A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

IN-09: Baron Hill wins rubber match against Sodrel

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The Indy Star has a headline up saying that Hill has won in Indiana’s 9th District in his re-rematch against Sodrel. I won’t bother linking to it at the moment since the text doesn’t match the headline and they keep shifting text. CBS offered a teaser with the same information. I guess there is some allegation of voter fraud on the part of the Democrats in Monroe County that I suppose could put things on hold for a bit if the margins are too close.

IN-08: Ellsworth defeats Hostettler

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Looks like John Hostettler used up his 9 lives already. It’s being projected that he will go down to defeat to Brad Ellsworth in the bloody eighth. I respected him for voting against the war in Iraq and generally voting his conscience. But Hostettler was far too radical with some of his views for my tastes. For example he characterized the Democrats as “demonizing and denigrating Christians.” He was against “divorce on demand.” In an effort to establish fully human life begins at conception, he proposed giving people a child tax credit if they had a miscarriage. And, he was in favor of defunding the U.S. Marshal’s Office in order to prevent them from enforcing judicial orders with which he disagreed.

I think Brad Ellsworth is conservative enough to represent the vast majority of people in the 8th District. But he’s not going to be a wingnut about it.

Administrative Note

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I migrated to a new host for my blog, so a few of my later posts were lost. If you made any comments to those posts, I apologize. Hopefully the move will have fixed some of the glitches I’ve been experiencing lately.

IN-03: Souder leads Hayhurst by 12%

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A poll by the Fort Wayne News Sentinel shows incumbent Republican Mark Souder leading challenger Tom Hayhurst 52% to 40%. There aren’t any polls to use as comparisons of trends in the race, but it seems to confirm that Hayhurst is running a good campaign but his chances of winning in this heavily Republican district are a long shot. By way of comparison, Souder took 69% of the vote two years ago.

Path of least resistance

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Apropos of not very much, does anyone else ever have those days when you get more done the less you try? I walked to and from the court house to attend an inconsequential hearing and, in the process, got work done on about 5 other cases simply by happening across other attorneys. Oh, and I ran into a law school classmate I haven’t seen in 10 years.

Got more done in 20 minutes than I had during the past 6 hours of the day.

Server failure

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Looks like the hosting company I use for Masson’s Blog had a pretty bad server failure. So, that’s why I was down for the last day or so, and it looks like I lost the posts for the past week. But, we’re back up at the moment at least.

IN-03: Hayhurst on DCCC’s “Emerging Races” list

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(H/t Taking Down Words) Democratic candidate to represent Indiana’s Third District, Dr. Tom Hayhurst has  made the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Emerging Races” list. The list consists of about 25 Democratic candidates “who have taken traditionally non-competitive districts and, through the strength of their campaigns, put themselves in a position to win in November.” The DCCC’s entry on Dr. Hayhurst is here.

Maureen Groppe has a story in the Indianapolis Star that mentions that the national Republican party has seen a need to fund Mark Souder’s campaign against Hayhurst. According to Ms. Groppe’s report:

The party could be worried about the fact that Hayhurst is outspending Souder. Hayhurst, a first-time congressional candidate and member of the Fort Wayne City Council, reported spending $320,000 on advertising. Souder reported spending about $60,000.

Another Star report that gives the breakdown of money raised, spent, and in the bank, summarizes IN-03 as follows:

3rd District
• Rep. Mark Souder, R-Fort Wayne: $299,193 raised; $222,712 spent; $111,365 in the bank as of Sept. 30.
• Democrat Thomas Hayhurst, Fort Wayne: $592,494 raised; $500,932 spent; $91,562 in the bank as of Sept. 30.

North Korea

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Kim Jong Il has apparently tested a nuclear weapon in North Korea. With our resources sunk into Iraq and our international influence squandered, we’re left in the position of relying on China to do the right thing and try to handle its crazy neighbor. That’s not a great position for us to be in.