The big question for the over 1,700 Indiana Democrats gathered at their quadrennial state convention downtown Saturday was whether they can capitalize on the energy, enthusiasm and excitement generated by Sen. Barack Obama and win back the governorship.
The convention was the kickoff to hopefully a more energetic campaign by governor candidate Jill Long Thompson and her new lieutenant governor running mate state Rep. Dennie Oxley.
Oxley, 37, with an attractive wife and two cute kids, is from Southern Indiana, where Long Thompson is weakest. Oxley’s a respected legislator especially among Black legislators, two of whom, Bill Crawford and Greg Porter, spoke highly of him when I asked them last week about Oxley.
Reminiscent, in speech and manner to Peyton Manning, Oxley is strong on faith issues, even sings in a gospel group. While his values upset some Democrats, they will resonate with many African-Americans. Despite his Crawford County twang, Oxley could help Long Thompson in Black communities where she needs help.
The largest block of Hoosier Black voters were ambivalent towards her in May as she got just 48.6 percent of the votes in Indianapolis’ Black-majority precincts, losing to Jim Schellinger by just 1,764 votes.
Since May, Long Thompson’s done nothing to shore up her Black support. No Blacks on her campaign staff. No visible, strong support from Black leaders here. An otherwise great video shown before her convention speech featured testimonials from Hoosier Democratic stars — both Bayhs, Andy Jacobs, Lee Hamilton — but none of the party’s major African-American politicians spoke about Long Thompson on her video.
Long Thompson’s campaign can’t assume that Blacks will vote for Obama, Andre Carson and then her. She’s got to engage African-Americans and relate to the issues in the governor’s race that concern them.
She must get more aggressive, making sharp distinctions to how she compares to Mitch Daniels, whose administration may have given her an issue that resonates with Blacks.
Last week supervisors and managers at Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) blew the goodwill and high marks the state had earned (including from this column) about their response to the tornados and floods. In a clear disgrace, FSSA failed to follow federal rules and regulations governing emergency food stamps.
Residents of a county declared by the president as a federal disaster area are entitled to emergency food stamps. The federal rules include those “not ordinarily qualify(ing) for food stamps” as well as those who’ve “had disaster damage to their homes, expenses related to protecting their homes, or lost income as a result of the disaster” and those whose food spoiled because of power losses longer than “four hours.”
In a scene reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds who lined up outside food stamp offices were illegally turned away. After local media uncovered the illegality, FSSA remembered how emergency food stamps work.
FSSA even misled Indianapolis Power and Light (IPL) officials who mistakenly told IPL customers who were tornado victims that they weren’t eligible for federal assistance. The same bogus information FSSA gave out to applicants for emergency food stamps was given to IPL.
IPL spokeswoman Crystal Livers-Powers told me IPL worked hard to “help their customers.” But they depended on info they got from FSSA. Info that was flat wrong.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s never been thrilled with Daniels’ privatization of welfare and food stamps, repeatedly warning Indiana to follow the rules and regulations. The botched distribution of emergency federal food stamps is more strong evidence that welfare privatization won’t work during disasters and emergencies and isn’t working now.
In her speech Saturday, Jill Long Thompson bitterly condemned Mitch Daniels’ privatization schemes, including the privatization of welfare, promising, “I’ll stop the Daniels’ obsession with privatization.”
As a former official of the Department of Agriculture, Long Thompson should be all over this issue. It’s a good test of how nimble her campaign will be in bringing the ills of Mitch Daniels to voters, in terms they can clearly understand.
We’ll see.
Meanwhile, the retirements of Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Suellen Reed and Attorney General Steve Carter have given Democrats two good shots at victory.
But, it doesn’t help that again Democrats picked someone unknown to our state and African-Americans as their superintendent candidate, Dr. Richard Wood.
Wood has headed the Tippecanoe School Corp. for 19 years. But his political inexperience shows. His campaign didn’t reach out to media last week. No copies of his convention speech were distributed. Not an auspicious beginning.
The party’s best chance for victory, other than Long Thompson is attorney Linda Pence who’s running for attorney general. Pence, an experienced former federal prosecutor and trial lawyer, has raised a fair amount of campaign cash. Indiana’s first woman (and Black) Attorney General Pam Carter, made a rare Indiana public appearance to nominate Pence.
Pence will be a strong campaigner. And the GOP is already worried as her Republican opponent Greg Zoeller is already running hard against her. Attorney General may be the best race other than president in Indiana this fall.
What I’m hearing in the streets
Barack Obama’s campaign will open “several offices” in Indiana. TV ads are already on the air. A full staff, including a press person is being engaged. As of now, Indiana is in play in the presidential contest – for the first time in a couple of generations.
Congressman Andre Carson is temporarily without an opponent as Republican state Rep. Jon Elrod quit to run for his legislative seat. Conveniently, no Republican ran for the seat in May’s primary giving Elrod his escape hatch away from a race he’d lose, with Obama atop the ticket.
Elrod now faces Democrat Mary Ann Sullivan, who has been campaigning hard in the near Southside district for five months.
Carson plans to campaign as if he had a strong GOP opponent. But who?
Whoever the GOP picks will have just four months to find a winning formula to capture the 100,000 votes it’s going to take to win. An extremely weak or token candidate allows the national Democratic Party to move money and help from Carson to the 3rd District in Fort Wayne and Northeast Indiana. There, in a district Obama and Long Thompson carried in May, congressional candidate Mike Montagano is gaining momentum against incumbent Republican Congressman Mark Souder, who only got 54 percent of the vote in 2006.
Elrod’s quitting the Carson race could help Democrats add another Indiana congressional seat.
See ‘ya next week.
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or by e-mail at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
