After receiving an email last week notifying me that I had to be on campus from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. on this coming Tuesday, I realized that I would not have a chance to vote in the Indiana primary. Our polls close too damned early in this state and I’ve had nothing but trouble in the past trying to vote before going to work. There have been times where both The Coach and I have shown up at our polling place only to find that the workers haven’t shown up on time. Added to that, our county has gone to centralized voting centers, theoretically for efficiency’s sake. Yet, in November, The Coach and I had to stand in line because the workers were having trouble finding people in the voter rolls. To be honest with you, I thought about skipping the primary altogether; unlike TQE who votes in a different Indiana district, there’s not too much on the Democratic ballot in the Bloody 8th. I know, because I checked the ballot on the county clerk’s website last week. The one major race is for our Congressman, but David Crooks received a fairly early endorsement from the party and should win in a walk.
And then, this news came out: Senator Richard Lugar is down 10 points to Tea Party endorsed candidate Richard Mourdock. That’s right: the candidate in the lead is the one that has been endorsed by both Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. The candidate — our state treasurer, mind you — who obviously is not a detailed oriented guy, or at least not until he is running for a bigger, badder job:
Mourdock was receiving homestead tax deductions on a house in Evansville, Ind., and a condominium in Indianapolis. State law, however, only allows residents to receive the deduction on their primary residence, or in Mourdock’s case, his home in Evansville. But the exemption on the condominium, which Mourdock purchased in late 2006, was applied for by its previous owner, not Mourdock, according to the Marion County Auditor’s Office.
Last year, Mourdock told the Evansville Courier & Press that he notified the auditor’s office in person in 2007, after receiving a property tax rebate, that the exemption on the condominium should be canceled. But the exemption was not eliminated, and Mourdock continued to receive the tax credit in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Mourdock told the paper that he was unaware that he was still receiving the tax deduction until “doing opposition research on myself” in June 2011 in preparation for his primary contest with Lugar. That’s when, Mourdock said, he again went to the county auditor’s office and signed a statement saying that the tax exemption should be canceled. (Source)
The problem, according to the Wall Street Journal blog’s is that Senator Lugar is too much of centrist. ZOMG, yes, he’s a moderate Republican — even though he tried to reframe himself as being more conservative when he took after Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline vote. He’s also strong on foreign policy, which is something that these isolationist Tea Partiers can’t seem to wrap their brains around. He’s an elder statesman who dates back to the days when Democrats and Republicans could duke it out on the Senate floor, but then go out and play golf and be civil to one another. With this in mind, I stopped by my local library on Friday and voted — probably for the first and last time — in the Republican Primary. I won’t tell you who I voted for at the top of the ticket or even if I left it blank — you’ll just have to wonder about that — but I cast my vote in protest.
So, to Senator Lugar: Here’s one gal who thinks it’s shameful how this election has played out. Good luck on Tuesday and hold your head high even if you lose. You have my respect.
More importantly, you have my vote.