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Everything you need to know about the Indiana Senate race in one article

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 26th, 2010 at 12:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Everything you need to know about the Indiana Senate race is summed up in this article.

Dan Coats is running around Indiana telling people you have to be smart to be a Senator.

Marlin Stutzman is running around Indiana telling people about his “Ideas for Indiana” agenda to help Indiana.

John Hostettler is nowhere to be seen.

Have you done what you can to help Marlin Stutzman yet?

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  • http://ruminationsaspirations.blogspot.com jonbingham

    Just this morning I sent a couple messages to urge the Senate Conservatives Fund to be active in this race.
    First:
    Maybe you have information otherwise, but from what I am able to see, it appears that Marlin Stutzman is the viable IN Senate candidate who has gone on record for repeal. See the Club for Growth’s http://www.repealit.org/ candidate listing – Coats and Hostettler are missing.
    While I would like to see a full Stutzman endorsement, AT A MINIMUM, any difference in candidate positions on the repeal issue should be noted prominently by the SCF – if for no other reason than to nudge Coats and Hostettler to go on record for repeal.
    Please act appropriately on the IN race asap. Thanks!
    –
    Then I thought about it some more and sent a follow-up:
    If Stutzman really is the only viable IN Senate candidate to support repeal (vs Coats and Hostettler), then I think the pledge applies:
    “I hereby pledge to support with my time, money and vote only those candidates who vow to repeal President Obama’s health care takeover.”
    Please get Coats and Hostettler on the record one way or the other. Then endorse Stutzman if he alone supports repeal. Thanks again for considering.
    –
    I hope these things start to resonate – and soon!

  • Mayhem

    Conservatives in Indiana are going to have a stellar year. 2008 was an aberration, and you can be sure that Barack Obama will lose the Hoosier State in 2012. People here are absolutely sick of this stuff. Under the leadership of Gov. Daniels, Indiana is the island of sanity in a bleeding Midwest. Because the Dems have screwed up so drastically, the 2010 election will see Republican comebacks all across the state ballot.

    The 2010 goals for Indiana Republicans are threefold:

    1. Win back Evan Bayh’s Senate seat.

    2. Win back the Indiana State House of Representatives.

    3. Win back the 3 US House seats lost in 2006.

    I have no idea who will win the Republican Senate primary in May, but I can tell you that the winner will most likely be the next Senator from Indiana. So, if you want Marlin Stutzman to be that man, now is the time to donate to him. Brad Ellsworth kissed the Senate seat goodbye with his November and March votes for healthcare. He’ll get a good chunk of Evan Bayh’s campaign money, but it won’t matter. This seat is ready for the taking, and it will be taken.

    The Indiana House of Representatives is also ready to flip red. Gov. Daniels got most of his reforms through in 2005 and 2006, when the General Assembly was briefly controlled by Republicans. In 2006, Dems won back the House and they have been thwarting him ever since. The Indiana State House of Representatives is one of the most competitive legislative chambers in the United States. Both parties control it off and on, and rarely ever with more than a 5 or 6 seat majority. It will tip to the GOP in the coming wave this November.

    Finally, the three Blue Dogs that were elected in 2006 (Ellsworth, Hill, and Donnelly) all have enormous targets on their backs. They have played the moderate game well, but they all fell in line when Pelosi gave the order. Indiana is always the first state to report on election nights, and in 2006, the loss of 3 competitive districts foreshadowed the rest of the night. 2010, however, will be just the flip. 2010 will be for us what 2006 was for the Dems. These three districts will flip red.

    In IN-2, the NRCC has recruited a very strong candidate in State Rep. Jackie Walorski. NRCC has been trying to get her to run for several cycles, and she finally decided now was the time to do it. If you don’t know much about Jackie, check out her webpage (www.standwithjackie.com). Mike Pence just endorsed her this week, and Mitch Daniels and Marlin Stutzman have already done so.

