Cross-posted from
Deny My Freedom
In Indiana, the Democratic party has three great opportunities to pick up House seats.
I profiled the race in IN-2 (Donnelly vs. Chocola) several weeks ago.
IN-8 is, perhaps, an even better pickup opportunity, with Sheriff Brad Ellsworth facing off against Rep. John Hostettler.
Indiana's 8th district is a combination of the Indiana part of the Evansville tri-state area and the Wabash Valley.
Evansville still has a decent manufacturing sector. AK Steel, Alcoa, Toyota and Whirlpool all still have plants there. In fact, it's Alcoa plant has the highest sulfur dioxide emissions of any plant in the country.
Evansville is also well-known for having the second-largest street festival in the country after Mardi Gras (the West Side Nut Club Festival).
The major city in the Wabash Valley part of the district is Terre Haute, which used to be a manufacturing town but has lost most of it's manufacturing is gone. It is the birthplace of the Socialist Eugene Debs, and is also the home of the only federal death chamber.
Political Make-up of IN-8
2004 Vote
President: Bush[R] (61.5%-37.8%)
Senator: Bayh[D] approx. 67%-31%
Governor: Daniels[R] approx. 50%-48%
2000 Vote:
President: Bush[R] (56.5%-41.7%)
Bill Clinton won the district twice by 2%.
Indiana's eighth district has had it's boundaries changed over the years as Indiana has gone from 11 districts to 10 to 9 since 1966, but it has remained one of the most competitive districts in the country. It has become known as the "Bloody Eighth," and certainly deserves its name.
During one period in the 1970's, it elected four different Congressman in four successive elections (one open seat, two incumbents defeated).
During the entire period from 1966 to 2004 (20 elections), only 3 times was the margin of victory greater than 10% (it was less than 5% 7 times), in 1972 when the Nixon ticket helped lead Roger Zion(R) to a 63.4%-36.6% victory, in 1980 when the Reagan juggernaut helped lead Joel Deckard(R) to a 55.2%-44.8%, and in 1988, where I presume Dan Quayle hurt the ticket enough in his home state to let Democrat Frank McCloskey win 61.8%-38.2%.
In 1984, the Republican Richard McIntyre was certified as the winner by the state by exactly 34 votes, but the U.S. House overturned the result, giving victory to Frank McCloskey by a comfortable margin of 4 votes.
The current incumbent, John Hostettler, has also always had close races. The largest percentage of the vote he's ever gotten is 53.3%.
He beat Frank McCloskey in the Republican Revolution of 1994 by attacking him on taxes and virtually every wedge issue imaginable (gays, guns, the environmen and school prayer), by attacking his overdrafts at the House bank, and by referring to McCloskey as "Frank McClinton" (even though Clinton did decently in the area).
He barely beat Jonathan Weinzapfel in 1996 (Weinzapfel went on to serve 5 years in the state House and is now the mayor of Evansville), and has faced tough challenges every year since then.
Part of the reason Hostettler has so much trouble winning is probably that the district is cursed. Part of it's his refusal to raise PAC money. But his voting record also probably has a lot to do with it.
A look at John Hostettler
Calling John Hostettler a rubber-stamp Republican would be dishonest. He votes against most of his part a decent amount of the time.
Of course, that's because he thinks the Republican party is too liberal.
John despises the government more than anyone in Congress except for Ron Paul and has a similar paleo-conservative outlook
That's led him to cast some votes that people here would approve of, most notably his vote against the Iraq War, which I suppose I must give him a smidgen of credit for, especially for what he had to say here.
Today, a novel case is being made that the best defense is a good offense. But is this the power that the Framers of the Constitution meant to pass down to their posterity when they sought to secure for us the blessings of liberty? Did they suggest that mothers and fathers would be required by this august body to give up sons and daughters because of the possibility of future aggression? Mr. Speaker, I humbly submit that they did not.
As I was preparing these remarks, I was reminded of an entry on my desk calendar of April 19. It is an excerpt of the Boston Globe, Bicentennial Edition, March 9, 1975. It reads, ``At dawn on this morning, April 19, 1775, some 70 Minutemen were assembled on Lexington's green. All eyes kept returning to where the road from Boston opened onto the green; all ears strained to hear the drums and double-march of the approaching British Grenadiers. Waving to the drummer boy to cease his beat, the Minuteman Captain, John Parker, gave his fateful command: `Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want to have a war, let it begin here.''
