In the e-mail, dated April 30, Samantha White requested the investigation following not only the bullying incident at Tech involving Young, but another incident at Northwest where a student was beaten.

White gave the following response…

Really!! An investigation….. really!!  Your request is denied.  The Board may make such a request and I will respond, but an individual Board Member’s request does not rise to the level of investigation in this matter.  The fight of a group of girls at Northwest or at any school is not unusual in schools.  Bullying is a nation-wide problem in schools, I am sure students had the same problems during your high school days in Detroit, and we have not had a disproportional number of such concerns.  In addition, on Friday of last week I met with all secondary school principals, vice principals, assistant principals, deans, academic deans, campus monitors, and others responsible for discipline in our secondary schools to clearly communicate expectations and responsibilities for the last weeks of the school year.  We won’t tolerate misbehavior on the part of students nor failure to act on the part of administrators.  There is no need for an investigation at this time, but if one becomes necessary we will get it done.  Thank you for your concern in this matter.

The school board voted Tuesday night, 4-2, to hire an outside agency to determine whether Young’s civil rights were violated.

The older I get the more I truly appreciate my own mother.  Anyone who can put up with me for four decades deserves a medal.    Actually they deserve a lot more than that.    I’m still trying to convince the current Mrs. Shabazz that she should join the “Mom Club” however her response is usually, “one of you is more than enough!”

The “Lunch Pail Republicans” labeled themselves as members of the GOP who opposed Right to Work legislation and promised to run opponents against lawmakers who voted for the bill.

As it turns out, the threat was empty as every Lunch Pail lost.   The Lunch Pails only managed to get a combined 27% of the vote in the seven Indiana House Districts where they ran a candidate.  Here are the results.  The Lunch Pail Republican candidate is in italics.

House District 5

• Dale DeVon  – 3366
• Cory Stith – 1207

House District 16

• Doug Gutwein  – 4769
• Diana Boersma -  3731

House District 22

• Rebecca Kubacki – 5240
• John Hare – 3060

House District 48

• Tim Neese – 4106
• Jerry Brewton – 2528
• Randall Weinley – 206

House District 64

• Thomas Washburn – 2803
• James Amick – 1553

House District 82

• David Ober – 3550
• Denise Lemmon – 3284
• Mike Caywood – 534
• Wesley Ortell – 238

House District 91

• Robert Behning – 3676
• Mike Scott – 2151

Even statehouse candidates supported by the Indiana State Teachers Association also lost.

This is not to say all those factors didn’t matter.  Throw in  millions of dollars in an air campaign, a feisty opponent with a lot of energy and a Republican party that has become much more ideologically conservative than in years prior and they all are the right ingredients for defeat.   It also didn’t help Lugar had spent two weeks dealing with a residency matter that should never have been an issue in the first place.  However, the final addition to the mixture, was time.

Richard Lugar had served, in my opinion honorably, for more than three decades.  However, for the Republican voter, that was too long.

The Howey-DePauw poll showed that most of the Republicans who were opposing Lugar weren’t necessarily big Mourdock supporters, but they had simply felt that Lugar had been there too long and it was time for a change.   When breaking down Mourdock’s support, 23% said they were supporting him because they thought Lugar had been in office too long, 16% thought it was time for change, 10% said it was time for new blood and 6% thought Lugar should retire.  Only 18% of Mourdock’s supporters cited ideology.

Even in anecdotal conversation with my gardener this morning I asked who he was voting for.  He told me that he thought Lugar was a good man, but he had just been there too long and it was time for a change.

Looking at the map of the electorate, a lot of Republicans felt that way.  Mourdock won in the rural areas and donut counties and he stayed competitive in Indianapolis.  Mourdock won every donut county except Boone.    I had several GOP precinct committeemen call me over the course of the evening and the totals they were giving me showed a very close race in the city.   When I heard, Lugar on the Amos Brown radio program Tuesday afternoon appealing to African-American voters to pull a Republican ballot I knew this was not going to end well.  And it didn’t.

The good news for Lugar is that he can go back to the Senate and spend his final days being an advocate for Indiana.  And he won’t be hurting for money, I can easily see him on a number of think tanks and speaking engagements.

Mourdock will have some challenges.  The polls show him and Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly running a competitive race.  And Mourdock will also have to do some outreach to The Indiana Republican establishment and business class.  I have already heard from Republicans who say they would not support Mourdock if Lugar loss.  So while Mourdock may have gotten 60% of the Republican primary vote, he cannot win without a good chunk of that 40% that went for Lugar.   However, those are issues to elaborate on for another day.

For now Lugar leaves national politics, the way he began, with a loss.  To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, time was not on his side.

