There’s been a lot of speculation about who will run for the 7th Congressional District when a special election is called to replace incumbent Julia Carson who has been diagnosed with termnial lung cancer. 

I’ve written about possible Democratic contenders and after doing some checking, here’s my  list of possible Republican contenders.  

Former U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks,  FSSA Director Mitch Roob, former Indianapolis Public Safety Director Bob Turner, State Senators Jim Merritt and Theresa Lubbers, State GOP Chairman Murray Clark, former City-County Council Candidate Bruce Henry, Christamore House Director Olgin Williams, outgoing Couty-County Council Member Ike Randolph, incoming At-Large City-County Council member Kent Smith, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi, Indiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Atterholt.   State Representative Jon Elrod has already declared.

On the Democratic side the contenders are still Marion County Treasurer Mike Rodman, State Representatives Greg Porter, David Orentlicher, outgoing Mayor Bart Peterson,  Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer,  City-County Council member Andre Carson and outgoing City-County Council Member Sherron Franklin.

Is there any particular match up you would like to see?

We’re all paying attention to the weather this morning, but I have my eye on something taking place tonight.  The City-County Council’s Public Safety Committee is taking up an ordinance to spend more than seven million dollars of your hard earned money.   It’s supposed to be for “public safety” but the ordinance doesn’t spell out exactly where the money is going.

There is $5,000,000 for “personal services.”  There’s another $156,000 for “supplies.”  $127,000 for “capital outlays.”  And my personal favorite, $1,317,000 for “other services and charges.”  Lord only knows what’s hidden in that line item.

This proposal is typical of what is wrong with the current Council.  It was put on the agenda under questionable circumstances, and there is no breakdown of expenditures for the public to see exactly where their money is going.  It was this kind of budgetary chicanery that contributed to the majority party’s loss this past November. 

Hopefully this behavior will stop come January 1.

My good friend and former Indianapolis Star editorial writer RiShawn Biddle has a thought-provoking piece today on the legacy of 7th District Congresswoman Julia Carson.  It’s on the American Spectator’s website.  It makes for very interesting reading. 

There’s nothing like getting back into town, throwing all your stuff on the floor, running to the suburbs where dinner is waiting and running all the way back downtown to cover city hall. There was a lot of stuff tonight, so here it is.

Republicans announced their committee leadership team.

Public Safety – Ryan Vaughn, Rules & Policy – Bob Lutz, Administration & Finance – Marilyn Pfisterer, Public Works – Ben Hunter,Economic Development – Jeff Cardwell, Municipal Corporations – Mike McQuillen, Community Affairs – Kent Smith, Parks – Susie Day, Metropolitan Development – Lincoln Plowman, Monroe Gray Investigation -Virgina Cain.

The appointments must be approved by the Council’s Committee on Committees on January 7.

On the Democratic side, Joanne Sanders will be taking over as Minority Leader. Council President Gray “took himself” out of the running, so the only opposition was Cherish Pryor. Sanders also justified the introduction of two proposals concerning tax abatements and a citizen referendum on issuing certain tax bonds. Sanders says that they introduced the measures late because they spent the early part of the year working on the budget and they had to campaign in October. However outgoing minority leader Phil Borst says the measures won’t fly because they run contrary to state law.

You might recall how I equated the process to succeed outgoing Congresswoman Julia Carson to that of the queen passing and the subsequent royal family jockeying for position. Well if anyone tells you there is no positioning going on they are lying to your face. For right now it looks like for the major players in Democratic circles the race is coming down to two individuals, City-County Council member Andre Carson, Julia’s grandson, and State Representative Carolene Mays.

What makes these two choices so intriguing is not so much who they are, but who they are affiliated with. In addition to being Julia’s grandson, Carson has strong ties with Democratic power broker Lacy Johnson, a key Julia ally and advisor. Mays, on the other hand, is related to wealthy businessman Bill Mays who has a lot of business interests in this town and a lot of wealth to go along with it. Mays is also an investor in 300 East, the famed restaurant-bar in the Julia Carson Center which caused a big stir last year. Ironically sources say the two are rumored to meet this weekend in 300 East, perhaps to try to hammer out their differences of opinion. There is already alleged tension between the two as they vie to become the top player in Marion County Democratic politics, as there is no leader now that the Mayor and the Council will no longer be in Democratic hands, and Julia will not be back next year.

And complicating matters is outgoing City-Council President Monroe Gray. Council Democrats have to come together soon to pick a new Minority Leader and the race is between Gray and current Vice-President Joanne Sanders. The caucus is split along racial lines with the Blacks supporting Gray and the whites supporting Sanders. Carson, who is black, is in the Gray camp. However, a vote for Gray could cost him a Congressional seat in the general election.

Follow me on this one if it seems confusing. One of the reason County Democrats lost was because of Gray and his ethically-challenged behavior. For Carson to vote for him for a leadership position would give Republicans, who actually have a shot at winning the 7th Congressional seat for the first time in ten years, a ton of ammunition. Can’t you see the ad right now, “Andre Carson’s first vote as a newly elected Council Member was for Monroe Gray as their leader. Gray voted to raise your taxes 19 times, locked you out of city hall (you can fill in the rest). If Carson will vote for someone like Monroe Gray what will he do in Washington?” You see what I mean. This is something Democrats will have to take into account should Gray become the leader. They are all still shell shocked over last month’s loss and are still blaming each other, Gray included. Of course Carson could take this issue off the table by not voting for Gray, but instead Sanders, but that remains to be seen.

