indiana just a few weeks ago," the Mourdock letter read. "Against all odds and with the establishment working day and night to defeat me, we retired a 36-year entrenched incumbent senator, who routinely betrayed conservative voters to push through some of the most radical aspects of President Obama's agenda."
This notion of “betrayal” has a number of Lugarites fuming.
Mourdock had been critical of Lugar votes for President Obamas's Supreme Court nominees Kagan and Sotomayor and the START Treaty, something Lugar supported predating the Obama presidency. But as Lugar supporters note, he opposed all aspects of Obamacare, the stimulus, as well as the carbon tax proposals.
What is emerging in late summer is Mourdock is still playing to his Tea Party base and not making inroads with voters who don't buy into the parts of his candidacy that favored voting against the debt ceiling and allowing the U.S. to go into default, as well as attempting to derail the Chrysler-Fiat merger, once calling it his “Rosa Parks moment.”
Polling has consistently shown that Mourdock has ground to make up with independents (61 percent who favored the auto rescue in a March Howey/DePauw Poll) and with Lugarites. In my polling last spring, 57 percent of Lugar voters had a negative view of Mourdock, compared to 12 percent who viewed him positively. In a tight race with Donnelly, Mourdock needs every Republican voter he can get.
In the Rasmussen Reports Poll released last Sunday, Mourdock was in a dead heat with Donnelly, leading 42-40 percent, well within the five percent margin of error. And it was a Republican heavy sample at 45 percent. Among those who labeled themselves as "moderates," Donnelly led Mourdock 50 to 23 percent.
In the same survey set, Mitt Romney was leading President Obama 51-35 percent, so there is a huge drop off for Mourdock. That is a problem, because about $5 million had been spent on his behalf prior to the primary, and close to another $1 million since.
In a Washington Post interview, Mourdock was asked if he was worried about winning over the more moderate Lugar voters. "I worry about everything every day, so of course I do," Mourdock responded. "But the primary showed Indiana voters look past negative attacks. Lugar spent a lot on negative attacks and it didn't work."
Asked if he had been in touch with Lugar supporters, Mourdock responded, "Not directly, no. But in the end, he is a Republican."
And it's not as if Lugar hasn't tried to help. He introduced Mourdock to Senate Republicans in July. This came after he warned Mourdock on May 6 that the nominee should “revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator."
As for his Tea Party speech in Dallas last month in which he equated his effort to derail the Chrysler/Fiat merger to the Civil War era issue of slavery, Mourdock said, "People will have to make their own judgment.”
A more vivid contrast even within the Tea Party realm came on “Fox News Sunday,” when Tea Party nominee Ted Cruz of Texas was asked if he would work with Democrats. "I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody," Cruz said. "Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. I'll work with Martians. If -- and the if is critical -- they're willing to cut spending and reduce the debt."
And that's Mourdock's problem with Lugarites. They view him as a bomb thrower who will simply make Capitol Hill even more polarized than it is. Mourdock's fundraising letter of May citing Lugar’s "betrayal" doesn't help his cause.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. Find him on Twitter @hwypol.) by Brian Howey ZIONSVILLE, Ind. – In my three decades of covering Indiana politics, I have never seen anything quite like Richard Mourdock’s U.S. Senate campaign. To his credit, he aptly picked up on the brewing Tea Party unrest, articulated a case against U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, and convinced three national groups – Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the National Rifle Association – to pump more than $4 million on behalf of his campaign. The result was a stunning 61-39 percent upset of Lugar, with Mourdock basing his candidacy on attacking the concept of “bipartisanship.” The old Nixonian axiom of run to the right in the primary, run to the center in the general, seemed to be a cogent path for Mourdock. While my Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll in late March showed Lugar easily leading Democrat Joe Donnelly 50-29 percent, Mourdock and Donnelly were tied at 35 percent. If Mourdock moderated his pitch to a degree, he could position himself to pick up the needed independent and even moderate voters. He already has the Tea Party base in his pocket, but even in Indiana, you have to carry moderate Republicans and independents to win.
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Wednesday, 01 August 2012 15:38 |
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by Brian Howey
INDIANAPOLIS - It had been nine years since Mike Pence had run and brawled for a Congressional seat, twice unsuccessfully challenging U.S. Rep. Phil Sharp.
