by Carla Knapp
Pharos-Tribune associate editor
May 09, 2008 10:53 am
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Political candidates, party chairmen and election officials across the state have all expressed excitement about the record voter turnout in Tuesday’s primary.
However, some local Republican party members admitted frustration over the numbers from their party who cast Democratic ballots, and several candidates are uncertain about what that might foretell for the November general election.
“The big question is how big are the Democratic coattails,” said Randy Head, who won the Republican nomination in the Senate District 18 race and said he had already shifted gears to focus on November’s race against Democratic candidate Linda Klinck.
Among the four Republican candidates, Head earned 52 percent of the vote (5,622) and finished 32 points ahead of the nearest challenger. Still Klinck, who ran unopposed in the primary, received 14,367 votes — 3,615 more than were cast for all four Republican candidates combined.
Klinck, who is also Logansport’s deputy mayor, said the hype surrounding Tuesday’s election that drew out a wealth of voters would be beneficial to the Democratic Party, but whether the party can sustain that type of momentum moving toward November remains to be seen.
“I’m the first to admit that there are people who voted Tuesday who are Republicans who won’t return,” said Cass County Democratic Chairman Matt Meagher. “In general, I think we can still say there is a boost in interest and that’s going to benefit us. I think we’ll be able to look at some people who have never voted in a primary before and pick up some new voters along the way.”
Meagher’s Republican counterpart, Dave Arnold, expressed disappointment with the turnover.
“I wish more Republicans and especially traditional Republicans that voted Democrat would have stayed in the party because we had some races that were important races,” said Cass County Republican Chairman Dave Arnold.
One of those was a rematch of the Indiana House District 24 Republican primary race from two years ago between incumbent Rich McClain and challenger Rick Eller.
Eller, who spent election day campaigning in Galveston, said he and his camp ran a “fantastic campaign,” and had no regrets. The outcome was a different story.
McClain secured 62 percent of the vote (3,425) to Eller’s 38 percent (2,119), which was a major swing from 2006 when McClain beat Eller with 54 percent of the vote. McClain said he felt his work to pass property tax relief measures as well as the support he had received from the farming community helped to win him the nomination.
Though McClain’s vote total from 2006 went down slightly, more than 1,600 fewer people voted in this year’s race compared to the 2006 pairing between Eller and McClain. But Eller said he was unsure that the crossover affected the outcome.
“Really, I have no idea and I have no opinion,” said Eller, adding that he thought the crossover “messed up state and local races” overall. “That would just take so much analysis.”
Eller, like many of the other candidates, said he was trying to move on. His opponent said he was looking forward to getting back to the statehouse.
“I’m excited about going back to work in January in the General Assembly,” McClain said after Tuesday’s election.
McClain currently has no opponent for general election, but Meagher said that might not be the case come November.
“We’ll certainly look at it,” Meagher said of the openings left on the Democratic slate. “I don’t have any race that we’re primarily looking at, but hopefully some people who have sat on the fence about some of these local races have seen that clearly there is a base out there to some degree.”
Though uncertainty remains for some candidates as to whether they’ll be challenged come November, others are pleased to finally know their opposition.
“I believe Randy Head is a formidable opponent, and I look forward to running against him in the general election,” Klinck said of her race against the Cass County deputy prosecutor.
While much of the focus in this area during primary season was on the McClain-Eller rematch, the race between Logansport residents Klinck and Head will likely garner just as much attention leading up to the general election.
“It’s going to be an interesting local race,” said Meagher. “On one hand, you have two local candidates, but Cass County is about one third to maybe 36 percent of the district, so they’ll still have to compete in the rest of the district where neither one is known.”
Carla Knapp can be contacted at (574) 732-5150 or via e-mail at carla.knapp@pharostribune.com
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