Regardless in all this, whether it is Mays or Carson, what you likely won’t see is a white candidate get the party nod. There are too many people in Democratic circles who think the 7th Congressional seat should stay in the hands of the African-American community. Should that follow suit and an African-American get the nod, Republicans may have no choice but to follow suit. Marion County is approximately 27% Black, so in order for race to not become an issue, and trust me it can and will, the two main candidates to succeed Julia Carson may have to have the same pigment, instead of the same politics.

Life is about to get a lot more interesting folks. Stay tuned.

A coalition of Indiana farmers, labor and faith leaders are protesting a NAFTA-style agreement with Peru that the U.S. Senate will debate next week. They say NAFTA and similar free trade agreements have been responsible for the loss of thousands of American jobs. 

I agree jobs have been lost, but jobs have also been gained. What the opponents of free trade don’t understand is that we as Americans are a bit contradictory when it comes to labor and prices. On the one hand we want people to have “good-paying jobs” but on the other hand we want items on the cheap.

The only way you can achieve this is to either charge so much that you can afford to pay the high wages or you move so much product that what you lose in price you make up in volume. I frankly don’t care where certain items come from as long as they are of equal value and they’re cheaper.

Welcome to capitalism and the 21st Century. For every job allegedly lost by free trade, there are more opportunities created. But to take advantage of those opportunities you have to be creative and offer a personal service that the bigger guys can’t provide. It has been done before and it will be done again. So give it a try.

Apparently my charming personality and rapier wit have become lost on Black Democrats in Marion County.  I don’t know why they hate me but they have really stepped things up.  From outgoing City-County Council Attorney Aaron Haith calling me the grandson of Willie Lynch, to State Representative Bill Crawford defending him.  And State Representative Vanessa Summers going on the public airwaves and engaging in a string of personal attacks and demanding I be fired from my jobs.  I can’t quite figure out what I did to these guys, but I’ve been compiling a list.

The only hood I know is on the back of my parka from Land’s End.

I’m a free thinker.

I hold officials accountable.

I have a blue tooth and not a gold tooth.

I have a good job, good diction, credit and education.

I have no baby mamas in my life.

I speak the truth.

I’m successful and it had nothing to do with the Black establishment in this town.

I drink martinis and smoke expensive cigars and not King Cobra and Swisher Sweets.

I speak three languages and ebonics is not one of them.

I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and didn’t stop at the halfway point.

I think these are just some of the reasons, I’m sure there are more.  I just wish these guys would find something more productive to do and instead of hating the playa, they’d spend more time hating the game.

My fellow blogger Gary Welsh at Advance Indiana is throwing some pretty heavy criticism at the Julia Carson campaign for playing coy with her health and not being up front with the voters about her health.

Welsh cites and an RTV 6 interview with Jonathan Baily, Carson’s minister…

The Rev. Jonathan Baily said he was with Carson when doctors told her she had cancer about a year ago. He said the doctor finally told her that she had just days to live recently. “She asked the doctor, ‘How long have I got?'” Baily said. He said, ‘It’s not our thing to tell you how long, just make you comfortable.’”

However, as Welsh points out, a statement put out by her campaign office Carson says leads readers to believe that the cancer discovery was more recent…

In the late summer of 2007, Congress granted me a leave of absence because of my leg infection. My wonderful doctor cured the leg, and I went into rehabilitation, planning to be back in Washington shortly. Then the second shoe fell — heavily. My doctor discovered lung cancer. It had gone into remission years before, but it was back with a terminal vengeance.

It’s pretty apparent that Carson has been more ill than anyone knew and she’s known this for a long time. The question is should she have disclosed this information to the public and would it have mattered in the last election? My personal rule has been that elected officials private health matters are just that, private.

However, when their health affects their job performance or when there are noticeable differences in their physical appearance, I do think they owe their constituents an explanation. They have to make the ultimate decision as to whether they are fit to serve, but at the very least they need to be honest.

Although no one will admit this publicly there are a number of elected and appointed officials lining up to run for the 7th Congressional District.  Incumbent Julia Carson is battling terminal lung cancer and has declared that she will not run for another term.   Unfortunately, because she is in hospice care Carson may not complete this term as the point of hospice care is usually to make individuals comfortable at the end of their lives.

I’ve been going down my list of potential contenders who will probably run if and/or when the seat becomes vacant. 

Democrats

Marion County Treasurer Mike Rodman, State Representatives Greg Porter, Vanessa Summers, David Orentlicher, outgoing Mayor Bart Peterson,  Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer,  City-County Council member Andre Carson and outgoing City-County Council Member Sherron Franklin.

There was some Internet speculation that Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson might run for the seat, but Anderson lives in Geist which is in Dan Burton’s District.

Republicans

State Representative Jon Elrod (who has already declared),  former candidate Eric Dickerson.

Feel free to add someone to the list.  And no, I do not feel ghoulish about this because you know these conversations are taking place behind closed doors. 

I’m hearing this morning that 7th District Congresswoman Julia Carson may resign her seat by the end of the week.  Carson revealed publicly this weekend that she has terminal lung cancer and is now in hospice care.  If she does step down a special election would have to be called for her replacement.  Stay tuned.