``Don't fire unless fired upon.'' It is a notion that is at least as old as St. Augustine's Just War thesis, and it finds agreement with the Minutemen and Framers of the Constitution.
Of course, he would've been fine with a war for oil.
Nor, Mr. Speaker, are we discussing a response to an act of aggression by a dictator who has invaded his neighbor and has his sights on 40 percent of the world's oil reserves, an act that could plunge the American economy, so dependent on energy, into a deep spiral.
He also voted against the marriage amendment in 2004 and last month. However, his reason for doing so was more that it would give the federal government too much power than with letting homosexuals have any sort of rights whatsoever.
He prefers discriminating against gays by taking away the authority of the judicial branch to protect their rights. He sponsored the Marriage Protection Act of 2004, which would "limit Federal court jurisdiction over questions under the Defense of Marriage Act"
Of course, that wasn't the first time he'd done such a thing. 14 days after the horrific events of 9/11, he decided to celebrate our nation's dedication to freedom and liberty by proposing an amendment to the D.C. appropriations bill to prohibit any of the funds in the bill from being used to enforce a court order to reinstate two gay Boy Scout troop leaders.
passed 262-152 (Harold Ford voted against it while Menendez, Murtha and Strickland voted for it, incidentally, although Menendez and Strickland both voted for Eleanor Holmes Norton's amendment to limit the prohibition to federal funds)
Limiting the authority of our courts is one of Hostettler's favorite pastimes, and he hasn't just focused on limiting their authority on gay rights.
He's also successfully had amendments passed prohibiting enforcement of Newdow v. U.S. Congress (pledge of allegiance), and Glassroth v. Moore (Ten commandments)
Of course, he's only doing it to protect his religion from the evil Democratic party.
Mr. Chairman, the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats.
...
Like moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians. (he wanted this last sentence removed from the Congressional Record, because even he realized how inappropriate it was)
One of the areas in which John Hostettler is most concerned about federal government intervention is in our sacred, cherished right to beat women. He is so deplorable and disgusting that he actually voted against the Violence Against Women Act
One of his most hypocritical acts was voting against federal aid to Katrina victims, and then turning around and asking for aid for his district after it got hit by tornadoes.
Here's what his spokesman had to say in his defense.
Faraci added that Hostettler would like to see federal funds spent helping victims of natural disasters -- including those hurt by the tornado that swept through southwestern Indiana Sunday -- so long as those dollars are not squandered.
I presume he forgot to add to the end of his last sentence "on people who John Hostettler doesn't represent," but I'm not going to hold it against him (the spokesman. I will hold it against Hostettler).
Just recently, he voted against the estate tax repeal/minimum wage hike. Not because he thinks that repealing a tax on the wealthiest Americans is imprudent when we have such a large deficit. He voted for the Permanent Estate Tax Relief Act of 2006 just last month, and even devoted an entire podcast (he went to college at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and is probably more in tune with technology for that reason) to why repealing the estate tax is awesome.
His problem was that if we raise the minimum wage to $7.25, that means we're going to have to raise the wages of people who make 6 dollars an hour to 8 dollars an hour, 7 dollars an hour to 9 dollars an hour, and so on.
"When you raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, what do you do with that person who was making $6 an hour under the $5.15 an hour minimum wage?" he said. "Well, you have to put them up over $7.25. Obviously, you can't pay a person that's been working on the job a year the incoming wage.
"Well, what do you do to the person that was making $6.50 an hour under the $5.15 an hour minimum wage when the person that was making $6 an hour now makes almost a dollar more than they do, even at the minimum wage level?"
He just couldn't bear the thought of anyone who isn't John Hostettler (or a CEO) getting a pay raise this year, so he just had to vote against it.
A look at Brad Ellsworth
Brad's campaign biography (and his issue positions) are so beautiful compared to the tripe we normally get from campaigns that I'm just going to excerpt it.
On Growing Up
We moved to Evansville, Indiana when my dad took a job at Alcoa in 1967. Jobs were hard to come by during those days, and he said he was lucky he got the one he did because it offered unlimited overtime. I remember how proud Dad was when he would come home and display to us kids a weekly pay stub with over 100 hours of actual work on it. In those days, Dad felt lucky to have an opportunity to work one hundred hours. That's just how it was in those days: you went to work, did your job well, and saved every penny you could.
