Importantville: #INSEN as bellwether—Banks on immigration—Veep to Brazil—Inside Buttigieg's wedding
By @AdamWren & design by Kris Davidson
Days to Midterm Election: 134
BREAKING THIS MORNING: NBC’S Meet the Press First Read, “Why the Indiana Senate race might actually be the best midterm bellwether in the country,” by NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann.
The midterm battle for Senate control has plenty of colorful characters, important narratives and high-profile races. There are well-known red state Democratic incumbents like Joe Manchin and Claire McCaskill; there are expensive and high-stakes partisan clashes in traditional battleground states like Florida and Nevada; and there are quirky races in places (we’re looking at you, Tennessee) that don’t always get a lot of national political attention.
But for a true bellwether contest about the state of the country in 2018, the best bet might be Indiana, where Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly is facing off against relative political newcomer and GOP businessman Mike Braun.
Why? Donnelly doesn’t have the strong personal and political brand of a McCaskill or a Manchin, and Braun doesn’t have the political baggage of being a “D.C. insider.” That makes this more of a generic Democrat v. Republican ballot than most of the other marquee Senate races elsewhere in the country. And it’s in a state where — despite a GOP-leaning history — Democrats have sometimes benefitted from political winds blowing their way, including Barack Obama’s win there in 2008 and Donnelly’s victory in 2012.
So, while other races may get more attention because of the larger-than-life national profiles of the candidates or the familiar battleground terrain, look to Indiana for what might be the most instructive contest to show us how the overall political climate is shaping up — and who will control the chamber after voters head to the polls.
In D.C. last week, I sat down with U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Fort Wayne for a wide-ranging, mostly off-the-record discussion covering everything from immigration to the 2018 midterms and his re-election campaign. On Twitter, Banks has been trolled for his conservative views. In person, the son of a union leader and nursing home worker comes off as articulate, thoughtful, and serious.
Banks, who bonded with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg over their shared military service in Afghanistan, is a good Trump Country bellwether.
Banks told me two things I found particularly interesting.
On immigration reform, Banks says the more moderate compromise immigration bill would've failed in the House Friday. (Which is why the vote was postponed). He voted for the more conservative Goodlatte bill that went down Thursday. Banks says he believes the President, who now owns the issue, should do a national press conference outlining a substantive reform plan. Until that happens, it's hard to see a way forward, he told me.
Hours later the next day, Trump didn’t announce a national presser on immigration. Instead, he tweeted:
Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!
June 22, 2018While Banks still has significant disagreements with Trump's style of governance, he seems won over by the results Trump has achieved. Cities like Fort Wayne are thriving now economically—a data point you don't hear on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Good Monday morning. Welcome to Importantville.
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Where’s Veep: Pence has a call with Iraq's Prime Minister, a bilateral with the King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and then departs D.C. for Brasília, Brazil.
Tonight: The president will hold a 7 p.m. rally in West Columbia, S.C., for Gov. Henry McMaster in his runoff.
Immigration breaks through in Indianapolis
Perhaps no issue in the Trump presidency has broken through to people the way the crisis at the border has. A denizen of Importantville sent me this statement from St. Thomas Aquinas Church and School's Parish Council. St. Thomas is a catholic church here in Indianapolis.
Policies punishing families for the most human instinct of seeking refuge from suffering are inherently unjust. Cruelty toward vulnerable children is evil. As St. Augustine taught, an unjust law is no law at all. As St. Thomas Aquinas himself said, “if the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it cannot rightly be complied with; one’s moral obligation is not to obey but to disobey.” No Christian can rightly take a screaming child from her mother’s arms, nor stand silent in the face of a policy that does so on a wholesale basis. It is our Christian duty to rail against this injustice.
Our tipster writes:
In the bigger picture, though, I can't help but wonder the impact responses from small churches like this all over the state will have in November. Will the Hoosier Christians who supported Mike Pence in the past stick to their ‘pro-life’ above all else voting mentality, or will they open their eyes to the reality of how this Administration mistreats and targets those living, working, and worshiping right next to us?
U.S. Rep. Susan Brooks also issued a statement on Friday asking Trump to clarify his policies on family separation.
Braun’s Four Seasons Weekend
Per Politico’s Playbook, Mike Braun attended the RNC’s summer retreat at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles.
Per the Indiana Democrats, Braun has held eight out of state events since May 8, and six public events in Indiana.
Donnelly, meanwhile, spoke at the opening ceremony for the National Kidney Foundation Indiana Annual Walk in Indianapolis.
IMPORTANTVILLE TAKE: Does Braun wear his trademark blue shirt at swanky fundraisers? Honest question. Let us know.
In London, Trump’s photo trump’s Pence’s
Trump plans to visit London next month. Ahead of that, here’s this fun insight from the Daily Mail:
Eagle-eyed visitors to the new US embassy in London have noted that Mr Trump's picture has been hung slightly higher than that of vice-president Mike Pence.
Evidence of the strict hierarchy comes ahead of the President's much-anticipated first visit to the UK next month.
Buttigieg makes NYT’s Vows section
From the paper:
Far from being just the out-gay mayor of a scrappy rebounding Rust Belt city, Mr. Buttigieg is a singular politician: a Democrat in a Republican stronghold; a high school valedictorian who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and who also attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar; a political comer who, after winning election at 29, quickly set about reversing an economic decline in this northern Indiana city, where the last Studebaker rolled off a South Bend assembly line in 1963; a Navy veteran who, in 2014, took an unusual leave-of-absence from his civic day job to serve a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Travels with Pete
Pete Seat, who has the longest title in Indiana politics (Executive Director of Strategic Comms & Talent Development at Indiana Republican Party), was selected for the prestigious Atlantic Council Millennium Fellowship. This year, the twenty-one member cohort was picked from an applicant pool of 655 from 100 countries, making it one of the most competitive professional development opportunities in the international affairs sphere. Seat will spend the next two years traveling to major world conferences and summits and studying issues with a global impact on-the-ground and in-person. Thankfully, it's part-time, so I can remain at the Indiana Republican Party.
That’s all for today. Tips and feedback are appreciated: cadamwren@gmail.com.