His friend, U.S. Rep. David McIntosh, was planning to run for governor. What became the 6th CD would be open. At his gubernatorial campaign kickoff in Columbus in June 2011, Pence recalled a vacation horseback ride in Colorado in 1999 when he pondered a return to Congressional politics with his wife, Karen. The couple spotted two red-tailed hawks drafting in the winds above the mountains. He would run once more, they decided, but “no flapping.” They would “soar.”
What has become clear in his gubernatorial race against Democrat John Gregg is that Pence is going to keep his sunny, good mood demeanor and “soar” with a warm and fuzzy message, a bank account double that of his opponent, and when it comes to taking the gloves off, Mike Pence the “good cop” will rely on “bad cop” surrogates to bloody up his opponent.
Appearing at the Indiana Black Expo last week, Pence told Amos Brown, “We’re going to continue to put out a positive message about aspiration. We can build a better Indiana. It’s about aspiration for every community in the state.”
Thus, this week Pence released his fifth feel-good TV ad focusing on jobs. Seated with Karen, he talked about jobs pumping gas and baling hay, and then “I found myself out of work. We got through, tightening our belts.” He added that he wants Indiana to be known “everywhere as the state that works.”
“I know the pain of losing a job,” Pence tells a state with a persistent eight percent jobless rate. It was the first time in nearly a year the state’s jobless rate increased as nearly 266,000 people were without work in data adjusted for seasonal swings in employment. “We’re kind of going sideways right now,” said Anthony Sindone, a continuing lecturer in economics at Purdue University North Central.
The Gregg campaign responded to the new Pence ad, saying, “After two and a half months of commercials, Mike Pence finally mentioned jobs for the first time in his latest ad. Unfortunately for Candidate Pence, Congressman Pence’s record shows that he has voted against jobs for Hoosiers time and time again.“Congressman Pence has no credibility on this issue,” said Daniel Altman, communications director for Gregg for Governor. “His commercial says he will protect Hoosier jobs, but as Congressman he has voted time and time again to give thousands of Hoosiers the pink slip.”
That was followed the next day by a broadside from the GOP “bad cop” – in this instance, Indiana Republican Chairman Eric Holcomb - who accused Gregg of “embellishing” his record as Indiana House speaker. He took Gregg to task for taking a $1.7 billion surplus and converting it into a $760 million deficit. “I am not going to let an embellished record stand on its own,” Holcomb said, standing in front of a placard that said “we can’t afford John Gregg (literally).”
But the emerging dynamic is that Pence is going to stay above the fray and project his sunny message while surrogates will do the dirty work.
As president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation in 1991, Pence wrote a tome titled “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner” in which he discussed the gutter brawl tactics he used against Rep. Sharp in 1988 and 1990. One of the Pence campaign TV ads had an actor posing as an Arab thanking Sharp for American dependence on foreign oil.
“Negative campaigning, I now know, is wrong,” Pence acknowledged.
What Pence does not do is characterize his article as an apology, describing it in 1991 for the Muncie Star Press as a “confession, an admission, a personal indictment. That’s the extent of it.”
The Holcomb attack was seen by Indiana Democrats as the current dynamic. “Part of that stems from the fact that Mike Pence doesn’t want to run a negative campaign,” Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker told WISH-TV, “so he’s going to have Eric do it.”
The strategy will likely work if Pence can maintain a big poll lead. In the only independent media poll taken in the race – the March 26-27 Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll – Pence had a 44-31 percent lead over Gregg. Pence’s hard fav stood at 32 percent and his hard negative at 20 percent (compared to 10/4 percent for Gregg, who was unknown by 71 percent of the likely general election voters surveyed).
Pence was unknown by 30 percent at that point in the Howey/DePauw Poll, so the clear Pence strategy in the five TV ads he has run since the May 6 primary is to gin up his name ID with the series of bio ads.
Gregg has been forced to rely almost exclusively on earned media, though Parker told me he expects Gregg to begin his TV ad campaign before Labor Day. When he does, Gregg faces two huge challenges: To define himself, and then redefine Pence, whom he has consistently characterized as a radical and “extremist” on social issues.