    In IN-9, Mike Sodrel is running against Baron Hill for the billionth time (he beat Hill in 2004, and he’ll do it again this year).

    IN-8 is known as the “Bloody Eighth” because of its vicious contests. This is Brad Ellsworth’s district, so it will be an open seat race. The Dem and GOP primaries in this district still need to play out, so we’ll have to see how they transpire. State Rep. Trent Van Haaften is the likely Dem nominee.

  • youthgrunt

    Coats spoke on Monday regarding repealing the health care reform bill:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUWMmcdB9kE

    John Hostettler on repealing health care reform:

    http://www.johnhostettler.com/?p=253

    The Indiana GOP candidates are unified on this. This is the weakness of using a single organization for the source of people’s positions.

  • youthgrunt

    Hostettler is pretty much in all the same places as Coats and Stutzman. Also, there has been an interesting survey by Rasmussen in this race:

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/indiana/election_2010_indiana_senate

    The good news for Stutzman is that he leads Ellsworth 41-34 (18 undecided). The bad news is that both Coats and Hostettler fare MUCH better than Stutzman. Coats leads 49-34 (12 undecided); Hostettler leads 50-32 (15 undecided).

    I suspect that Stutzman’s problem is that he has almost no name recognition in the state as compared with either Coats and Hostettler.

    The other news is that Bayh just gave Ellsworth $1M of his war chest. This just shows that whoever the GOP puts up will still need to be able to raise some money. In reality, Stutzman will need to be able to raise more than his opponents to deal with the name recognition problem.

  • http://ruminationsaspirations.blogspot.com jonbingham

    That’s why I had the caveats in my messages. Great to see that they are all on board for repeal.

    Still pulling for Marlin, but not quite as concerned about the others now…

  • youthgrunt

    but I have this nagging feeling that he is not ready. I like his positions, but he doesn’t seem to be able to pull together the statewide effort. I could be proven wrong when he files his next FEC fund raising numbers, but so far he has not been able to get the financing in place that he will need for this election.

    He has not gotten into leaderships positions in the State House or the State Senate. Maybe that isn’t a bad thing, but it would indicate some level of legislative effectiveness.

  • mustango

    Somewhere, Dan Quayle just did a spit-take.

  • LibertarianHawk

    It’ll be a tough year to be a Dem, I imagine. In fact, I was a little surprised he bit on the race.

    But, if anybody could keep that seat in the Dem column, it’s him.

    And, thus far, I haven’t been too impressed with the Republican candidate, Larry Buschon. I was really hoping that state Treasurer Richard Mourdock would run for the 8th district seat.

    He has before, unsuccessfully.

  • LibertarianHawk

    ….did you notice that, despite Stutzman pulling in less support than Coats or Hostettler, it didn’t help Ellsworth’s numbers?

    Virtually all of the Hostettler/Coats support that he didn’t keep went to the “Other” or “Not sure” column.

    In other words, at this point, Ellsworth’s in deep doo-doo no matter who wins the Republican nomination.

  • Scope

    I think he meant corrupt.

  • http://ruminationsaspirations.blogspot.com jonbingham

    I think not.
    Many times, those who get into leadership positions at one level then are not willing to rise to the next due to giving too much up.
    See Pence’s decision re the Senate race. (FYI – In many ways I’m thankful Pence is staying where he is.)
    Re financing, he just needs enough money and alot of word-of-mouth to get the grassroots to choose him in the primary. If he gets the people’s nod in the primary, he will have plenty of funds come his way for the general. I wouldn’t demand that his fundraising be on par with Coats and Hostettler to support him (not saying this is your standard/requirement).

