Diego and the Press

This much is clear less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 election: Republican secretary of state nominee Diego Morales is getting historic bad press. You’d have to go back to 2012 to find a statewide candidate – Republican U.S. Senate nominee Richard Mourdock – who has gathered as much negative press as Morales, who…

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A Second Civil War? Or American Pie?

For those of you who think a “second American Civil War” is a good idea, I’m here to tell you that it’s not just dumb; it’s ludicrously stupid … imbecilic. Any public official who would suggest such should be drummed out of office with the next election. There has been unrestrained, persistent talk of a…

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Lessons From The Defeat Of Speaker Dailey

On Election Day 1986, Hoosier voters in House District 37 delivered an emphatic message to Speaker J. Roberts Dailey. He had spent much of the previous decade blocking a constitutional referendum on a statewide lottery. On this day, he would lose 25 of 29 precincts in his stunning upset loss to Democrat Marc Carmichael. And,…

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The Commitment Of Rep. Walorski And Her Staff

For a delegation that easily logs more than a million highway miles every year, Wednesday’s news of the death of U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski and staffers Zachery Potts and Emma Thomson was a staggering, drop-to-your-knees moment of shock and then overwhelming grief. Lee Hamilton once told me it could take him five-hours to cross the…

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Pence should wait until ‘28

Mike Pence and I used to compare career notes at Acapulco Joe’s back in the days when he was beginning his radio show and I, Howey Politics Indiana. In 2010, I wrote that the congressman should run for president, saying it might be his best and only opportunity. Then there was Aug. 8, 2019 column,…

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Abortion restrictions loom in patriarchal Indiana

Next week, 150 Hoosier legislators, including 110 men, will convene in special session to determine the most restrictive abortion laws in state history that stand to change the lives of thousands of women. Attorney General Todd Rokita and Terre Haute attorney Jim Bopp Jr., had dominated the post-Roe era semantics leading up to the July…

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Indiana’s Mitch envy

Look At A Smiling Columnist Rix Quinn

Call it Mitch envy. Shortly after the university announced last Friday he was stepping away from the job he truly loved for the past decade, Purdue President Mitch Daniels’s various text, email and phone inboxes began filling up. Hoosiers were urging Daniels to run for governor, for president, for mayor of Carmel or Indianapolis. When…

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