As you know I write monthly for the Indianapolis Star. The paper and I talked about getting a column in before Election Day. I was more than happy to get that done. As you might guess, it’s on the Mayor’s race between Republican Greg Ballard and Democrat Melina Kennedy, with a focus on the recent playing of the race card. Here it is.
The first independent poll of the 2011 Mayor’s race shows Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard with an 11-point lead over Democratic Challenger Melina Kennedy, but a significant number of voters are still undecided.
The poll of 400 likely voters conducted for WISH-TV by the polling firm of EPIC·MRA, shows Ballard with 44% of the vote and Kennedy with 33%. Libertarian Chris Bowen was at about 2%.
In addition the survey was made up of 47% Democrats, 36% Republicans and 24% minority with 22 % being African-American.
According WISH-TV’s website, EPIC·MRA polls are regularly cited by national news and media outlets and have been featured on CNN, World News Tonight, Nightline, and National Public Radio.
In the 2010 U.S. Senate race between Republican Dan Coats and Democrat Brad Ellsworth, an EPIC-MRA survey three weeks before the election had Coats winning 53-35. Coats won 56-38 percent over Ellsworth with Libertarian Rebecca Sink Burris getting 5.4 percent of the vote.
Up to this point, both the Ballard and Kennedy campaigns have cited their own internal polling. Ballard’s camp says it was leading 51-39 in the race over Kennedy.. Kennedy points to Marion County Democratic poll taken September 23 which shows the race virtually tied with her leading 40-38 with 21 percent undecided.
The silver lining for Kennedy is the polls also show Kennedy leading amongst those who have already voted 44-30.
The poll also showed 65% of the voters viewed Ballard favorably and he had 62% job approval rating. A majority of voters, 55%, thought the city was going in the right direction compared to just 33% who thought it was going in the wrong direction.
Traditionally undecided voters break for the challenger by a 2-to-1 margin, which means 14% of the undecided voters would likely go to Kennedy while 7% would go to Ballard. However that means Ballard would win the Mayor’s race 51-47, based on these poll results.
The first independent poll of the 2011 Mayor’s race is scheduled to be unveiled tonight at 11 p.m. on WISH-TV Channel 8. Details of the poll are being kept under wraps, however WISH-TV tells Indiana Barrister that the survey of 400 likely voters is scientific and is a pretty good sample size. WISH-TV also says it using the same firm it has in the past.
In the 2010 U.S. Senate race, WISH-TV used the polling firm EPIC·MRA, an experienced survey research firm, which has been active in governmental, political, marketing, business and health issues at the state and national levels since 1985. According WISH-TV’s website, EPIC·MRA polls are regularly cited by national news and media outlets and have been featured on CNN, World News Tonight, Nightline, and National Public Radio.
In the 2010 U.S. Senate race between Republican Dan Coats and Democrat Brad Ellsworth, an EPIC-MRA survey three weeks before the election had Coats winning 53-35. Coats won 56-38 percent over Ellsworth with Libertarian Rebecca Sink Burris getting 5.4 percent of the vote.
Both the Greg Ballard and Melina Kennedy campaigns have cited their own internal polling. Ballard’s camp says it’s leading 51-39 in the race over Kennedy. They say the poll was taken last week. Kennedy points to Marion County Democratic poll taken September 23 which shows the race virtually tied with her leading 40-38 with 21 percent undecided.
My grandfather used to have a saying, the only thing he hated worse than a liar was a clumsy thief and a bad liar. I always considered those words to live by and Melina Kennedy’s campaign spokesman Jon Mills might want to do the same.
I say this because Mills is quoted in a Fox 59 story regarding polling in the Mayor’s race and the fact that there has been no independent polling so reporter Zach Myers solicited information from both campaigns. The Ballard camp said they polled last week and their results showed the incumbent with a 51-39 lead. The Kennedy camp obviously had conflicting data. They said they had just polled in the last couple of weeks and it showed the race virtually tied 40-38 and 21 percent undecided. Mills also said the margin of error was 2 percent, which is virtually impossible with a poll sample of 400 people.
