Tag Archives: republicans

IBRG’s Brantley: Election a ‘Mini-Mandate’ in Indiana to Stay on Course

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UOur friends at Inside INdiana Business interviewed Jeff Brantley, the Indiana Chamber’s VP of Political Affairs and our PAC, Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG), about Tuesday’s election (the link includes an audio clip about the federal elections as well). Here’s the synopsis (edited for accuracy):

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of political affairs believes Hoosier voters in yesterday’s mid-term elections delivered a “mini-mandate” to legislators to continue focusing on job growth and the business community. All Indiana Congressional incumbents won re-election and Republicans swept the contests for secretary of state, state auditor and state treasurer. Jeff Brantley says voter turnout appears to be higher than anticipated and believes results in Indiana General Assembly races demonstrate Hoosiers like the direction policy makers are going.

Only one U.S. Congressional race, the 7th District between Representative Andre Carson and challenger Catherine Ping, was within 15 points. The winners are:

Peter Visclosky (D-1)
Jackie Walorski (R-2)
Marlin Stutzman (R-3)
Todd Rokita (R-4)
Susan Brooks (R-5)
Luke Messer (R-6)
Andre’ Carson (D-7)
Larry Bucshon (R-8)
Todd Young (R-9)

Statewide office winners were Secretary of State Connie Lawson (R), Suzanne Crouch (R) for State Treasurer and Kelly Mitchell (R) for State Auditor.

Jeff Brantley says, with only one exception, all candidates the organization endorsed were victorious.

Some incumbents in the Indiana General Assembly were unseated. They include Sen. Richard Young (D-47), who was beaten by Republican Erin Houchin, and Senator Tim Skinner (D-38), who lost to Republican Jon Ford. Incumbent Reps. Mara Candelaria Reardon (D-12) and Shelli VanDenburgh (D-19) also fell.

Kansas Independent Could Be Wild Card in Senate (Or Not, We’ll See)

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AAccording to Huffington Post polling, there’s a 79% chance the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate today (and The Washington Post contends there’s a whopping 98% chance). No surprise it’s likely to happen if you’ve been following along.

But, perhaps most interesting, is that HuffPo also calculates a 9% chance that Greg Orman, an independent in an extremely tight race against Republican three-term Senator Pat Roberts, could determine which party rules based on where he decides to caucus (should he win his race).

Read this Politico piece to find out why Republicans think he’ll actually caucus with Democrats, and what that could mean going forward. (And this may shock you, but Vice President Biden reportedly let the ol’ cat out of the bag on this matter earlier today.)

At any rate, Orman’s campaign is making for interesting theater during this mid-term election season.

Indiana Primary 2014: Intra-Party Turmoil and Bassler’s Big Win Over Longtime State Senator

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Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG), the non-partisan political action program of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, fought through one of the most challenging primary election cycles in its history with 12 of 14 IBRG-endorsed candidates winning their respective primary elections (including Eric Bassler’s big victory over 20-year incumbent State Sen. John Waterman).

Today, Hoosier voters believe their state government is on the “right track” by margins probably not seen in a generation of polling in the state, while holding nearly mirror opposite views of the federal government. Hoosiers have confidence in where our growing economy is headed and strongly support a variety of reforms that are helping Indiana lead the nation in economic growth.

However, large blocks of Hoosiers also detest the federal government, distrust both political parties, and want someone or something to lash out at. With Republicans in charge of both houses of the General Assembly by strong quorum-proof majorities, if you’re looking for some political payback in Indiana, the Republicans are the ones calling the shots.

In the 2014 primary elections, no Democrat incumbent legislator faced a primary election challenger. There were only two Democratic primaries in the state for “open” (i.e. no incumbent running) legislative seats, both in Lake County. The 2014 primary elections were about the Republicans. It’s important to note that the 2012 primary elections were the first held after redistricting. Twenty-two districts in 2012 did not have an incumbent running, compared to only eight this primary election. If you look at the House, the difference is even more stark –  20 open seats in 2012 and only three in 2014. So, the 2014 primaries had a lot more to do with incumbents.

In 2012, the labor unions were still hopping-mad over right-to-work and running a number of candidates against GOP incumbents and open seat races. They all failed. While the ISTA teachers union and “Lunch Pail Republicans” were back this year, a new and formidable primary challenge came from social and religious conservative candidates and interest groups, working in concert with some Tea Party networks. Their targets — select Republican primary elections.

Highly-motivated by hot-button social and religious issues such as the gay marriage amendment HJR-3, several otherwise conservative Republican legislators found themselves facing tough challenges from the right. In low-turnout elections, highly-energized subgroups of voters – those angry and motivated to vote against someone – can and do turnout to vote and win races.

It’s impossible to have much of a discussion of 2014 Indiana state politics without considering the impact of the hyper-divisive fight over the gay marriage amendment HJR-3. Setting aside the policy debate, clearly it has motivated, energized and radicalized large segments of the population on both sides of the issue. For many, it is a hyper-issue that overrules all others.

