Tier 1 Races For Indiana State Legislature

Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/15/08 @ 1:30 am - Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, Featured

I’ve analyzed the upcoming Indiana State Legislature races and I’ve identified what I’ll call the Tier 1 races. These races are ones that I expect will either be close or have a good possibility of flipping to a different party. The bad news for Republicans, I don’t see a single race that would qualify as a solid pick up opportunity for them but there are 7 such opportunities for Democrats.

There are a couple of Republican possibilities that I might put into the Tier 2 category but that’ll be a post for another day. For now let’s look at the top 7 races:

  1. HD 89 - John Barnes (D) vs Chris Swatts (R). This was Republican Larry Buell’s seat but he decided to not seek re-election. Barnes lost to Buell 7809-7297 in 2006 but in the primary Barnes raked in over 9600 votes to Swatts’ 2725.
  2. HD 97 - Mary Ann Sullivan (D) vs John Elrod (R). Elrod ran against Andre Carson and lost in the 7th congressional district special election. He originally said he wasn’t going to run for re-election in the House but eventually changed his mind. He really is the GOP’s only hope in this district but he’s still facing a tough battle in what will be an Obama-heavy district.
  3. HD 44 - Nancy Michael (D) vs Amos Thomas (R). Michael is a popular 12 year mayor of Greencastle and easily won a contested primary to take on Amos. The Democratic primary candidates totaled over 10,000 votes while Thomas’ vote total in the 2006 general election was 9127.
  4. HD 31 - Joe Pearson (D) vs Tim Harris (R) - In 2006 Harris beat Larry Hile by a razon-thin 19 votes with a total of 7492 votes. This go around he’s facing the Democrats’ 2006 Secretary of State nominee in Pearson who received over 7900 votes in the primary.
  5. HD 15 - Myron Sutton (D) vs Donald Lehe (R) - This is a rematch of the 2006 battle where Lehe won by 27 votes out of ~17,500 cast. Sutton is banking on a strong Democratic year and his primary vote total was 1200 votes larger than his 2006 general total where he barely lost.
  6. HD 4 - Larry Chub (D) vs Ed Soliday (R) - Soliday’s precinct was redrawn in 2006 to move him from the 10th district into the 4th where he won by about 1100 votes. The lawsuit challenging his residency fizzled out when the court basically said the matter was for the state legislature to decide. Chub, in common theme, gathered more votes in this year’s primary than Soliday did in the 2006 general.
  7. HD 52 - Don Papai (D) vs David Yarde (R) - This is a wide open seat as the incumbent Marlin Stutzman (R) was chosen to run for Bob Meeks’ old seat in the state senate (13th district). There’s no primary data available since both candidates were chosen via caucus. However, Papai did barely squeak out a 3rd place finish finished out of the running for the general in his county council primary by finishing 4th out of 4 candidates.

Comments

One Response to “Tier 1 Races For Indiana State Legislature”

  1. anonymous123 on July 20th, 2008 9:21 pm

    While I agree that it is a Democrat leaning year and that Democrats are likely to retain control of the House with up to 54 members, I think you’re analysis leans way too much on primary vote counts. I suspect that there are some incumbent Republicans in unquestionably safe districts that received unusually low primary vote totals and where their Democratic opponents received unusually high vote counts. That had everything to do with a closely contested and very meaningful presidential primary (almost unique in Indiana) and very little to do with the electorate looking at down ballot races. Had Obama secured the necessary delegates in April (thus rendering Indiana’s May primary superfluous) the down ballot races likely would have received more historically typical (much lower) totals.

    Democrats may well pick up new seats in the House but I think you need a better reason than primary vote totals, which typically are predictive of very little. Better to look at locally important issues and the quality of candidates and campaigns.

    If I were making a Tier 1 list, I would agree with your numbers 1 thru 5, though not always for the same reasons. I would not have numbers 6 and 7 on the list. Instead, I would include the now-open Micon and Crooks seats.

    Just one guy’s opinion.

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