Where does one begin? Obviously, you take everyone’s polls with a grain of salt. However, here is the problem with Mills’ statement, it either makes him a liar or an idiot. The numbers that Mills cites are the exact same numbers that Marion County Democratic Chairman Ed Treacy released on September 23. I’ve linked the release here and have a copy saved in case the link is “broken”.
So we have one of three scenarios here. A) Mills lied to Fox 59 by knowingly and intentionally giving the news organization false information. B) He was uniformed and misspoke. C) After five weeks of attacking Ballard, Kennedy’s polling numbers haven’t moved an inch and the race is exactly where it was in September so they have wasted a million dollars. Which one is it? Something like this is easy to verify so why lie about it unless you’re so damn arrogant that you think you can get away with it, which is not completely out of the question.
And if you will lie or mislead the media over something this simple and verifiable, what else will you or more importantly, have you, lied or mislead the public over?
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this story, but when I was in law school, I was the Vice-President of the St. Louis University Black Law Student Association. I know it may sound shocking, but I was. Now I have never been a joiner of organizations that define themselves by race, however the young lady who convinced me to sign up at the time was very easy on the eyes. So when she asked me to do some tutoring in Constitutional Law for first year students, I was all over it, with my ultimate goal to eventually be all over her. Hey, I was still a single guy in my 20s, what did you expect?
My first lecture had nothing to do with Con Law. It was more about getting to know the students, telling them about life at the law school and some advice about personal freedom and the personal responsibility that went with it. And after teaching a few lectures, I noticed that I was making a difference so I decided to really get involved and run for V.P. My platform was simple, increase minority law student test scores and expand our weekend lecturing classes to the rest of the school. While a lot of my counterparts agreed with the first part of my agenda, the “SLU Black Revolutionaries” led by Angela Davis and a guy I will call “Chaka Zulu”, fought me gold tooth and pressed nail on the second, saying “we ain’t here for white folks we’re here for us!” Of course by opening up our weekend lectures we could increase student participation and dispel myths about the organization and in turn get more funding from the law school because we serve a broader student base, but that didn’t matter. Unfortunately, that particular cadre of black law students was incapable of three-dimensional thinking and did not find my conservative philosophy nor my expansive ideas appealing so they embarked on a whisper campaign that I was against affirmative action and was working with administration to eliminate it by including more white students in our activities and thus kick out all the black students. I lost the election in a close vote to Angela Davis.
I was really ticked off at the time and nearly quit the organization. I didn’t mind a loss on the issues, but these guys were beyond the pale. So my thought process was that if the natives couldn’t see the jungle for the trees, they deserve what’s coming when that big clipper ship comes ashore. Luckily, there were two people who convinced me not to quit, my father, who told me stay engaged. And the young lady with a great legal mind and body to match. So I stayed, and ironically halfway through her term Angela Davis quit because she could never come through on any project and the Black Law Student Board asked me to take her place. So I got the job and eventually a date.
Why do I bring this up? First of all, to freak people out that I actually belonged to something with the term “black” in it. Number two, to draw your attention to recent comments made by Stephen Clay of the Baptist Ministers Alliance and tweeted by my counterpart Amos Brown during a Sunday “Rally For Change” which really should have been labeled “We hate Greg Ballard and can’t win on issues so we’ll do it on race” The line attributed to Stephen Clay was referring to their Black Opponents; who is anyone who is free thinking and doesn’t believe their political and economic salvation comes from white folks or self-appointed and self-righteous Pharisees who cross dress as men of God. Amos tweeted “They are of our color, but not of our kind”. What “kind” is that?
I will never fully understand why Blacks who choose to think for themselves, subscribe to a political philosophy of personal liberty and responsibility are considered the bad guys? And because we don’t worship at the feet of these so-called “community organizers” and shucking and jiving race pimping hucksters, there is allegedly something wrong with us. Of course if you look at whose policies promote black unemployment, teen pregnancy, unstable families, poor educational opportunities and livelihoods of crime and despair, if I may paraphrase Chaka Zulu, “it ain’t us!!!!” If anything, instead of calling us the enemy, they should be calling us for advice. Since we’re not the ones with the problems, they are.
But to do that would lead to the end of the Black underclass because they would become self-sufficient and no longer need the services of the “Balderman Davis” types. It’s hard to be the “HNIC” if you don’t have any N’s to follow you. (“N” is for negro, by the way). So if I’m not Stephen Clay’s kind, so be it. I guess there are worse things in this world, I could be his type.