In this year’s primary elections, three Republican state representatives who voted against the gay marriage amendment found themselves challenged by significantly more socially conservative primary election challengers. Two of these three were defeated on May 6 and the third won with less than 50% as his two primary election challengers split 50.5% of the protest vote.

However, where issues other than religious and social ones took front and center, the results were very different. Where issues such as jobs, tax cuts, economic growth, right-to-work, education reform, free enterprise, regulatory relief and other economic and reform issues were the focus, incumbents (and non-incumbents) performed very well. In fact, they all won when IBRG was involved!

IBRG success included the highly‐targeted race that defeated a 20‐year Senate Republican incumbent (John Waterman in Senate District 39) strongly backed by the ISTA teachers union, other labor unions and trial lawyers. It included defending key legislators with strong pro‐jobs, pro‐economy records. This report will be updated as additional election results become available and published at
www.ibrg.biz.

IBRG Endorsed Candidates

Incumbents
House 22 Rebecca Kubacki – Loss
House 25 Don Lehe – Win
House 32 P. Eric Turner – Win
House 39 Jerry Torr – Win
House 59 Milo Smith – Win
House 83 Kathy Heuer – Loss
House 84 Bob Morris – Win
House 85 Casey Cox – Win
House 91 Robert Behning – Win
Senate 31 James Merritt, Jr. – Win

Challengers and Others
Senate 39 Eric Bassler – Win
Senate 47 Erin Houchin – Win

Open Seats
House 63 Mike Braun – Win
Senate 43 Chip Perfect – Win

Nate Silver: GOP Has 60% Chance of Taking Control of Senate

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Nate Silver has built a brand as a successful prognosticator of U.S. elections — and fantasy baseball projections, for the record. So Democrats are understandably concerned about his prediction that Republicans will regain the U.S. Senate in 2014. The Huffington Post writes:

Cue the hand-wringing in Democratic circles everywhere: Nate Silver says the GOP will probably re-take the Senate in November’s elections.

After he ran the table in 2012, correctly predicting the electoral outcomes in every single state, Silver has become something of a modern-day oracle to political junkies.

On Sunday, Silver took to his new FiveThirtyEight website—and his new TV home on ABC—to deliver one of his breathlessly awaited prognostications.

Republicans need six seats to regain control of the Senate chamber. How many seats did Silver think the GOP would win? “Exactly six,” he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

Silver gave Republicans a 60 percent chance of wresting the Senate out of Harry Reid’s hands—a big blow to the final two years of the Obama presidency. In Silver’s words, that only makes the GOP “slightly favored” to win, and there are still very many months to go until November.

Throwback Thursday: Old School Governance

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Our annual Legislative Directory remains the most in-demand product from our legislative services department. (And stay tuned, because this year it will be offered as a fancy new app for your mobile device!)

The directory features pictures and bios of the members of Indiana's House and Senate, and is a handy tool for lobbyists and politicos to know their reps. So imagine our delight when we found a Legislative Directory from 1945!

Here are some fun facts:

Governor Ralph Gates: Gates, a Republican, hailed from Columbia City. He was Indiana's sixth wartime governor, and attended the University of Michigan. He was also an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War I, and made his living as an attorney. (I later read that Gates died in 1978 of natural causes, and is best known for helping to rebuild the GOP after it came close to collapsing following the KKK scandal of the late 1920s.)

Lt. Governor Richard James: Also an attorney, James was from Portland. He attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Party breakdown: The Senate consisted of 37 Republicans and 13 Democrats. The House held 69 Republicans and 31 Democrats. Oddly enough, the exact same splits exist today in both houses in 2013!

Women: There were eight women in the legislature at the time (one senator; seven reps). Contrast that with 2013, as 31 women (eight senators; 23 reps) help shape legislation in the Indiana Statehouse. Our Lt. Governor, of course, is also a woman now (Sue Ellspermann) — as was the last person to hold that position (Becky Skillman).

The Political Brain: Can Brain Scans Predict Your Affiliations?

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Found this interesting article on Huffington Post about how brain scans can predict political affiliation. This does make sense; my experience is that after interacting with someone only for a brief period of time, I can accurately guess which way they lean. Not always, of course — and some turn out to be centrists or libertarians, who wouldn't necessarily fit into the left/right model. But it's an intriguing scientific approach to the madness.

Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.

Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking.

While their brain activity differed, the two groups' behaviors were identical, the study found.

Schreiber and his colleagues can't say whether the functional brain differences nudge people toward a particular ideology or not. The brain changes based on how it is used, so it is possible that acting in a partisan way prompts the differences.

The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs, however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents' political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the researchers wrote.

