Ex-sheriff wears independent badge in Senate race (Journal Gazette)
Ex-sheriff wears independent badge in Senate race
Sylvia A Smith
WASHINGTON – Brad Ellsworth was a popular southern Indiana sheriff who has never lost an election.
In his first attempt to win a congressional seat, he dislodged a five-term Republican incumbent. In Congress, he developed a reputation as one of about a dozen conservative Democrats likely to buck their party one out of every 10 votes or so.
On Saturday, Hoosier Democrats said Ellsworth is their choice to try to keep one of the two Indiana Senate seats in the Democratic column.
Ellsworth will go head-to-head with Dan Coats, the GOP nominee, as Indiana becomes a battleground over what Hoosiers want in a senator for the next six years.
Republicans are counting on the race to give Hoosiers a way to express their frustrations with the Obama administration.
Coats “has a golden opportunity to benefit from the anger people feel toward Washington,” said Terry Holt, a former Republican campaign operative who has worked on numerous Indiana congressional races.
Ellsworth and his backers hope his demeanor as someone who avoids a go-for-the-jugular partisan approach will tame that anger.
Ellsworth said he ran for Congress initially because he thought he was better suited than the Republican incumbent to “cross those divides and to resolve disputes and work on issues on a team-building spirit rather than a divisive spirit.”
Democrats think Ellsworth is the kind of Democrat Hoosiers feel comfortable with. He’s a fiscal conservative, opposes restrictions on guns, opposes abortion and takes a hard line against illegal immigrants.
James McCann, a Purdue University political science professor, put it this way: If you described Ellsworth’s positions to someone standing at a bus stop and asked whether the views are a Democrat’s or a Republican’s, “that person would be hard-pressed to identify what it is.”
For instance, the National Rifle Association backed Ellsworth in his 2008 re-election and went out of its way to praise him during the state’s May 4 Republican primary.
In fact, last month the NRA spent $18,000 to mail letters to Hoosier Republican primary voters to criticize Coats for gun-control votes he cast in 1993. Even though Ellsworth wasn’t running in a primary, the group described Ellsworth as having a “perfect” pro-gun record.
Against the flow
From the moment Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., announced he wouldn’t seek a second term and Ellsworth said he wanted to be the nominee, Republicans have been working to define him as an out-of-touch liberal.
“Ever since Brad Ellsworth was elected to Congress, he’s been a reliable vote for Nancy Pelosi and the reckless agenda of Washington Democrats,” Indiana Republican Party Chairman Murray Clark said March 10, more than two months before Ellsworth was officially nominated and before the GOP chose Coats.
In the more than 3,000 roll-call votes the House has taken since Ellsworth entered Congress in 1997, he has voted against the Democratic Party’s position 11 percent of the time. Only a handful of Democrats have a record of opposing their party’s position more frequently.
Ellsworth is more likely to part with the Democratic stance on fiscal issues – he’s voted against dozens of spending bills, for instance – than on other matters. But he has sided with Republicans against tightening restrictions on smoking and tobacco, demanding an ethics investigation into whether colleagues (including a Hoosier) traded favors for campaign contributions, and opposing the inclusion of sexual orientation in the definition of hate crimes.
But he’s not likely to stress those votes as he introduces himself to Hoosiers outside the Evansville area who have never met, or heard of, Ellsworth.
Ellsworth’s early campaign material describes him as the “former Vanderburgh County sheriff,” a position he held for eight years until he ran for Congress in 2007. Neither Ellsworth nor the state Democratic Party refers to his years in Washington.
“Ellsworth is a sheriff, not a career politician,” said Dan Parker, chairman of the state Democratic Party.
Ellsworth said he’s not running from his two terms in Congress, but being a deputy and then sheriff “was 25 years of my life. That was my career. People want to know that.”
Making decisions
Republicans will focus on the congressional part of Ellsworth’s political career. He’s likely to come in for GOP criticism for supporting legislation to restructure the health insurance industry, the auto industry loan program, the financial industry bailout and Cash for Clunkers.
Ellsworth, one of the last Democrats to declare a position on health care, said his concerns about abortion coverage first had to be satisfied. When they were, he voted for the bill, saying “it will provide immediate relief on day one to millions of seniors, children, small businesses, young adults and early retirees.”
He described the 2009 Cash for Clunkers program as “a common-sense program that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help save local jobs.”
Ellsworth said the auto industry is “a cornerstone of our economy” and that the bridge loan “buys the automakers and workers critical time to implement their long-term restructuring plans and prevent millions of middle class Americans from losing their jobs.”
He cast his support of the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout in terms of Hoosiers:
“Ultimately this is about that worker in Vincennes who is wondering if his pension will be there in the future; the single mother in Greencastle who dreams of sending her children to college; or the small-business owner in Boonville who is trying to meet payroll. These are the Americans that have everything to lose if Congress fails to act,” Ellsworth said in a statement at the time.
In an interview last week, he said he decided on the vote after talking to bank presidents, investment brokers and other financial professionals in his district, all of whom recommended the package.
He said he took the same approach – and got the same kind of recommendation – from automakers on the vote for the car industry loan bill.
Even the president of the Toyota plant in his district recommended a “yes” vote even though Toyota would receive no loans. Ellsworth said Toyota buys parts from the same manufacturers as the U.S. companies, and that if the domestic industry collapsed, so would the parts makers – and that would be bad for Toyota.
Ellsworth said he doesn’t regret those votes.
“We don’t get do-overs,” he said.
Even though the financial industry bailout and auto loans were developed under a Republican president, many of those programs have become unpopular with voters. Polls show a general unhappiness with Congress.
“The atmosphere is bad for Democrats,” said Joe Andrew, former chairman of the Indiana and national Democratic parties. But he said the Democrats who win this year will be like Ellsworth.
“On a whole host of issues that independent voters care about,” Andrew said, “he is every bit as conservative as Dan Coats.”
‘Ramp up’ profile
What Ellsworth does not have, but Coats does, is a statewide profile. Ellsworth is well known in southwest Indiana but not elsewhere. Coats was a senator for 10 years and has the remnants of a statewide volunteer-and-donor network he has been trying to reactivate.
It’s tough to run for a statewide office without that, said Paul Helmke, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully against Bayh, a former two-term governor, in 1998 and was in the same boat as Ellsworth is now: well known in one corner of the state and a cipher elsewhere.
Ellsworth got the Democratic nomination without a primary, which would have brought some voter awareness, because by the time Bayh announced he wouldn’t run again, it was too late for any other Democrats to get on the primary ballot.
“He’ll need to ramp up a statewide effort for media and name recognition, organization and money,” said Leonard Williams, political science professor at Manchester College. “Where Coats can rely on a strong and enthusiastic Republican establishment, Ellsworth will need to start almost afresh. If he can find a way to tap the netroots and Obama activists, that would certainly give him a boost of needed energy.”
But Ellsworth’s profile as a fiscal conservative, gun-ownership advocate and abortion opponent may not excite the Democratic voters who pushed Indiana’s presidential vote for Barack Obama in 2008. The GOP so far is trying to paint Ellsworth as anything but a conservative Democrat.
Coats calls Ellsworth an “enabler of the leftist Obama agenda.”
Asked whether he can win the support of the Democratic grass-roots activists who are decidedly more liberal, Ellsworth did not answer directly.
“I am me,” he said. “I’m 51 years old. I was born here, raised here, went to school here, worked here my entire life and come home every weekend since I’ve been in Congress. … Our country’s diverse, our state is diverse. I’m willing to work with all sections of our population.”
LINK: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100516/NEWS03/305169861/1006/NEWS