Growing up, my family lived in a small working class neighborhood on a dead-end street. My siblings, friends, and I could roam and play in the neighborhood as we pleased. We were safe. We were secure.
I graudated from Harrison High School in 1976 and from Indiana State University Evansville (now USI) in 1981. I worked at Wesselman's grocery store and in the hardware department at Sears to pay for it all. I just considered it an investment in my future.
We went to Church every Sunday.
I learned that church is about our faith, and that it is also about our community.
These lessons aren't insignificant. They are important in this community and they are important in my family.
On Becoming a Law Officer
I became a deputy sheriff in 1982. I became a cop because I didn't think it was fair that drug dealers could get rich while regular folks like my dad were working one hundreds hours a week.
Because I'd worked for a college degree, I had opportunities to rise through the ranks. I went back to school Friday nights and Saturday mornings and got a Masters degree in Criminology from Indiana State University in Terre Haute. The following year, I spent twelve weeks in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI National Academy. Looking back, the choices I made to further my education beyond high school gave me the tools I have needed to advance my career as a law enforcement official.
I was fortunate enough to spend two years as a D.A.R.E. officer, traveling to many schools and teaching kids about the danger of drugs and alcohol abuse. I tried to help take the lessons children learned from their parents at home and reinforce those lessons in the classroom.
I've been in law enforcement for almost 25 years now, and I can tell you that today we face challenges I would have never dreamed of back in 1982. My little dead-end street is a thing of the past. I understand better than most the dangers that threaten to break up our communities. The popular culture that assaults the values we try to teach our children:
- a meth lab cooking up drugs near a middle school;
- gangs moving in from the big cities because they smell an opportunity;
- TV shows and video games that glorify violence and sex as they compete to see who can show our kids the next provocative image.
Kids today don't get to grow up the way we did. Because our jobs as parents is harder, it doesn't mean that we can give up teaching our kids the lessons we learned from our own parents.
On Running for Congress
Today, I'm running for Congress because I believe Washington has stopped listening.
I'm a Sheriff, not a politician.
I believe that Washington is letting us down.
I'm running for Congress because I believe that Washington doesn't listen to things we need as a community.
I'm running for Congress because I believe that Washington doesn't hear what we need as families.
I'm running for Congress because I believe ALL children deserve the opportunity to grow up safe and secure.
This is my life and who I am. I'd like you to join me and I ask for your support
Washington Stopped Listening (His Campaign Theme)
I've been out there in our communities. I've worked a beat and I've driven a cruiser up and down 41 more times than I can count. I know the first rule in protecting a community is to listen to it. I feel the same way about being your Congressman.
When you come to see me, you're the one that does the talking. I'll do the listening.
If you come to me and want to talk about folks losing their jobs and their pensions, we'll talk about it.
If you come to me and want to talk about getting affordable health insurance for you or your kids, we'll talk about it.
If you come to me and want to talk about illegal immigration, keeping our borders secure, we'll talk about that.
If you come to me and want to talk about how we get proper health care and benefits for our veterans, we'll for SURE talk about that.
I can promise you that one thing I WON'T do is ignore you or change the subject to something I want to talk about.
I believe the job of the Congress is to listen to the people, not tell them what to do.
God gave us two ears and only one mouth for a good reason, and I think we all know that folks in Washington are using their mouths more than their ears.
And that's while I'll be an Ambassador for South and Western Indiana. This district needs a leader. Someone to fight for our businesses. For our families. For the communities we call home.
I'll go to Washington and advocate your views. Your values. And our Hoosier way of life.
- Brad
The Way Washington Works
Listening to all this nonsense about lobbyists buying Congressmen and people switching their vote because someone wrote them a check, you'd think Washington was the most corrupt city in America. That may be, but let me tell you something else - the real problem isn't in the laws, it's in the criminals. I know something about laws, and the one thing laws CAN'T do is prevent people from breaking them. We can pass all the new laws we want, and we will. But until we replace the people committed to breaking them, we'll never have real reform. Congress doesn't belong to the politicians, and it certainly doesn't belong to the criminals. Congress belongs to us.
On Terrorism
The flag is an ideal, not a piece of cloth. There's not a person here that wouldn't lay down their life for it, and thank God for those overseas who do. We certainly didn't start this war with the terrorists, and until it's won I'm going to support the brave men and women fighting it. That means weapons, equipment, and support here at home. They're laying it all on the line for us, and they deserve nothing less in return.