• U.S. Senate – Richard Mourdock by 5-7 or Richard Lugar by 1-2.  (This will really depend on how good Lugar’s GOTV efforts are today, especially in the doughnut counties.  How’s that for hedge betting?)
• 5th CD -  Too close to call, but I would not be surprised to see a John McGoff or Susan Brooks win.   The voter/residency issue has hit David McIntosh pretty hard in the last three weeks.
• 6th CD – Luke Messer.  If Travis Hankins wins, all political hell will break lose.
• 8th CD – Larry Buschon.  There had been some talk that tea party challenger Kristi Risk might pull off an upset, but she appears to have fallen off the radar screen.
• House District 37 -Todd Huston, but Debbie Driskell comes close.
• House District 91 – Bob Behning.
• House District 92 – Tim Motsinger, because of local party ground game.
• Senate District 35 – Toss up.  Mike Young (who I admit I am not a big fan of) has the joy of incumbency.  However, challenger Dan Kinnamon has been working like crazy and the district is split evenly between Hendricks and Marion County.

A poll by Howey Politics Indiana and DePauw University had the incumbent trailing his opponent, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock by 10-points, 48-38; definitely not the place you want to be a few days before an election.   The anti-Lugar folks smell blood in the water and rallied on Saturday in Indianapolis in preparing for their march to victory.

Luckily for the incumbent, there are still a few items out there that can allow him to squeak out a victory, there isn’t a whole lot of room for error though.  In fact, the best analogy I can use is the closing scene in Star Wars, where Luke Skywalker is flying down the Death Star canyon and Darth Vader and two Imperial Tie Fighters are in hot pursuit.

Although Lugar trails by 10-points, Moudock leads 37-30 amongst those who say they will definitely vote for either candidate.  That means nearly 23% can change their mind between now and primary day.  What’s also worth noting is that 97% of those surveyed had not voted yet.  This is crucial because in order for Lugar to be successful, he has to build that firewall of early voters.  When I did my last analysis of early voters (remember this is part art/part science) there were about 22,000 early vote ballots turned in.  About 33% were identified as Lugar supporters and 18% Mourdock.  The rest couldn’t be identified. However, I have been able to gather that about 20% of the early absentee voters have never voted in a GOP primary.

In addition, the Lugar camp is making about 70,000 phone calls this weekend, not only making sure they reach their audience, but also non-traditional Republican primary voters.   This is important because the Howey poll shows Mourdock runs not only strong among ideological conservatives, which are typical primary voters, but more than 80% of the people supporting Mourdock are doing it because they have an issue with the incumbent, i.e. been in office too long, dislike him, don’t think he’s conservative enough.    If he can build that firewall, he will likely survive, not by much, but he can squeak out a win.

As I stated earlier, these last few hours will be political life or death for the Senator.   And if I may amend my Star Wars analogy, not only is Lugar flying down the Death Star canyon being pursued by Vader and the Imperial Tie Fighters, but Han Solo and Chewbacca won’t be coming back to save the day.  We’ll see Tuesday evening if the force was with him.

********

INDIANAPOLIS – U.S. Sen. Richard G. Lugar’s iconic career of elected public service appears to be in great jeopardy. A Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll conducted Monday and Tuesday shows that Lugar is trailing Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock 48-38% in Indiana’s Republican Senate primary. That head-to-head figure includes so-called “leaners,” who could conceivably change their minds in the final 72 hours of the campaign. Without the leans, Mourdock still leads 43-35%.

Based on this survey data, Howey Politics Indiana is moving the Senate race into a “Leans Mourdock” category. It had been “Leans Lugar” until the March 26-28 Howey/DePauw survey had Lugar leading Mourdock 42-35%, at which time HPI moved the Senate race into “Tossup.”

The survey, conducted by Republican pollster Christine Matthews of Bellwether Research and Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, is based on 700 likely voters with a +/- margin of error at 3.7%. The sample was made up of 76% Republicans, 14% independent, 8% independent/lean Republican, 1% lean Democrat and 1% independent/lean Democrat. Survey top lines will be posted under the “Howey/DePauw Poll” tab at www.howeypolitics.com.

And it appears to be a confirmation of a Tea Party mantra that a single challenger to Lugar would consolidate their support, with the incumbent getting about 39% of the “establishment” Republican vote – the percentage that U.S. Sen. Dan Coats won in the 2010 Republican primary against four other candidates. Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate, spearheaded by Tea Party activist Monica Boyer of Warsaw and Greg Fettig of Noblesville, engineered a Tea Party endorsement of Mourdock on Sept. 24, 2011 in Greenfield, and helped keep the field constricted to the treasurer, who was coming off a million vote reelection campaign in 2010.

Yang observed, “Back in January 2011, I conducted a statewide survey on behalf of Chairman Dan Parker for the Indiana Democratic Party, and I found a surprising result in one of our questions: Richard Lugar had a 28% reelect to another term score, and fully 56% wanted to make a change and elect someone else, and this result was among Republican voters. Thus, the findings of that poll made clear that Senator Lugar was vulnerable to a single challenger in a Republican primary.  And that’s exactly what has seemed to transpire.”

