It’s becoming obvious that ticket-splitting will be the order of the day in Indiana in 2008.  You can tell driving through some neighborhoods, where you see signs for Barack Obama and Mitch Daniels in the same yard.  And the polls indicate the same thing very clearly.  Obama may not beat John McCain in Indiana. (He was two points behind in the latest poll Tuesday.)  But few will dispute that at the very least he will come at lot closer than any Democrat in recent memory.  And the gubernatorial polls appear to show Daniels pulling away from the underfunded Jill Long Thompson.

  The question is:  Are these basically Democratic voters who are switching sides on the gubernatorial race to vote for Daniels?  Or Republican voters changing sides at the top to vote for Obama?  It’s important, because of the way it affects the down-ticket races, especially the minor state offices and the legislature.  If it’s Obama voters scratching for Daniels, Democrats stand a much better chance of keeping control of the House.  If it’s Republican voters scratching for Obama, Republicans still have a chance to win back the House majority.

  And there’s still the possibility of a third force at work here.  What if Obama supporters who’ve been drawn into this election specifically to vote for him simply fill in the blank by his name and then turn in their ballot without voting for anybody else?  If that happens, Obama could still do very well without helping other Democrats at all.

 Jill Long Thompson is back on the air.  But is it too late?  After an absence of a month and a half, dictated by lack of cash, the Democratic candidate for governor began running TV ads again yesterday.  But marketing experts question whether an ad campaign re-starting only two weeks before the election will have any impact.  It doesn’t help, of course, that the ads are pretty much the same ones she was running back in the summer before she ran out of money: “Mitch Daniels Has Done A Poor Job-I Can Do Better”, without really saying how.

  But in the long run, it probably doesn’t matter what she says, because this election isn’t about Jill Long Thompson.  It’s about Mitch Daniels.  People either love him or hate him.  So they’re going to decide how to vote based on how they feel about him, not how they feel about Long Thompson.  She just has to make sure people are aware that there is an alternative out there.   (An electable one, Andy Horning.)  So Long Thompson’s major concern is to just have ads running with her name spelled correctly, not what they say.

  If this were a normal Indiana election, this would probably be over.  There are probably more people out there who love Daniels than hate him, although those who hate him REALLY hate him, because of issues like the Toll Road lease and Daylight Saving Time.  The reason this election is still a contest is the great unknown factor of Barack Obama, who may make Indiana a blue state for the first time in 44 years.

  But that doesn’t necessarily win for Long Thompson.  Obama’s supporters may not show up, since they are largely young and young people are notoriously unreliable about going to the polls.  They may vote a straight Democratic ticket.  Or they may split and vote for Daniels.  Or they may just mark Obama’s name, leave the rest of the ballot blank, and walk out.  We won’t know until Election Night, and that’s why the election is still up in the air.

 “This will be an everlasting love.  This will be the one I’ve been waiting for.” 

If you’re like me and some of my colleagues, you may have spent much of Tuesday night wondering when Natalie Cole’s song from the eHarmony commercials would pop up on the gubernatorial debate.  Moderator Tom Cochrun’s bizarre questions made the whole thing into something resembling a dating service questionnaire, not a discussion about what the next governor of Indiana would do with the office.

  I understand Cochrun was trying to elicit answers about the candidates’ character, and it would have been understandable in a long, sit-down one-on-one interview.  But not in a multiple-candidate setting.  Debates are about give-and-take and rebuttal.  What’s somebody supposed to say to their opponent’s answer about his-or-her biggest defeat or mistake?

  The format of these debates has made it difficult for any of the candidates to talk about their priorities, if elected.  We didn’t need more roadblocks thrown in front of them.  Cochrun’s questions actually made Jill Long Thompson into somewhat of a sympathetic character.  Although she continued her strategy of attacking Mitch Daniels and not saying much about how she would change things, she at least appeared to be trying to put the debate back on track with issues.  But when she did so, Cochrun chided her for not answering his questions.

  Oh, well.  At least we can probably be grateful there were no questions about candidates’ favorite colors.

It was comic theater at its highest at the City-County Building as Marion County Republican Chairman Tom John accused Democratic County Clerk Beth White of breaking the law on buying votes.  Here’s the gist of the accusations.

According to John, White, appearing on the 11 p.m. 6News on Sunday night made the following offer:  If you prove you voted early on Monday or Tuesday, you’ll get preferred seating at Barack Obama’s Wednesday rally at the State Fairgrounds.  According to John, that violates state and federal law about enticing someone to vote by offering something of value.  And it doesn’t matter, he says, that people were only being asked to vote, not specifically to vote for Obama.  It’s still illegal.

White, however, says it never happened.  She says she never made any such offer, that she was merely explaining, in answer to a reporter’s question, that she was preparing for a lot of early voters on Monday, because she had been told that Obama’s people had made the offer.

This all raises many questions.  First, how do you prove you voted?  White’s aides give early voters a little round sticky that says, “I Voted.”  But that could easily be transferred to somebody else’s shirt.

Second, what constitutes value?  The seats at the rally are free.  Obama’s people (who also deny making the offer) say the preferred seats they’re giving out early are actually less valuable than the first-come-first-served tickets available Wednesday morning, because they’re out in the rain.  John says they are valuable, because Obama’s rock star status gives the rally the cache of a concert.

And third, what does this do to practices long engaged in by both parties locally, including John’s Republicans?  Like driving people to the polls.  John says there is no value to that.  It’s just a time-honored way of making the process work.  Well, I’m sorry, but if I can get a Republican or Democratic go-fer to come get me and drive me to the polls, using his $3.50 a gallon gasoline instead of mine, I consider that a value.

I guess it all boils down to a new idea being questionable, but something that’s been done for years being okay.

  So how far is Gov. Mitch Daniels ahead of challenger Jill Long Thompson?  One percent?  Twenty-two percent?  Something in between?  Those are the numbers from the crazily skewing polls we’ve been seeing in the last couple of weeks.  Most have Daniels comfortably ahead, with some in the near-landslide zone.  But a couple of polls showing his lead in the low single digits keep us from declaring this race over.

  Here’s something to remember.  Long Thompson hasn’t been running any TV ads for about a month.  That’s about the same time she closed a bunch of her campaign offices.  With now less than a month to go before the election, you’d have to think that if her campaign isn’t completely poverty stricken, she’d be back on TV.  That would indicate that the internal polls, the ones we don’t see but the big contributors do, are bad for Long Thompson.  Otherwise, they’d be opening their wallets to fund the October commercials that might be her only chance.

  Debate number three next Tuesday might provide another chance for a comeback.  But based on the first two debates, Long Thompson hasn’t really done anything to move the numbers.

  What scares Daniels’ people, I’m sure, is the prospect of a Barack Obama landslide in Indiana.  Yes, I know that even a narrow Democratic presidential victory in Indiana qualifies as historical.  But what if things continue deteriorating for John McCain and Obama opens up a really substantial lead in Indiana?  What if all those newly registered voters who haven’t been to the polls before don’t bother to take the extra effort to split their tickets?  What if they just check “Democratic” and walk out the door?  That has to keep Daniels up at night just a little bit at least.