Citizen Essays:

(click on title to read)

Wake Up                                                 M. Blatt

Adding New Employees           G. Burkowski

Property Tax Assessments             S. Miller

Straight Ticket Voting Lever        K. Havens

Three candidate events are planned

We are in the process of scheduling our Congressional and Senatorial candidates for a Meet the Candidates night in September.  Two other forums will be held for State level candidates and County candidates.

Keep these tentative dates open:

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 7-9pm

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 7-9pm

Tuesday,  Oct.. 12, 7-9pm

The Congressional candidates will include Joe Donnelly, Mark Vogel and Jackie Walorski for Congress, and  Dan Coats, Brad Ellsworth and Rebecca Sink-Burris for Senate.

The State races will include Secretary of State, State Treasurer, State Auditor, State Senate District 11 (Fanello/Zakas), and State Reps for Dist. 5 (Cenkush/Fry), Dist. 6 (Bauer,Beals), Dist. 7 (Dudeck, Niezgodski), Dist. 8 (Dvorak, Pfeil),  Dist. 21 (Fish, Wesco), Dist. 48 (Neese).

The County races will be County Commissioner (Kostielney/Nufer), County Council (Hamann/ Kata/Zmyslo, Jordan/Noland, Dean/Devon, Kruk/Wilson, Fleming/McCahill), Sheriff (Fox/ Grzegorek), Prosecutor (Duerring, Dvorak), Clerk (Bachota/Rethlake), and Assessor (Clark/ Mandrici).

These events will feature candidate statements, questions gathered from the audience, and a coffee afterward for meeting and greeting.

What 3-way races can do

As already mentioned, voters are in the rare position of being able to completely change the face of the County Council this year.  For the past 3-4 decades, the County Council has been dominated by members of the entrenched Democrat political machine.  Independent-minded Democrats have been almost unheard of. Fiscal conservatives have never held more than four seats. (They currently hold three.)

But this year, one of the three conservatives is up for re-election, and FOUR of the entrenched party members are being challenged by highly capable and energetic conservatives!  FINALLY, voters have a chance to elect a fiscally conservative County Council.

But wait – a Libertarian has filed for one of those four positions.  Now, conservative voters have TWO choices – which can potentially split the conservative vote.  Do we leave it alone and risk giving the seat to the machine candidate – or do we take the messier but maybe gutsier step of evaluating these three, voting on them, and making a public endorsement?

Similarly, the State Senate race is 3-way  between Republican Dan Coats, Democrat Brad Ellsworth, and Libertarian Rebecca Sink-Burris.  Again, can we sit by and let a potential split in the fiscally conservative vote put a fiscal progressive in the Senate?

 

We have some serious thinking to do, people!