Gregg also to hope that Pence slips up, like heavy favorite Stephen Goldsmith did in 1996 with his mishandling of the Meridian Street police brawl, allowing Frank O’Bannon to pull off a stunning upset.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. Find him on Twitter @hwypol.) by Brian Howey INDIANAPOLIS - It had been nine years since Mike Pence had run and brawled for a Congressional seat, twice unsuccessfully challenging U.S. Rep. Phil Sharp. His friend, U.S. Rep. David McIntosh, was planning to run for governor. What became the 6th CD would be open. At his gubernatorial campaign kickoff in Columbus in June 2011, Pence recalled a vacation horseback ride in Colorado in 1999 when he pondered a return to Congressional politics with his wife, Karen. The couple spotted two red-tailed hawks drafting in the winds above the mountains. He would run once more, they decided, but “no flapping.” They would “soar.” What has become clear in his gubernatorial race against Democrat John Gregg is that Pence is going to keep his sunny, good mood demeanor and “soar” with a warm and fuzzy message, a bank account double that of his opponent, and when it comes to taking the gloves off, Mike Pence the “good cop” will rely on “bad cop” surrogates to bloody up his opponent. Appearing at the Indiana Black Expo last week, Pence told Amos Brown, “We’re going to continue to put out a positive message about aspiration. We can build a better Indiana. It’s about aspiration for every community in the state.” Thus, this week Pence released his fifth feel-good TV ad focusing on jobs. Seated with Karen, he talked about jobs pumping gas and baling hay, and then “I found myself out of work. We got through, tightening our belts.” He added that he wants Indiana to be known “everywhere as the state that works.”
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Wednesday, 25 July 2012 14:22 |
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by Brian Howey
INDIANAPOLIS - When I was a high school page for House Speaker Kermit Burrous back in the early 1970s, I remember standing at the Speaker’s podium for a photo with him, and looking out across the House chambers as members gathered for the session. I saw Chet Dobis and Jeff Espich, and, of course, the little giant, the martinet of the St. Joe, one B. Patrick Bauer.
I’m 56 years old now, and those guys are still there! I have a term for the public servant who doesn’t know when to hang it up: Feet firsters. You know how that goes: The only way they’ll leave the Statehouse or U.S. Capitol is feet first, on a stretcher to either the ambulance or the hearse.
This year, 2012, is becoming the anti-FF. It began in the days and then hours leading up to the February filing deadline when a slew of long-time legislators decided to hang it up. The first was former Ways & Means Chairman William Crawford.
U.S. Rep. Dan Burton came to the House floor where his career began and declared he would retire. Burton was smart enough to read the tea leaves after winning reelection in the 2010 Republican primary with a paltry 29 percent of the vote. Then came the parade of House Democrats: Reps. Chet Dobis, Dale Grubb, John Day, Nancy Dembowski, Dave Cheatham and even the relatively youthful looking Dan Stevenson.
All had had it. They cited a polarized atmosphere, special interests willing to spend huge bucks against them, and they saw angry voters who make political dinosaurs vulnerable.
As were Senate Finance Chairman Larry Borst in the 2004 Republican primary and Senate President Pro Tempore Robert D. Garton in the same humbling method two years later. Both lost to little known challengers.
These leaders accrued nicks, cuts, barnacles, and vociferous enemies and insurgent PACs with an array of conspicuous and hidden agendas.
This was a precursor to the most epic retirement party of all: U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar’s landslide loss to Richard Mourdock in the May Republican primary.
Republican pollster Christine Matthews – half of the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll team – observed after the April 30/May poll that while 15 percent of pending Republican primary voters were voting for Mourdock due to ideology and Tea Party issues, a vast majority decided to retire Lugar because of his age and that he had “been there too long.”
That may be the message Hoosier voters are trying to deliver this year: No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, there are limits to how long we want you doing our bidding in Washington and Indianapolis, or even at City Hall.
A decade ago, it was almost unfathomable to think that a Lugar, Burton, Garton or Borst could be dislodged from their perches. Today, no one is safe.
The behavior of Hoosier voters belies the need for term limits.
Which gets me back to Democratic House Minority Leader Bauer, who has survived two caucus coup attempts since June 28.
The reason that a good chunk of his House caucus is up in arms is that a state legislator has an ear to the ground and is attuned to what the folks back home are saying. They hear: “We’re mad as hell.”
But more emphatically, Bauer’s oversight of the 2010 campaign when Democrats went from a majority to a 40/60 minority has been a calamity for the party.
Informed and reliable Democratic sources tell me that in early fall of that year, polling showed veteran State Reps. Bob Bischoff, Paul Robertson, Sandra Blanton and others losing by big numbers. All lost in a big way.
