Politics
The current governor of Indiana is Mike Pence, Indiana has long been considered to be a Republican stronghold and is rated R+7 on the Cook Partisan Voting Index. It has only supported a Democrat for president five times since 1900 - in 1912, 1932, 1936, 1964 and 2008. Nonetheless, half of Indiana's governors in the 20th century were Democrats.
Historically, Republicans have been strongest in the eastern and central portions of the state, as well as the suburbs of the state's major cities. Democrats have been strongest in the northwestern and southern parts of the state along with the major cities. However, outside of Indianapolis, the Chicago suburbs, and Bloomington, the state's Democrats tend to be somewhat more conservative than their counterparts in the rest of the country, especially on social issues.
Indiana's delegation to the United States House of Representatives is not completely Republican either. Instead, it has generally served as a bellwether for the political movement of the nation. For instance, Democrats held the majority of seats until the 1994 Republican Revolution, when Republicans took a majority. This continued until 2006, when three Republican congressmen were defeated in Indiana; (Chris Chocola, John Hostettler and Mike Sodrel), giving the Democrats a majority of the delegation again.
Former governor and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced in 2006 his plans for a presidential exploratory committee. His father was a three-term senator who was turned out of office in the 1980 Reagan Revolution by conservative Republican (and future Vice-President) Dan Quayle, a native of Huntington in the northeastern part of the state. However, Bayh announced that he would not be seeking the Presidency on December 16, 2006.
The state's U.S. Senators are Senior Sen. Dan Coats (Republican) and Junior Sen. Joe Donnelly (Republican). Both Senators have proved popular in the state. In 2006, Sen. Lugar won reelection to a sixth term with 87% of the vote against no major-party opposition. In 2010, Sen. Coats won reelection to a third non-consecutive term with 55% of the vote against Democratic Congressman Brad Ellsworth and Libertarian business owner and teacher Rebecca Sink-Burris.
Read more about this topic: Indiana Government
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self- Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)