McDermott running for chairman

Kinda funny how this is shaping up, political endorsments:
McDermott: Philpot, Mrvan Jr., Fran Dupey, Mayor Soderquest, Mayor Uran, Mayor Stahura, Mayor Sendacor, all the building trades.
VanTil :15 people in Lake Station, and Barney Stodola
Clay: Anthony Higgs.

VanTil actually hurts Rudy in Gary, Approx 30 committeemen and vices have pledged support. If it wasn't for the 40,000 votes he got there in the primary he'd be talking to Freetime all day otob. Word is he's resorting to calling city chairs and threatening them and their organizations if he loses, thier cities. McDermott has surprised many by his strong showing so far, and may actually have a shot.

nabbing the support of philpot and dupey in particular impresses me. the list of mcdermott endorsers is a pretty good cross section of the lake county dem party...and has great geographic mix. rudy's support (other than higgs) seems to be all gary based. and van til's? well, i dont see lake station (or barney) having that much weight on the overall party.

i see that last night the schererville/dyer/stjohn chapters of the party all endorsed mcdermott as well.

it seems to me if everyone supports who they have publically said they are supporting. than this should be a mcdermott landslide. then again, this is base party politics, so you never can be sure that what you are told is what is what is actually occuring.

i saw this interesting letter coming out of gary in the times today

http://nwi.com/articles/2009/02/05/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc4d3c73863af698b086257553007115a9.txt

I wonder if Philpot's support for McDermott will have any effect on Higg's support, or is Higgs finally jumping off of the Philpot bandwagon and hitching his horses to Rudy.

i doubt it will effect higgs. niether philpot nor anyone else is being asked to strong arm anyone to support mcdermott. mcdermott is simply humbly asking everyone to support the best candidate themselves. which in many peoples opinions, according to what they are saying. is mcdermott.

and the key thing here that i think people should take note of. if people choose not to support someone else i dont think tom will take it out on them later. not that they should be expecting any special favors down the road or anything...but i dont think tom is going to vow revenge like some other candidates are promising.

Rollo wrote:

Kinda funny how this is shaping up, political endorsments:
McDermott: Philpot, Mrvan Jr., Fran Dupey, Mayor Soderquest, Mayor Uran, Mayor Stahura, Mayor Sendacor, all the building trades.
VanTil :15 people in Lake Station, and Barney Stodola
Clay: Anthony Higgs.

VanTil actually hurts Rudy in Gary, Approx 30 committeemen and vices have pledged support. If it wasn't for the 40,000 votes he got there in the primary he'd be talking to Freetime all day otob. Word is he's resorting to calling city chairs and threatening them and their organizations if he loses, thier cities. McDermott has surprised many by his strong showing so far, and may actually have a shot.

Peggy Katona and 5 out of 7 County Councilmen are supporting Mayor Tom.

who besides blanchard, isnt? elsie? shes beholden to rudy anyway.

as for the commisioners. i know fran supports tom. and im told that if schueb doesnt run himself, hell support tom of the three candidates that have stated they are running. rudys hand picked replacement however? somehow i think hell likley be supporting rudy.

Curley or Thayer? Any smart man would go with Curley. He has a slate that is unbeatable and beyond reproach.

Well I certainly wouldn't want to be the Dem chair with the way Obama is handling things. But that's a slightly different topic even though it well may have an indirect effect.

But of course local Dems seem to weather any storm. But with some of the expected local changes there well could be quite a backlash in the coming years. If only the GOP wasn't too inept to capitalize maybe we could finally have a 2 party system again and have some changes from the status quo.

The F&B tax to pay for the RDA just for starters comes to mind. But also the possible elimination of local trustees offices could be a very hot issue and one's opinion on that is very well likely to be tempered by whether you are someone who pays or someone who receives. I've heard that many would refuse to go through the process of applying for assistance were it to be run by private charities because their programs apparently have a stricter means test. But as a taxpayer you outta WANT strict means testing and the elimination of an entire bureaucracy, and not to forget some of the past local abuses. So folks may well be willing to vote their pocketbook in local races. I guess the real question on that being a major factor is do we have more benefit receivers or more tax payers?

But there are number of other local issues ready to spring up. Frankly I don't know why constantly late tax bills isn't a bigger issue and why apparently inflated trending assessments in north county aren't as well.

the late tax bills arent a big local issue, because they are in fact a state wide issue. marion county just announced their tax bills are going to be late in 2009 again. the fact is numerous problems with the states ever changing tax policies are making it nearly impossible for the locals to do all the necessary work on time. sort of like unfunded educational mandates. the legislature keeps changing the law without concern whether its possible to implement the changes or not.

as for curly. think about it. 6 years ago under a democrat in hiding lake county's second largest city had a repub mayor. blanchard was in the county council. and lowell, munster, crown point and a few other small locals were run by repubs.

today under curly. hammond and crown point have gone democrat mayor wise. and there are fewer towns run by repubs. there were actually more repub elected officials when the dem was in charge of the repub party than there are now after 6 years with curly.

maybe the answer for repubs is to put a dem in charge again? maybe thats why curly is turning back to team schammond?