Democrats Scramble for Indiana
Could Decide Victor
INDIANAPOLIS -- Determining the victor in Tuesday's presidential nominating contest in Indiana could very well be left to that most elusive of Democratic primary voter: the Republican.
A confluence of unusual political events has Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looking for traction in districts often ignored by Democrats in this deep red state.
Several factors suggest that Republican voters may be attracted to the Democratic primary this year, including an open-primary scheme that allows voters of all political stripes to cast ballots, a settled nominating race on the Republican side and a downticket slate that includes few cliffhanger races to interest the Republican faithful. As one Republican Party official put it, "when the circus is in town, people want to go to the circus."
Current polling shows the race for Indiana's 72 delegates to be knotted among likely Democratic voters. Though political polling is difficult in this state because voters don't register by party, Sen. Clinton is believed to have a slight edge.
Some political observers, such as Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, say Republican turnout in the Democratic primary could reach 15%; Obama campaign officials say they expect Republicans could make up 5% of the total.
In a race expected to be close, "any reasonably sized voting bloc could call the election," said Mitch Stewart, state field director for the Obama campaign in Indiana. "We're not reluctant to go into any district to press our case."
Razor-edge expectations have not only made for some unusual campaign movements but also have provided a backdrop for questions of race and electability. Indiana has a history of racial tensions and Ku Klux Klan activity, and the Obama candidacy is seen as one new test of how much attitudes have changed here.
Sen. Clinton's campaign set up a campaign office in Martinsville, about 20 miles south of Indianapolis and sent former President Bill Clinton to a rally there. The town has a reputation in the state as an area of Klan activity over the years. While the Obama campaign has been active in Martinsville, Sen. Obama doesn't field an office in the town and hasn't appeared there.
Jonathan Swain, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said Martinsville, like all corners of Indiana, is deserving of Sen. Clinton's attention. "We have 28 offices in the state," he said. "This is a question of getting the Democratic vote out in all parts of the state and nothing more than that."
The contest in Indiana is unlikely to change the delegate math, which Sen. Obama leads by a substantial margin. But a win would provide a critical psychological boost for Sen. Obama, who has lost several large states with older populations and relatively few minority residents. For Sen. Clinton, winning Indiana would let her press her claim to party elders that she is the more-electable candidate in the fall.
In a state that hasn't elected a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, the lure for these Democrats is strong. Sen. Clinton, who appeared this week on the show of conservative television talk-show host Bill O'Reilly, has a fair-weather champion in the form of radio conservative Rush Limbaugh, who has been urging Republicans for weeks to join an "Operation Chaos" and vote for the New York senator in states that have open primaries.
Mr. Limbaugh wants the Democratic nominating battle to persist in hopes of throwing the party into disarray. The effect of the scheme is unknown but some Obama campaign operatives say it may have worked in states such as Ohio, where Sen. Obama's once-lofty support among soft Republicans slipped a bit.
Indiana's Republican Party rejects the Chaos scheme, according to State party Chairman Murray Clark. "Voting for Democrats is not a habit I want our voters getting into," he said.
Friday, Sen. Obama's campaign will introduce three prominent Republicans who are supporting the campaign: John Clark, a top aide to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is running unopposed in the primary; William Ruckelshaus, a former Nixon administration lawyer whose family has deep ties to the state; and Jim Benham, president of the state's National Farmers Union.
The bigger sign of a changed strategy is the way the Obama camp is applying a grass-roots organizational zeal to courting Republicans, much as it has done for younger voters in previous contests. The best example: Hamilton County, a suburban enclave north of Indianapolis that delivered 72% of its vote to President Bush in 2004. This week, the Obama camp opened its third field office there, in the county seat of Noblesville.
Lily West, regional field director for the Obama campaign, earned plaudits recently by drawing some 300 people to a picnic in Noblesville's town square for an early voting effort.
Though she employed a proven crowd-builder -- free sandwiches -- she nonetheless gave Noblesville Democrats something to marvel at. "I don't think anyone had ever seen that many Democrats in one place in this county before," Ms. West said.
This unusual political season has exposed many Byzantine rules in Democratic Party politics, and Indiana is no exception. Here, voters can cross party lines but only if they intend to favor that party's nominee in the fall. Voters who favor the other party's nominee in the general election can be challenged by poll workers and technically be refused a ballot.
The rule has little practical effect. Voters can trump a challenge simply by attesting that they plan to support the eventual nominee in the fall. Indeed, voters have rarely faced challenges in the past. But about a month ago, Mr. Parker, the Democratic Party Chairman who has endorsed Sen. Clinton, threatened to challenge voters statewide if he determined that Republicans were attempting "mischief."
In an interview this week, though, Mr. Parker said that his threat was mostly bluff. Challenges must be done individually and at a district level; "it would be impossible to mount a statewide effort" to stop people from voting as they please, he said.
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