Chamber Statement on the Fiscal Cliff Deal

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President Obama and a divided Congress have come to an agreement on the so-called fiscal cliff. Indiana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Kevin Brinegar reacts:

"The Indiana Chamber applauds the President and Congress for their ability to compromise in the eleventh hour. However, the measures agreed to are inadequate, some potentially counter-productive, and fall far short of addressing the long-term fiscal challenges facing our federal government.

"Despite tax increases, long-term spending remains unsustainable and a threat to our economic and national security. We must rigorously reform entitlement and social welfare programs and look for real, lasting savings across all federal activities. We can no longer borrow and spend as if there were no consequences, because the day of reckoning fast approaches. We look forward to working with our congressional delegation in the weeks and months ahead to fashion workable and responsible reforms."

In early December, the Indiana Chamber released the results of a federal tax survey, done in in partnership with Congressman Todd Young (R-9th District), who is a new appointee to the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. The survey of Hoosier businesses revealed a willingness to share the tax burden, provided there is real and significant reduction in federal spending and substantive reform to simplify the tax code. The press release and charts detailing the results can be found online at www.indianachamber.com/federal.
 

Pennsylvania Grapples with Transportation Solutions

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How to pay for future transportation infrastructure needs and what to do about mass transit options. While these are issues Indiana legislators will soon be debating, the battle in Pennsylvania is slightly different. Mass transit involves alternatives already in place and the question is whether funding for both topics should be considered together or separately. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

Faced with critical needs in Pennsylvania’s transportation networks, the Republicans controlling both legislative chambers are divided on whether to uncouple the issues of infrastructure and mass transit.

Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, has said he is considering all recommendations of an advisory commission that issued a report in August 2011 about how to fund improvements to the state’s roads, bridges and mass transit.

During an appearance Monday in McCandless, the governor said he expects to lay out a proposal when the new Legislature begins work in mid-January.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, said in an interview at the event that his members want to address transportation infrastructure and separately deal with public transit systems.

"We want it focused on roads and bridges," he said. "So many reforms have to be brought to mass transit that it needs to be disentangled. They need to be separate pieces."

House Republicans want to bring checks and balances to spending on mass transportation, said Steve Miskin, a spokesman for the caucus.

But Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Republicans, said he believed legislation addressing only one component of transportation would have an uncertain path through the chamber.

"Our read of the Senate is that it will be very difficult to move funding for one part of that — either roads and bridges or mass transit — without the other part," Mr. Arneson said. "But whether that is one bill or two bills or three bills, we’re not concerned about that as much as we are the timing."

He said he believed the Senate could pass separate bills if they were moved together.

Asked about disconnecting the components of a transportation plan, Steve Chizmar, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said Mr. Corbett has kept his options open.

"At this point the governor said that everything is on the table," Mr. Chizmar said. "He’s really dedicated to finding a long-term solution that’s going to move through the Legislature."

Democrats, meanwhile, denounced the idea of extracting mass transit from a funding plan. Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said that while funding plans could be presented in separate bills, lawmakers from cities would not support legislation aimed at roads and bridges without an accompanying proposal for the transit systems serving their communities.

A Look at the 2012 Election

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An election of historic proportions has just taken place in our nation and right here in Indiana. There were some big surprises, big changes, and a lot of "status quo" outcomes.  Read all the results in the Indiana Chamber/IBRG’s 2012 General Elections Report.

The things that didn’t surprise political analysts:

  • Joe Donnelly defeated Richard Mourdock for the U.S. Senate
  • Mike Pence won the Governor’s race
  • Indiana House Republicans won 69 seats, achieving a quorum-proof (or walkout-proof) majority
  • In the Indiana Senate, not a single incumbent of either party was defeated

The things that did surprise political analysts:

  • Mike Pence won the governor’s race by an unexpectedly tight 3.2 percentage points
  • Dr. Tony Bennett was defeated for re-election as Superintendent of Public Instruction
  • 23 freshmen legislators were elected to the House; 42% of the new House roster will include legislators with two or less years of experience in office

The Indiana Chamber’s non-partisan political action program, Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG), had a good election: 61 of 77 IBRG-endorsed candidates facing opponents won their races; 8 of 9 candidates endorsed for the U.S. Congress were victorious.

The Elections Report will be updated as final results and additional analysis are assembled in the hours and days following the election. Check back at www.ibrg.biz or www.indianachamber.com for updates. For more information or questions, please contact Jeff Brantley (jbrantley@indianachamber.com), vice president of political affairs and PAC.

Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG), the non-partisan political action program of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, was heavily involved in support of pro-jobs, pro-prosperity candidates.
 

Still Not Sure Who You’re Supporting for President? Try This Quiz

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Because my political affiliation would best be described as "clustermess," I always get a kick out of taking these "Who Is Your Closest Match?" surveys of presidential candidates.

Independent educational site ProCon.org has a pretty good one with 68 questions. Would love for folks to discuss their results in our comments section, but unfortunately our comments section is down at the moment as our web guys are having trouble figuring out a major spam issue. So I’ll post this blog on our Facebook page and you can comment there if you like.

Happy matching!