In the meantime, resources were not directed into tighter races that the party could have retained. They included campaigns of State Reps. John Barnes, who lost to Cindy Kirchofer by 598 votes; Ron Herrell, who was defeated by Mike Karickhoff by 818 votes; Joe Pearson, who lost to Kevin Mahan 7,198 to 6,121; Bob Dieg in the seat vacated by State Rep. Trent Van Haaften (who ran in the 8th CD) and lost by four votes to Wendy McNamara; and Mike Goebel in the seat of retiring State Rep. Dennis Avery, who lost to Ron Bacon by 164 votes; as well as House Minority Leader Russ Stilwell, who lost to current Republican lieutenant governor nominee Sue Ellspermann by 880 votes.
Those tactical decisions have been disastrous for the Indiana Democratic Party and its core constituencies. Right to Work is the classic example. Republicans easily passed it with votes to spare, allowing potentially vulnerable freshmen like State Rep. Mike Karickhoff and State Rep. Tom Dermody, both representing heavily unionized areas, to vote nay.
Had House Democrats been able to hang on to 45 seats, the Right to Work issue would have been much more arduous for the GOP, with more political implications for the 2012 cycle.
Some House Democrats now see a dinosaur – a Bauersaurus – who missed the astroid trail that lit the primitive night skies in 2004, 2006 and now 2010; the one that brought climate change.
There’s climate change in the Statehouse, and if you use a Grecian formula, a walker, an oxygen canister, if you keep losing your bifocals and you think tweeting is for the birds, well, it just might be time for you to go home.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. Find him on Twitter @hwypol.) by Brian Howey INDIANAPOLIS - When I was a high school page for House Speaker Kermit Burrous back in the early 1970s, I remember standing at the Speaker’s podium for a photo with him, and looking out across the House chambers as members gathered for the session. I saw Chet Dobis and Jeff Espich, and, of course, the little giant, the martinet of the St. Joe, one B. Patrick Bauer. I’m 56 years old now, and those guys are still there! I have a term for the public servant who doesn’t know when to hang it up: Feet firsters. You know how that goes: The only way they’ll leave the Statehouse or U.S. Capitol is feet first, on a stretcher to either the ambulance or the hearse. This year, 2012, is becoming the anti-FF. It began in the days and then hours leading up to the February filing deadline when a slew of long-time legislators decided to hang it up. The first was former Ways & Means Chairman William Crawford. U.S. Rep. Dan Burton came to the House floor where his career began and declared he would retire. Burton was smart enough to read the tea leaves after winning reelection in the 2010 Republican primary with a paltry 29 percent of the vote. Then came the parade of House Democrats: Reps. Chet Dobis, Dale Grubb, John Day, Nancy Dembowski, Dave Cheatham and even the relatively youthful looking Dan Stevenson.
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Wednesday, 18 July 2012 14:58 |
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by Brian Howey
FREMONT, Ind. – The solitude on the lakes this Fourth of July was eerie. Nary a rocket’s red glare or mortar exploding in air.
Accuweather measured the degree of heat: 101 on July 1, 98 on July 2, 95 on July 3, 101 on the holiday, followed by 103, 104 and 106. Driving between Columbus and Edinburgh a week earlier I watched the thermometer on my Ford Escape flicker between 107 and 108.
Evansville set heat records on nine consecutive days. Indianapolis had the second driest June on record. Bloomberg Businessweek reported “tumbling” corn yields of 35 percent below the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s June 12 forecast, potentially the biggest reduction since 1973. Accuweather is describing a “corn belt catastrophe.”
This week, NOAA reported that the July 2011-June 2012 period was the warmest 12-month period for the contiguous U.S., narrowly surpassing the record broken last month for the June 2011-May 2012 period by 0.05°F. When you look at the top 10 warmest 12-month periods in U.S. history, there is a cluster beginning in 1999 and 2000, in 2005, 2006 and now these past two years. There were 170 all-time heat records broken last month, and the U.S. Drought Monitor now covers 56 percent of the U.S., a record.
Climate experts from the National Weather Service to Purdue University are now using the phrase the "new normal" to describe a series of extreme weather events ranging from droughts and floods, to catastrophic tornadoes and hurricanes. It comes on the heels of the extreme weather of 2011 which affected millions of people, including 1,600 tornadoes, along with droughts and floods that claimed 1,000 lives, resulted in 8,000 injuries and totaled more than $52 billion in economic losses.
The political question therefore is that while it’s apparent we are experiencing “climate change,” is it man-made? Does man impact the environment?
