Archive for the ‘Attorney General Race’ Category

The Greg Zoeller tour across the state continues. After a successful trip to St. Joe county yesterday, Zoeller is taking to Allen County and will be at the Allen County GOP HQ in Ft. Wayne tomorrow at noon.

On Tuesday, 9th District GOP Chairman Larry Shickles will be hosting Greg Zoeller at the Falls Of The Ohio Interpretive Center in Jeffersonville, Indiana from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

If you’re around, make sure to check out these events as we unite behind Greg to help bring him to victory over Linda Pence and the rest of the Democrat ticket in November!

In the spirit of the many of the interesting (and often very rotation-happy; see “the Quayle regime” here, “we have always been at war with Eurasia and were always neutral in the AG race” here, “it’s all the fault of township officials” here, or interesting revisionism here) post-mortems put forward on the outcome of the GOP state convention, I have decided to join in the fun.

On the evening immediately after the convention, the Hoosier Access guys joined Chris Spangle, Adam Longworth, and Mitch Harper at the South Bend Chocolate Company on Monument Circle in Indy for a podcast. We did an “up and down” round table, and my post-mortem is based around that basic concept.

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Kurt Luidhardt of Prosper Group Think has some random thoughts about the GOP state convention.

I’ll have my own list to add in the next day or two. Still thinking about it.

Most enthusiastic: 9th District delegates when Mike Sodrel was announced.

I’m from the 9th, and I must say that the reaction Sodrel got (both in the general session and in the district caucus) was so enthusiastic as to surprise even me. He certainly got the loudest and most rousing cheers of anyone at the entire convention, and that was even with only maybe a ninth of the delegates present cheering for him (and they didn’t have noise-making gadgets either).

This is his year.

Pin Cushion Award: Steve Shine for handling the large delegation of Ron Paul delegates in the 3rd district caucus with class. He may get the Pin Cushion of the year award for getting criticized by both sides of the Republican Party in the 2007 Fort Wayne Mayoral contest.

Strangely enough, there was no trouble at all from the Ron Paul delegates in the 9th District caucus; there were only maybe a dozen of them there.

Best Demonstration: LG Becky Skillman with the drum corps and crew of loud supporters. She actually pulled this off without having to beg delegates from the floor to help.

The Skillman demonstration was impressive; though the Zoeller demonstration (composed of almost three hundred people and easily twice the size of that for Costas) was quite impressive also (doubly so since it had no marching band or noise-making gadgets).

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(Bumped up by Josh as an announcement)

This Central Indiana boy wishes he could attend, but that doesn’t mean you can’t!

2nd District Unity Tour event at St. Joseph County Republican Hq’s: 4133 S. Main St, South Bend, IN 46614 this Friday, June 6th 3:15-4:30pm.

We are inviting everyone from the 2nd District to attend and join in suporting our candidate for Attorney General, Greg Zoeller.

Any questions: contact Lindsey Mustard (574) 299-1388

For all the talk in the liberal blogosphere that Governor Mitch Daniels is now some how weakened because of the loss of Jon Costas at Monday’s convention, they seem to be unaware of the problems within their own party. I understand that when the Governor puts forth a candidate for AG, he would hope that person wins. But when you have two more than qualified candidates for the job, it’s nice to have choices. And the delegates were happy to have that option.

But allow me to say that, Costas’ defeat in the convention, hardly means trouble for Mitch in the fall. If Costas had won, then my guess is, there would have been trouble (but that’s another post for another time). What the liberals don’t understand, is that for all went on over the last few weeks, since Greg Zoeller is our candidate for AG, those who had a beef with Mitch are now mollified. It’s like a family squabble. Now that it’s resolved, we’re back to being a family and willing to move on.

See the Democrats can’t say that. They talk about Mitch Daniels being in trouble with his own party but don’t they have a candidate they didn’t want leading their statewide ticket? Didn’t they have 50%+ of their voting electorate (not just a small number of delegates) that said, “forget what the party told me, I’m voting for Jill!”? Plus, they have a gubernatorial candidate who they hate more than Mitch Daniels. She has more people turning her down to be her LG candidate than a fat Jared did dates before he went on his Subway diet. At this point, she’s probably looking at Town Councilors to be her running mate. And she’s getting no help from the party. Not that she would take it if they offered it to her.

Let’s take this a step further shall we.

