Indiana Blog Review

A Pence for Your Thoughts

Two different takes on Mike Pence's failed bid to become Minority Leader:

Chris Douglas --

His leadership in my opinion would potentially  undermine the future of the Republican Party as a majority party, not enhance it.

Scott Fluhr --

Today's vote was an unclear outcome for the Republicans, but a defeat for Indiana.

Minority Report

Scott Fluhr on Mike Pence's bid to become Minority Leader in the House of Representatives:

Mike Pence, while known as somebody with new ideas and seen as a fresh face, probably simply just hasn't donated enough money to his fellow Republicans to secure the leadership. Money matters . . . that's an objective fact; it matters regardless of principles.

I'd give Pence an outside chance to win. He'd certainly be better than Texas' Joe Barton or Ohio's John Boehner, but the smart money seems to be on Boehner . . .

More Post-Election Commentary

From Resisting Inertia, with a rundown of our House delegation.

MEANWHILE, Abdul chimes in, "What's interesting is the GOP won all the statewide races. And the Indiana Congressional delegation went from 7-2 Republican to 5-4 Democratic. To me, it shows Indiana may now be the new battleground state. We'll see in 2008."

MEANWHILE, Scott Fluhr writes John Hostettler's political obituary.

More:  He also surveys the coming statewide political landscape.

Silver Medalists

Doug Masson has an interesting note:

Just thought I’d take a look at how the second place finishers did in the Congressional Race. Here they are in order of vote percentage:

#1 - Eric Dickerson (IN-07) - 46.41%
#2 - Chris Chocola (IN-02) - 45.9%
#3 - Tom Hayhurst (IN-03) - 45.7%
#4 - Mike Sodrel (IN-09) - 44.85%  (Libertarian Eric Schansberg took 5%   of the vote in this race.)
#5 - Barry Welsh (IN-06) - 39.8%
#6 - John Hostettler (IN-08) - 39.33%
#7 - David Sanders (IN-04) - 35.33%
#8 - Katherine Fox Carr (IN-05) - 32.89%
#9 - Mark Leyva (IN-01) - 26.85%

Amazing Poll

Mark Rutherford posts some exciting news:

Results of last night's poll commissioned by the Libertarian Party of Indiana on Libertarian Rex Bell's Indiana House District 54 race:

Among Decided Voters
Saunders (R) (I) : 35.4%
Bell (L) : 33.1%
Sadler (D) 31.3%

Wow.

Were They Wearing Mood Rings?

Jim Shella:

Here's what I learned talking to and listening to Brad Ellsworth, Joe Donnelly, and Baron Hill yesterday.  The three great hopes for Indiana Democrats seem to be in very different moods heading into the final three weeks of the campaign.

The Something Fourth

Ruth Holladay relates some difficulties in getting the Indianapolis Star to cover Indiana's 4th Congressional district race.

Senator Moneybags

Jason Bourneman says that Evan Bayh should demonstrate his party loyalty by ponying up more than $100k to help take back the Senate.

via Doug Masson, we see that the Great All-Knowing Kos agrees.

The Other HRC in Congress

Advance Indiana:

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released its congressional scorecard for 2006. Indiana's congressional delegation fared poorly overall.

Since When Has That Stopped Anyone?

Matt Tully says that Democrats' criticism of Chris Chocola for not opposing Major Moves is "smart -- but wrong."

More: Doug Masson begs to differ.