Well, the Asian carp didn’t swim over from China to find a new home in the Wabash. Anyone who has sailed the oceans finds vast swathes of garbage thousands of miles from nowhere. In the three days following the Sept. 11 terror attacks when all flights were grounded, temperatures rose. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002: Because thousands of commercial flights were canceled after the disaster, the researchers said, a thin blanket of cirrus clouds that often forms from water vapor exiting jet engines in high traffic corridors was absent. The lack of clouds allowed daytime temperatures at ground level to rise and nighttime temperatures to fall.
In the Indiana U.S. Senate race, the Republican nominee Richard Mourdock is a notable skeptic, hewing the Tea Party line. In May, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that climate change was a potential national security threat. The Arab Spring is a classic example. The revolts that took place in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria were primarily political, but lengthy droughts and crop failures fueled the public to act in ways they wouldn't have before. The catalyst for the Tunisia revolt was a self-immolation and food riots, lending credence to the old adage: When the water hole shrinks, the animals act differently.
As the climate changes, humans are facing adaptation to increasingly more frequent and severe weather events. Hoosier farmers will tell you that weather events are becoming more extreme.
Mourdock reacted to the Panetta comments, saying, "The irony here is that our energy policy is in fact a threat to our national security. We are basing our energy policy on the greatest hoax of all time, which is that mankind is changing the climate."
Those who believe that man is having an impact on the climate cite a steady rise in CO2 levels since the Industrial Revolution began in 1800 to now historic levels. Scientists have been able to take air samples from drilled ice cores that reveal what was in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago. The most dramatic increase has occurred in the past 60 years.
Mourdock noted that a monument near his home in Vanderburgh County marks the spot where the glacial ice made its furthest southern advance prior to the warming of the climate 10,000 years ago, allowing mankind to begin to cultivate crops and form communities. The climate has changed and will always change, but he dispels the notion that mankind is even partially responsible.
His opponent, U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, takes a different approach that ties energy and environmental policy together. "While I believe that climate change is real and should be addressed as part of a comprehensive reform of our nation's energy policy, I do not believe an approach that asks Indiana's economy to bear undue high costs to cut our nation's carbon emissions is the right way to go," Donnelly explained.
Last year, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman observed, “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”
In a December 2011 Pew poll, 63 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence” that the earth’s temperature has increased in past decades, but only 30 percent of conservative Republicans believe that.
On the Fourth of July, I sat immersed in Big Otter Lake with cold beer and a Sox hat atop . . . for hours, my man-made answer to climate change.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. Find him on Twitter @hwypol.) by Brian Howey FREMONT, Ind. – The solitude on the lakes this Fourth of July was eerie. Nary a rocket’s red glare or mortar exploding in air. Accuweather measured the degree of heat: 101 on July 1, 98 on July 2, 95 on July 3, 101 on the holiday, followed by 103, 104 and 106. Driving between Columbus and Edinburgh a week earlier I watched the thermometer on my Ford Escape flicker between 107 and 108. Evansville set heat records on nine consecutive days. Indianapolis had the second driest June on record. Bloomberg Businessweek reported “tumbling” corn yields of 35 percent below the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s June 12 forecast, potentially the biggest reduction since 1973. Accuweather is describing a “corn belt catastrophe.” This week, NOAA reported that the July 2011-June 2012 period was the warmest 12-month period for the contiguous U.S., narrowly surpassing the record broken last month for the June 2011-May 2012 period by 0.05°F. When you look at the top 10 warmest 12-month periods in U.S. history, there is a cluster beginning in 1999 and 2000, in 2005, 2006 and now these past two years. There were 170 all-time heat records broken last month, and the U.S. Drought Monitor now covers 56 percent of the U.S., a record.
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Thursday, 12 July 2012 13:16 |
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by Brian Howey
ANGOLA, Ind. - At the advent of the Mitch Daniels governorship, a close ally of his told me that the new governor always had a long-range plan. In fact, the Daniels’ governorship was scripted in advance.
When you look at how things turned out, there’s some credence to that notion. In 2005, he got the budget in the black, ended collective bargaining, began paying money owed to local governments and schools, put a freeze on Taj Mahal taxpayer-funded construction projects, and offered tax amnesty to stoke up the reserves.
In 2006, there were his signature Major Moves project and telecommunications reform, though reaction to the Bush wars helped Democrats regain the House. In 2007, there was a second balanced budget, an emphasis on health with a cigarette tax hike and money for full-day kindergarten, the Kernan-Shepard reform proposals and, of course, tax relief. In 2008, it was the signature property tax relief and caps that would drive his reelection and recoup the House.