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Your humble correspondent has obtained a machine-by-machine breakdown of the delegate vote for attorney general at Monday’s GOP state convention (see the file of the breakdown here).

There were some forty-five electronic voting machines. Some counties (such as mine) shared machines with other counties. Other counties (such as Marion) had several machines all to themselves.

From this machine-by-machine breakdown, we can get a glimpse (however imperfect) of the anatomy of Greg Zoeller’s victory at the convention yesterday afternoon.

The totals themselves will tell you that it was, as George W. Bush once memorably put it, “a thumpin’.” Zoeller won sixty percent of the ballots cast, a margin of 354 votes.

That’s a smashing victory at any convention.

It’s a bigger victory than Barack Obama will see over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party nomination battle, and the Democrats have more than two times as many delegates in that contest.

Sort of kills the “divided Indiana Republican Party” meme dead by comparison, doesn’t it?

More startling still than just the totals is the breakdown (seen via the machine totals) of the geography of that victory:

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Jon Costas sent a departure email to his supporter mailing list:

Congratulations to Greg Zoeller, the successful nominee for Attorney General at the Indiana Republican State Convention. I look forward to campaigning for Greg, Governor Mitch Daniels, Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman and Tony Bennett, the Republican candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

I want to thank all of those who supported my campaign with time, endorsements, money and encouragement. You are all my friends and I look forward to our opportunities and challenges together in the future.

To all the delegates that have spent time with me over the past five weeks, I appreciate your dedication to the Republican principles that we embrace as we lead and govern our state. I thank you all for your support and friendship built on the campaign trail. I look forward to our conversations in the future.

Jon

Mr. Costas is an excellent mayor for the citizens of Valparaiso. Hopefully, he’ll continue serving them (and Hoosiers more broadly) for many years to come, whether as mayor or as something else down the line (county office, state House, state Senate, statewide office, or whatever else).

This was just not his year. Mr. Costas put forward a good and clean fight (despite what some people supporting him may have done to his benefit or ultimate detriment), and should be commended on it.

Most counties voted together on touch screen voting machines. Here are the official results.

Greg Zoeller - 1,061

Jon Costas - 707

(The following are a few thoughts from Howard County Chairman and friend to Hoosier Access, Craig Dunn, about yesterday’s state GOP convention.)

The Indiana Republican Convention offered a wonderful example of Democracy in action. It was enjoyable to see two extremely capable candidates battle it out for the Attorney General nomination and then the entire convention warmly embrace the ultimate winner, Greg Zoeller. Although I did not support Greg Zoeller with my vote, because of reasons that I previously discussed, I do fully support his place on the Republican ticket in November. He is a good man, a capable man and a great Republican. I’m sure that he will do us all proud.

True Republicans delight in the democratic process. We fight hard for our beliefs and then we bind up our personal wounds and support the chosen leaders of our Party and our ticket.

Now is the time to rally behind our great Republican team and send a clear message to the Democrats that we wholeheartedly support Governor Mitch Daniels and that the next four years will take Indiana to even greater heights of achievement.

I’ve been seeing these kinds of posts around the internet all day today, so I thought I’d add my own as well.

Yesterday I attended my first, of what I hope is many state convention.  It was great to see real democracy in action.  We’ve commented quite a bit here on Hoosier Access about the AG’s race as we worked to support our candidate Greg Zoeller and I was very happy to see he won…and by a very large margin.  But even after I got there in the morning, I still didn’t feel like a Zoeller victory was in the bag.  Costas’ young group of volunteers and State party people were working handing out S.W.A.G. (stuff we all get) bags to the lines of people who were waiting in line to register with their congressional district caucuses.  Since I came wearing my Zoeller button, the Costas people would give me one look and walk away.

The Zoeller crew, not to be outdone, were handing out buttons, a letter from Vice-President Quayle and talking to individual delegates working to get their vote.  The Paulistas were out in force and plotting ways to use Robert’s Rules of Order to bring a little lively activity to the District Caucus meetings.  Such was the case in the 5th CD and, from what I hear, every other CD.  They bravely tried to make their voices heard, but to no avail.

One we had returned from lunch, we made our way to Convention Halls B & C for the big event.

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The Usual Suspects, along with Chris Spangle of WXNT and Mitch Harper of Fort Wayne Observed did a podcast tonight with discussion of the convention and its “fallout”.

 

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