Among Republicans, Mourdock has a 51-36% lead, and among the 44% of the Republican sample who called themselves “very conservative,” Mourdock leads 63-26%.

Should this trend continue through Tuesday’s Republican primary, Mourdock will have pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern Indiana history. Yang suggested that the final results may not be close.

But it will hardly be an isolated event. Over the past decade, Hoosier voters have had a vivid propensity to change parties, throw out incumbents, including powerful, iconic ones. This includes a sitting governor, two of the most powerful legislators in state history in Republican primaries, five sitting U.S. Congressmen, the East Chicago mayor who led the Lake County Democratic machine, and in the 2007 municipal elections, 40% of incumbent mayors, including Bart Peterson of Indianapolis. In 2010, sensing the destabilized political environment, U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh abruptly announced his retirement just prior to the primary filing deadline, setting off a disastrous series of defeats for Indiana Democrats, including a dramatic erosion of the party’s Southern Indiana base where “heritage” Indiana House and Senate seats held for decades by the party went Republican.

Those supporting Lugar included 24% who liked his experience, 21% who said he was doing a good job, 16% cited his “good record,” and at 6% each cited “just like him,” “dislike Moudock,” while at 5% others cited his “seniority,” “foreign policy” and Mourdock’s “negative campaign.”

The Lugar/Mourdock race essentially became a referendum on the former and this time tenure and legacy appears to have become a millstone. When Howey/DePauw asked “over the past week or two, has your opinion of Richard Lugar become less favorable,” 32% said yes, while 12% said their opinion became more favorable. Clearly, the stately Lugar’s campaign going negative had repercussions. Lugar’s hard favorable/unfavorables were both at 43%, while Mourdock’s stood at 47/25%. And cross tabulations show Lugar lost support in Indianapolis, his hometown.

“While the Tea Party and other national groups got into this race because of what they consider to be Lugar’s liberal transgressions, it appears that a bigger issue for GOP primary voters is simply his longevity,” said Matthews. “It is a very difficult environment to be running as a 35 year incumbent.”

Matthews added: A plurality (44%) of primary voters identifies themselves as “very conservative” and, not surprisingly, they overwhelmingly favor Mr. Mourdock (63%-26%). So the balance of the electorate is somewhat conservative (33%) or moderate (19%) and, to win, Mr. Lugar would have to dominate among these voters. The problem for Senator Lugar, is that Mr. Mourdock is also winning the less conservative voters (43%-41%), so that the senator carries only moderate voters (60%-26%).

When pollsters Yang and Matthews asked: “Which statement better describes your view?” – 60% responded to “I want a U.S. Senator to focus first on trying to solve our country’s many problems, even if that means working with elected officials across the aisle to do it.” And 33% responded to “I want a U.S. senator to focus first on standing up for conservative principles even if that means not working with elected officials across the aisle to solve problems.” The first question would appear to have fit a description of Lugar; the second, Mourdock.

On a second issue question pertaining the DREAM Act, which has been vociferously opposed by the Tea Party and Mourdock, the pollsters asked: “Do you support or oppose allowing the children of illegal immigrants who graduate from high school and have no criminal record and serve in the U.S. military or attend college a path of full U.S. citizenship.” Again, the response would seem to favor Lugar: 22% said they “strongly supported” that; 32% said “somewhat support” while just 13% said they “somewhat oppose” and 19% “strongly opposed.” The aggregate on that question was 54% supporting and 32% opposing. Again, such a stance on the issue would appear to have played into Lugar’s wheelhouse.

But what should be troubling for Mourdock in victory is a fractured Republican Party. Among Republicans supporting Lugar, 12% had a favorable opinion of Mourdock and 57% had a negative opinion. Yang observed, “If Joe Donnelly can get 15% of the Republican vote, split the independents, that’s how Frank O’Bannon defeated Stephen Goldsmith.”

Value of endorsement

When the pollsters asked whether an endorsement would make them more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate. Here’s how that broke down:

More likely       Less likely

Gov. Mitch Daniels   49% 18%

State/national Tea Party   37% 20%

State/national business groups   29% 17%

National Rifle Association   46% 13%

Indiana Right to Life   51% 12%

Club for Growth   8% 17%

Sarah Palin 32%

• U.S. Senate Republican  Primary
• 5th CD Republican Primary
• 6th CD Republican Primary
• 8th CD Republican Primary
• House District 37, GOP Primary
• House District 92, GOP Primary

You can also do vote percentages as well turnout.  I’ll be back on Friday, Brian Howey and DePauw University will be unveiling their second poll in the U.S. Senate race, and the only independent poll as well.