Posted on 05/05/2010 4:59:36 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Attorney Todd Young and Dr. Larry Bucshon will be the GOP nominees in a pair of top pickup opportunities in southern Indiana.
Young defeated a field that included former Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-Ind.) to win the nod to face Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), while Bucshon survived a scare from a Tea Party candidate an will be the party’s candidate in Rep. Brad Ellsworth’s (R-Ind.) district.
Buschon led 33-29 with 94 percent of precincts, while Young led activist Travis Hankins 34-32 with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Sodrel was third, with 31 percent.
In a cycle that features many former members of Congress running for their old seats, Sodrel was the first to actually face voters.
Sodrel and Young were both part of the NRCC’s Young Guns program for top challengers, but party leaders will be happy to turn the page on Sodrel. In four straight races against Hill, he has lost three times, including by 20 points in 2008.
Bucshon was the only candidate in his district to be part of the Young Guns program. He will face state Rep. Trent Van Haaften, who was unopposed on the Democratic side. Ellsworth is running for Senate.
Both races are widely considered to be toss-ups.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Lets hope the GOP gets the target off their foot and aims in the right direction.
Todd Young’s victory caught me off guard, I didn’t pay much attention to that race. I’m hoping for a sweep.
I was surprised as well. I had assumed that Sodrel would win, and hadn’t even bothered to find out who was running until yesterday. I found Young to be an impressive candidate, and Travis Hankins (who finished second, about a point behind Young) even more so.
I think there’s a good chance at a Hoosier sweep. The primaries are over, so it’s time to rally behind the victors, all of whom are conservative (albeit, in some cases, not as conservative as some candidates who fell short): Coats for the Senate, Warkowski in IN-02, Buchson in IN-08, and Young in IN-09.
And let’s not forget Dr. Marvin Scott, a black conservative running in the Indianapolis-based IN-07. The IN-07 leans Democrat (it held President Bush to 43% in 2004 IIRC) and gave Obama a huge margin in 2008 but that did not cast that many more votes in the RAT primary as the GOP primary yesterday (and whose current Representative, André Carson, is a Black Muslim who is well to the left of the average voter in the district.
The GOP nominee in IN-02 is Jackie Walorski, not Warkowski. Sorry about that.
Good point about Marvin Scott. Normally, he’d be a long-shot, but I think that he has an outside shot to win in this political environment.
All 3 candidates were conservatives, looks like some uncalled for sour grapes from Hankins.
Young reportedly outraised Sodrel. A fact I missed when evaluating the race.
In a close race, everything is a “decisive factor.” Hankins got shellacked by Young and Sodrel in Floyd and Clark Counties, and it probably had more to do with Hankins (I assume) not buying Louisville TV time than with Democrats voting.
This is going to be a strange primary year. Most incumbents are not getting the type of margins they’re used to getting. The electorate is in a foul mood and it’s hard to predict whom they’re going to take it out on.
I have two siblings. When we were young, we used to all sit in the second row of our family station wagon. Dad drove. When we’d act up, after repeated warnings, Dad would just send an arm flailing back our way and invariably he would land a hit on the one of us who wasn’t the source of the trouble.
Kind of a silly analogy, but the electorate has just had enough and they’re flailing. Some candidates, through no fault of their own, are just going to be the ones to take the blow. I don’t like it, because it is impulsive and irrational, but it’s just reality at this point in time.
When you are 99% on the mark who's to worry?
I’ve been ringing door bells in the spring weather since 5/1, almost every day.
Voters are HIGHLY engaged ... never seen them so interested. I say, “I am campaigning for some conservative candidates in town.” That is enough.
Of course, finding a campaign that wants to do this type of thing is brutal because they are Republican fuddy-duddies. They will say, “Let’s do our canvassing in July for the August primary. I say. “it will be 98 degrees in July. No thank you.”
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