Family Values
I'll protect our families. In my house, we were raised by my parents, not our television. Strong communities are anchored in strong families. I learned that church is about our community as much as it is our faith. This is important in this community and it's important in my family. The church helps all of us decide who we are. We're all weak in our own ways, but I believe that none of us is so weak that we're beyond hope. The church has guided my life and my career. I believe in justice, I believe in hope, I believe in salvation, and I believe in the value of life in all its forms, not just what people say to get elected.
Education
I'll protect our investment in the education of our children. The American Dream is the belief that our children can do better than we did. I believe this. You believe this. I'm running to make sure that our children can believe this.
Retirement Security
I'll protect an honest day's work. Accountability and fairness are values, not a dream. Do your job, save every penny you can, and you deserve the pension and secure retirement you've earned.
Jobs/Economy
I'll protect our jobs. American jobs belong in America. We need more of them. Bad trade agreements and corporate giveaways are just sweetheart deals for big corporations that don't need them.
You may not agree with everything he says, but you can't say that it's not beautiful.
He's obviously very socially conservative (he wouldn't be able to get elected in IN-8 if he wasn't) but pretty good on economic issues (very pro-labor and pro-education)
On the environment/energy, he of course supports ethanol (there's also a sizeable agricultural presence), but doesn't have much else (it's unfortunately not a top issue in this district).
A look at the horse-race
A poll conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang last December had Ellsworth leading narrowly. I presume independent polls will show the same thing once they're conducted.
Ellsworth is way ahead in the money race, of course (Hostettler being the anemic fundraiser that he is).
Here are the fundraising numbers as of June 30th.
Candidate |
Total Raised |
Cash on Hand |
John Hostettler |
$284,142 |
$194,146 |
Brad Ellsworth |
$1,036,348 |
$676,475 |
Ellsworth's electoral strategy is to attack Hostettler's record.
The DCCC has a very creative radio ad attacking him on his minimum wage vote.
They also have less creative TV ads bashing him for voting against a bonus for the troops and one on the
minimum wage
Hostettler's electoral strategy is twofold. First, he's trying to tie Brad Ellsworth to liberals, such especially Nancy Pelosi (when asked if his constituents knew who Nancy Pelosi was, Hostettler replied "They know where San Francisco is" [I'm sure you know what he's getting at]).
Second of all, he's trying to blame Ellsworth for something he isn't responsible for: a prisoner Travis John Moore getting out on work leave and then murdering his ex-girlfriend and two other people before killing himself.
Here's the text of the radio ad Hostettler's running:
John Hostettler would never violate the Constitution to raise his pay, and Washington liberals know it. So why are they lying, claiming he voted to raise his pay by violating the 27th Amendment? Because liberals are trying to cover up Sheriff Brad Ellsworth's release not long ago of a dangerous inmate who then murdered a mother of three and two of her friends. Ellsworth had brushed off two phone calls from the young mother, who pleaded for protection from the inmate. The press reported that Ellsworth was oblivious to the calls until after her murder.
Ellsworth kept the would-be murderer in work release, claiming he had only failed one drug test there. And Ellsworth didn't believe in one strike and you're out. But according to press accounts, this killer failed not one, but five drug tests on Ellsworth's watch. For liberal Brad Ellsworth, it's not one strike and you're out; it's five strikes and you get out. Liberal lies to cover up Brad Ellsworth's neglectful record.
Fortunately, the Evansville Courier & Press did some fact-checking.
Moore was serving a two-year sentence at the Vanderburgh County Safe House for his role in a 2003 robbery and was supposed to be at his job on the morning of April 22, 2005, when he fatally shot Sheena Sandage-Shofner and two of her friends before shooting himself.
Moore had been sentenced to work release by Vanderburgh County Superior Judge Robert J. Tornatta - not released by Ellsworth.
Community Corrections officer Brian Holtz filed a petition to revoke Moore's participation in the work-release program.
But when Moore went to court the next month for a hearing on the petition, the prosecutor's office and his caseworker - not Ellsworth - recommended he be allowed to return to the work-release facility with reduced privileges and a requirement to complete a drug treatment program.
The truth doesn't matter to the Republican party, though.
One final note.
Brad was one of the candidates kos donated to during the 2nd quarter (he had an ActBlue page up, but I can't seem to find it). Just something I thought I'd mention (if you're reading this, kos, I'm interested in knowing why you chose to donate him.
Not that I don't think it was worth donating to him. In fact ...