Someone asked me what I thought about the recent controversy surrounding LiteBox. For those of you who may have been out of the loop, LiteBox is the pet project of Bob Yanigahara, an California-based entrepreneur who announced last he was bringing his company to Indianapolis and creating 1,100 jobs in the process. The problem with Yanigahara is that his financial past has some serious questions attached to it and it has put Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard in a somewhat awkward political position. And is gave a an arrow for Democratic Mayoral challenger Melina Kennedy to get in a shot at the incumbent. So with all that said, here is where I stand.
The LiteBox deal would only concern me if the city and state put up money up front to attract them here to Indy. The way I understand the deal, there is not one dime of incentives to be paid out unless a job is created. So as long as that remains the case, I don’t stay up at night worrying about this one. I do think that holding a news conference may not have been one of the better moves and the city and state should have let things go quietly and then be ready to answer if someone were to call.
I do worry though about what this says for someone who is looking to invest in Indianapolis and will they get similar treatment. The very nature of entrepreneurship involves a certain amount of risk taking and eccentric behavior; whether you are creating Apple, Angie’s List or IndyPolitics.Org (Shameless plug).
Also, if we are going to get upset over an economic deal where no taxpayer dollars have been given out, then shouldn’t there be an outcry from the critics over deals where incentives have been paid out and jobs promised where never delivered? Case in point, Eli Lilly. The company has received more than $1.6 billion in tax beaks and incentives in exchange for creating 9,500 new jobs in Indianapolis area. It not only never reached that goal, but actually shed more than 2,000 as part of restructuring. I am waiting for the outcry.
But back to LiteBox. Is it a bad deal? I don’t think so, if no jobs are delivered the taxpayers aren’t on the hook. If the jobs show up, all is forgiven. Does someone (i.e. BobYanigahara) need to hire a P.R. person for next time, definitely. See there’s a job right there that’s waiting to be created.
*My apologies to Richard Darbyshire.
The Marion County Democratic Party’s internal polling must not be looking to good these days. The party is dropping several thousand flyers in predominantly black neighborhoods insinuating that Mayor Greg Ballard is a racist. I’ve embedded a copy of the flyer in this post (both the front and back). I got it from my barber this morning.
I find it hard to see how someone who is racist would see that millions of dollars were spent in black neighborhoods to repair streets and sidewalks that have been neglected for years, increased the number of minority contracts and reduced the backlog of city racial complaints.
Also, the man’s wife is from the Philippines. It’s hard to call that racist. If you want to fight over policy, that’s fine. But insinuating that Greg Ballard’s bed sheets have two holes in them is just over the top. If anyone is going to use a racial slur, it will probably be Marion County Democratic Chairman Ed Treacy directed at me.
Today is going to be busy so allow me to direct your attention to our sister blog today at IndyPolitics.Org.
Today you will find an interview Scott Miller, the head of Develop Indy who is heading over to the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. We spoke about jobs, worker retraining and of course the controversy surrounding the LiteBox job announcement.
You’ll also find my interview with City-Council President Ryan Vaughn on council re-precincting and redistricting.
And of course, “The Cheat Sheet” is out this week. There’s something funny going on in Marion County Sheriff John Layton’s office.
Enjoy.
It seems that every time we get near the end of an election season, idiocy goes into overdrive. Sometimes it is over the top claims by candidates or ridiculous behavior by campaign staff. However, this time, someone may have taken things a bit too far.
If you read this blog you know several Black pastors have come out on the radio and endorsed Republican incumbent Greg Ballard over Melina Kennedy in the race for Mayor. Well apparently someone either in or associated with the Marion County Democratic Party didn’t take to kindly to that and has crossed the line by allegedly making threats against the ministers.
I spoke with Pastor Mel Jackson of Westside Community Ministry, one of the ministers in the ad. He told me he has received several calls at home telling him he was going to be sorry for his endorsement and that retaliation was coming. I am also told by other sources that the leadership in the MCDP is promising to go after the ministers and “take the gloves off” in the process.
Picking a fight with God, where do I begin?
