 For those of you who have been following the site over the last few days, you are probably well aware that I have been covering the gubernatorial signature battle, as both of our candidates sought to get their 500 signatures in each congressional district, and thus earn a place on the statewide ballot for the May primary. As part of that process, I've been requesting daily updates from the Indiana Election Division, which keeps a rolling tally of the number of signatures that each candidate has collected.
Now, I'm originally from the 4th District, so curiosity led me to check out who had made it (and by how much) in my old stomping ground. To my surprise, I noticed that John McCain -- the presumptive front-runner for the GOP nomination -- was just a little short in a few districts, including my precious 4th, despite the fact that Attorney General Steve Carter had already turned in their petitions. I made a few phone calls, and one by one I found out that the McCain camp had got the job done across the state.
Except in the 4th District.
In the 4th District, they are short.
By my latest count, they turned in 496 signatures for the 4th, and the latest IED report for this morning shows them with only 491.
So this afternoon, I filed a challenge with the Secretary of State's office to keep John McCain off of the ballot. You can check it out here. (I'll have a .pdf version up when I get back to Bloomington this evening.)
Let's be clear here: This is one of the most Republican-friendly districts in one of the most Republican-friendly presidential states. John McCain has been endorsed by Governor Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Steve Carter, state GOP chair Murray Clark, and Secretary of State Todd Rokita.
And despite all of this high-level help, these guys managed to screw up one of the most basic steps that any candidate can take in the state.
I'm not scared of this crew at all.
This is indicative of John McCain's sloppy, ineffective national campaign infrastructure, and more notably for Hoosiers, makes it extremely clear that the incompetency of Governor Mitch Daniels, Steve Carter and the rest of this bunch has no limits.
This doesn't just make John McCain look silly -- and it does -- but this makes the entire Indiana Republican Party look silly. Silly, and clumsy, and inept, and generally incapable of running a national campaign, let alone the entire country.
Now, let's be honest here: Todd Rokita and Steve Carter will make sure McCain is on the ballot. Mitch Daniels will see to that, I'm sure. But at the end of the day, he shouldn't be, and the people of this state deserve to know that.
And while the GOP's magic wand will undoubtedly make a few signatures appear behind closed doors in the next few days, this is a clear stain upon Senator McCain as a candidate, and Governor Daniels and his Republican colleagues as standard-bearers within this state.
Did I mention he is coming to town on Friday? I wonder if he'll have a few choice words for his trusted surrogates in this state?
Update: The DNC responded to my challenge in a release a short while ago, but the key part of it is this: Despite the fact that the McCain campaign clearly failed to qualify for the ballot, Republican Attorney General Steve Carter and Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita (who recently endorsed McCain) rubberstamped it anyway, trying to sneak McCain onto the ballot. Clearly, the Republican Culture of Corruption is alive and well within the McCain campaign. A culture of corruption or a culture of incompetence, the fact remains that Hoosiers expect more from their officials, and I have no doubt McCain expected more from Mitch and the gang.
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