It was there that the kink in the plan occurred. Daniels would win a resounding 58 percent reelection landslide, but for the first time in modern Hoosier politics, he didn’t bring a GOP House with him.
In 2009 and 2010, the governor worked on the administrative front, changing education licensing requirements by executive order, and prepared for the retaking of the House. That occurred in resounding fashion in 2010, achieving a 60-40 House majority, which set the stage for his education reforms, along with a smattering of social legislation (the defunding of Planned Parenthood and abortion restrictions) emanating via the Senate conservatives who seemed to violate his call for a “truce” but positioned him for a White House bid.
Such a script with such resounding successes would then poise him for a presidential run. The Daniels’ Family Female Caucus put an end to that.
So, what next?
What we’ve learned in the week after the Purdue University trustees – eight of the 10 Daniels’ appointments – approved him as university president, is that the internal discussions involving Daniels coming to West Lafayette have been percolating for more than a year, which, coincidentally, corresponds with the end of his White House dreams.
I began hearing the Daniels/Purdue rumor early last winter. When it unfolded last week, the initial thought was that this is a bold stroke for Purdue, which has seen its state funding decline under the Daniels’ administration, and that Hoosiers would benefit from an ex-governor staying involved in the state, particularly with his education and transportation reforms under way and well within Purdue’s academic portfolio. Usually, ex-governors just move on.
But this script is now prompting some nagging concerns for a governor who has railed against “conflict of interest” in municipal governments as well as nepotism.
The Kernan-Shepard reforms took aim at city and county councilors who worked as cops and firefighters, essentially setting their own pay. But, as one mayor pointed out to me, here we have a governor who chose eight of the 10 Purdue trustees, with the voting coming fully seven months before he leaves office.
Believe me, there is grumbling to be heard in various city and town halls and township trustee offices over how this one came down.
There was a Purdue trustees meeting during the hiring process at Chicago’s sprawling O’Hare Airport, according to the notice, with no building or room designated. So much for transparency.
And of course there is a gigantic pay increase coming for a governor who makes about $107,000 while the current Purdue president makes about $450,000. Daniels is said to be worth about $50 million despite his years in city, state and federal government (his Lilly and IPALCO years responsible for much of that wealth). A retiring governor with his resume could conceivably have done much better on the open corporate market than what a university president brings in.
There is the state’s mandatory 65-year-old retirement age in place, while the 62-year-old Daniels is preparing for a five-year contract. But Purdue forced out IPFW Chancellor Michael A. Wartell due to the age limit. That law will almost surely be changed in the 2013 session of the Indiana General Assembly.
But it does have people in some quarters stewing about the inconsistencies involved here.
It reminds me of another famous state employee – one Robert Montgomery Knight – who operated under the “do as I say, not as I do” code. The profane, chair-throwing coach demanded that his players be choir boys in one breath while telling crowds at Assembly Hall that he wanted to be buried upside down so his critics could “kiss my ass.”
Politically, there has been little irritation. “It’s a little bit troubling that you have a board that is appointed by the governor then choosing that same person to lead the institution,” said State Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City.
But Democratic gubernatorial nominee John Gregg and Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker actually lauded the hiring. And here lies a political reason. With Daniels now consumed by studying all things academic administration, he won’t have time for politics. Daniels as a campaign fundraiser, stump speaker and commercial writer will be history.
In the art of politics and academia, there are always trade-offs.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com. Find him Twitter @hwypol.) by Brian Howey ANGOLA, Ind. - At the advent of the Mitch Daniels governorship, a close ally of his told me that the new governor always had a long-range plan. In fact, the Daniels’ governorship was scripted in advance. When you look at how things turned out, there’s some credence to that notion. In 2005, he got the budget in the black, ended collective bargaining, began paying money owed to local governments and schools, put a freeze on Taj Mahal taxpayer-funded construction projects, and offered tax amnesty to stoke up the reserves. In 2006, there were his signature Major Moves project and telecommunications reform, though reaction to the Bush wars helped Democrats regain the House. In 2007, there was a second balanced budget, an emphasis on health with a cigarette tax hike and money for full-day kindergarten, the Kernan-Shepard reform proposals and, of course, tax relief. In 2008, it was the signature property tax relief and caps that would drive his reelection and recoup the House.
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