When I looked at Pastor Jackson’s resume, working with the Indianapolis Housing Agency Board of Commissioners, The Midtown Advisory Board, Project Safe Neighborhood, the Dawn Project and his volunteerism with Westside Communities Inc., working with the homeless and unemployed, I was shocked that someone would be so brazen as to make threats against the man who has fought for the same people Democrats claim to represent.
Jackson also told me that he fought and marched against segregation in the South in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s so he wasn’t afraid of threats. He told me in a phone interview that he fought for Blacks to be able to make up their own minds about whom to vote for and he wasn’t going to back down. Another minister said, “they are afraid we are walking off the plantation and they don’t know how to deal with us.”
First of all, making threats only results in police reports and caller ID results in arrests. Secondly, and more importantly, will any Marion County Democrats step up and denounce this behavior? The party was quick to run ads against Greg Ballard insinuating he was racist for using the phrase “difficult populations”. Will they step up and speak out now? I think calling a black minister and making threats over who he supports in a political race ranks a little higher on the righteous indignation scale. I have my disagreements with some of the Black church in this town because they are more like Rev. Ike or Daddy Rich in “Car Wash” . But calling a black pastor and making threats against him and potentially his family? Because of the way he wants to vote? Is this 2011 or 1911?
Pastor Jackson also told me he has his faith as a shield which has helped him through the years. He may also want to keep a sidearm as well because after this type of behavior you can never be too careful. Especially around Halloween, there are too many opportunities for someone to show up on his doorstep wearing a white sheet. And the sad part is that the person under it won’t be asking for candy.
Although Democratic Mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy and I don’t agree on much, I always held a certain amount respect for her and her desire to serve the public. Lately, I have come to the conclusion that Kennedy’s ability to be honest and tell the truth is about the same as the Indianapolis Colts’ ability to win a football game. I don’t think she can be trusted with stewardship of the city of Indianapolis. Allow me to explain.
A few Saturdays ago I sat in on a meeting of a local black-oriented community organization. Both Melina Kennedy and Greg Ballard made appearances. I expected pretty standard stuff both candidates and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed; for the most part. However at that meeting Kennedy made a statement that made me raise my eyebrow. She said that Ballard was the first Mayor in the city to have a white police chief, fire chief and public safety director. That struck me as odd because I remembered former police chief Mike Spears, former fire chief Jim Greeson and public safety director/advisor Jerry McCory, all who worked under former Mayor Bart Peterson and they were all white as snow. I chalked that one up to Kennedy misspeaking and left it at that. At least I did until I heard her repeat it several times in a number of venues.
That wasn’t the only thing I heard her repeat that wasn’t factually accurate. She also said the Mayor had no high ranking African-Americans in top departments of the city. She obviously or conveniently forgot about Olgen Williams, the Deputy Mayor of neighborhoods. Her allegations against Deputy Mayor Mike Huber regarding a novice City-County Council candidate’s fund-raiser as well as her attempts to play the race card even had my colleague Matt Tully calling her candidacy into question, and Tully thinks she would be a good Mayor. Say what you will about a candidate’s positions on issues, but in order to be effective, the candidate must have the ability to tell the truth. I can live with spin, that comes with politics. But when you outright lie and mislead the public something is wrong. If Kennedy made these statements in court she would have been convicted of perjury.
The Marion County Republicans came out with a list what they say are repeated false and misleading accusations by Kennedy. We can debate where spin ends and lies begin, but if Kennedy will habitually lie or mislead the unsuspecting public about something as easily verifiable the racial make up of the police, fire chief and public safety director, what else is she not being honest about? Can the public trust her? Can they trust the person who wants to take money from neighborhoods for their streets and sidewalks and spend it on social programs. Can they trust someone who talks about education, but never showed up to offer testimony on the most sweeping changes to the state’s education system in a generation? And can they trust someone who would get in bed, politically speaking, with an individual who was not only investigated by the state for inappropriate contact with a minor, but also had the charges forwarded to the authorities for further prosecution?
My Marion County Democratic friends like to push the concept of “Ballard’s broken promises” but someone also needs to ask can the public trust Melina Kennedy? I will answer that question for you, no. If you will lie and mislead about the little stuff, Lord only knows what you will do with the big ticket items.