  • retiretherinos

    Dan Coats is conservative enough. Coats is far better than Dick Lugar and we need to win 3 seats backs, especailly the Ellsworth and Hill seats. Coats will beat Ellsworth no doubt about it. I think you can say that with absolute confidence. Marlin is less no known than Ellsworth and the race might be too competitive to knock off Hill and get the Ellsworth seat back. Hostetler is not my favorite choice.Mike Pence would win by 25 points. Stutzman needs big money to beat Coats. Right now I support Coats as the nominee. Ellsworth will have big money thanks to being a tool of Obama and Pelosi. Marlin is an unknown. Pence could have won this without breaking a sweat. Coats wins by double digits. He has won statewide twice and the left fears him.

  • LibertarianHawk

    It’s Hostettler.

    As it stands, the two of them are splitting the “anti-establishment” vote.

    And that probably means that Coats will win the nomination — unless one of the other two gets out and endorses the other.

    Knowing what I know about Hostettler, the chances of him doing that are about zero. Calling him “bull-headed” is to overstate a bull.

  • http://ruminationsaspirations.blogspot.com jonbingham

    I have considered the possibility that Marlin could raise his name ID this time around and then be poised to replace Lugar in 2012. (Please retire, sir.)
    I could live with Stutzman and Coats in the next two elections – in whichever order. But I still like the idea of Stutzman first…

  • LibertarianHawk

    …Ellsworth really isn’t the major concern.

    That’s the first thing that jumps out from the Rasmussen poll. He gets 32% against his strongest opponent….and 34% against his weakest.

    If the election were held today — and, of course, it isn’t — I imagine that Ellsworth would lose to Bill Belichick if he was the Republican nominee.

  • IJB

    How has he failed to impress you?

    I have to admit that I am worried about IN-08 – I feel like the IN GOP made no real effort in that one, because they figured Ellsworth was a shoo-in, but then Ellsworth, 1) voted for ObamaCare, and then 2) bailed to run for Senate, and the IN GOP was left with a bunch of 2nd and 3rd tier candidates in IN-08 just as the filing deadline passed.

    I’d like to hear some local perspectives on whether this will be a blown opportunity or not…

  • youthgrunt

    that said that and not Coats. Erick mis-attributed the statement.

  • youthgrunt

    and you may be right. What I am afraid of is the voter that will only vote for a name that he knows. Then on election day it turns into they know Ellsworth and not Stutzman. Those numbers in the “Not Sure” will come to Stutzman IF he can get the word out. I haven’t seen evidence yet that he can.

  • youthgrunt

    is that we do not know how effective he will be as a Senator.

    I would just like a better feel for how effective he can be. Coats and Hostettler have experience that you know what you will get (for better or worse).

  • LibertarianHawk

    First of all, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Dr. Buschon. He’s respected in his field and people I know who know him speak highly of him.

    But the best way to describe the impression I get of his candidacy thus far is that it’s been a vapor. I realize that it’s still March, I realize that he’s not having to worry about a primary, and I realize that he’s got a full-time job.

    But because he’s a newcomer to politics, he’s going to have to get out there and press the flesh more than he has. He’s going to have to go out and raise funds, talk to influential people, and attend as many social functions as he can.

    And, most importantly, he needs to begin making a case for himself, to give people an opportunity to get to know him, etc.

    He really hasn’t done much of any of that from what I can tell. At this point, it’s almost as if he threw his hat in the ring on a whim and now isn’t sure he wants to go through with the rigors of campaigning.

    Being that he’s a doctor, I thought he should be out there front and center during the healthcare debate.

    But we didn’t hear much out of him, beyond a couple letters to the editor.

  • kewgardens

    is that everyone needs to get behind the winner of the Senate primary. All the candidates are decent and the stakes are too high for disappointed folks to pout, take their toys and go home.

  • grandma

    That’s a given here in District 1 among the T.E.A. people.

    Our HUGE pain is our “ugh” congressman. He is slippery, and has what is left of the steel workers’ union kissing his bottom along with misc. other buffoons.

  • youthgrunt

    We are very fortunate that we DO have 3 very good candidates. I can enthusiastically vote for any of the three and will support whichever of the three financially that wins the primary in May.