Inside the 5th Congressional District race
Inside the 5th Congressional District race
Plus: Spartz picks up another endorsement—and a future six-figure ad buy.
FIRST IN IMPORTANTVILLE: Protect Freedom PAC, an independent organization “dedicated to supporting pro-liberty and freedom-minded candidates,” will endorse Republican State Sen. Victoria Spartz for Congress in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District—and plans a six-figure ad buy on her behalf.
“Victoria Spartz is a proven conservative and a tireless fighter for liberty, less government, and more freedom,” said Protect Freedom PAC spokesman Kory Wood in a statement. “We know she will bring that same track record and commitment to Hoosier values to the Halls of Congress. Victoria has our full support.”
Good Thursday morning, and welcome to IMPORTANTVILLE.
FOR YOUR RADAR
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, Democrat Woody Myers, and Libertarian Donald Rainwater will participate in televised debates at 7 p.m. on Oct. 20 and Oct. 27—with no live audience, due to the novel coronavirus.
Former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is launching a podcast.
Buttigieg held a fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Woody Myers on Monday—with an assist from Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett. The campaign isn’t releasing the fundraising haul.
Buttigieg’s fundraising for former Vice President Joe Biden has been more publicized: He’s raised nearly $10 million for Biden, according to Business Insider, earning him more talk of an administration position.
Inside the 5th District Congressional race
In partnership with The Indiana Citizen—a nonpartisan, not-for-profit startup aimed at improving voter registration, education, and turnout among Hoosiers— IMPORTATNVILLE is publishing Indiana statewide and local candidate profiles in the run-up to the election.
For the next nine weeks leading up to the Election, we’ll highlight each congressional race and the main statewide races.
First up: Indiana’s 5th Congressional District.
The district
The 1980 census presented Republicans then in control of the Indiana General Assembly with the challenge of redrawing congressional district lines to reflect a shifting and, in outlying parts of the state, shrinking population. Their attention soon focused on the suburban communities taking shape north of Indianapolis, where a growing and generally Republican-leaning population became the center of a new district offering an open seat in the U.S. House. The favored candidate to fill it was Bruce Melchert, a former state Republican chairman, but he was upended in the Republican primary by Dan Burton, an outspokenly conservative state legislator who went on to a 30-year tenure in the House often marked by controversy.
In 2012, the scramble to succeed the retiring Burton as the Republican nominee was as fevered as that to fill the seat three decades before; the winner was former U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks, whose remarks as a member of Congress have been more measured and her voting record more moderate than those of her predecessor. But her tenure has been much shorter. Brooks announced in 2019 that she would retire after four terms serving Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, setting off yet another scramble to succeed her as the Republican nominee; 15 candidates competed in the primary.
Victoria Spartz
The winner was a relatively late entry into the race, Victoria Spartz, still in her first term as an Indiana state senator from Noblesville. Spartz, a Ukrainian immigrant and businesswoman with a net worth reported as at least $8 million, quickly shook up the race by personally loaning her campaign $750,000 and gaining an endorsement and financial backing from the conservative political action group Club for Growth, resources which moved her into a different league from her lesser-funded competitors. Spartz faced questions raised by her competitors and in local media about her personal finances. In an interview with political reporter Adam Wren, she defended her financial dealings, saying she made her fortune as a financial consultant and accountant after coming to the U.S. from Ukraine in 2000. Spartz also faced suggestions that she entered the congressional race to avoid a stiff challenge in her primary bid for a second term in the state Senate. The Indianapolis Star also reported suggestions of a conflict of interest in her authoring a bill in 2020 to scale back state regulation of wetlands; the Star article noted that her family business clashed with state environmental regulators over development of wetlands, Spartz won the nomination with nearly 40 percent of the vote, more than twice that of the second-place finisher.
Christina Hale
For the first time in the district’s nearly four-decade history, winning the Republican nomination might not punch its winner’s ticket to Capitol Hill. Democrats are pinning their hopes on Christina Hale, a former state legislator who gave up her seat in 2016 to join John Gregg’s unsuccessful run for governor as the nominee for lieutenant governor. In two terms in the Indiana House, Hale consolidated the Democratic hold on a legislative district that had long been held by Republicans and built a reputation as a bipartisan and effective legislator despite serving in a badly outnumbered Democratic minority. What also distinguishes Hale is her fundraising. Campaign finance reports filed in June showed that Hale had outraised Spartz during the reporting period in donations from supporters, with about $410,000 compared to $196,000 reported in contributions to Spartz. However, Spartz also reported an additional personal loan of $324,000 to her campaign; Hale did not report making any personal loans to her campaign.
Hale emerged from a five-candidate Democratic primary. She is a former state legislator who gave up her seat in 2016 to join John Gregg’s unsuccessful run for governor as the nominee for lieutenant governor. In two terms in the Indiana House, Hale consolidated the Democratic hold on a legislative district that had long been held by Republicans and built a reputation as a bipartisan and effective legislator despite serving in a badly outnumbered Democratic minority. What also distinguishes Hale is her fundraising. Campaign finance reports filed in June showed that Hale had outraised the Republican nominee, Victoria Spartz, during the reporting period in donations from supporters, with about $410,000 compared to $196,000 reported in contributions to Spartz. However, Spartz also reported an additional personal loan of $324,000 to her campaign for a total of more than $1 million that she had loaned personally; Hale did not report making any personal loans to her campaign.
The Democratic takeover of the U.S. House in 2018 was largely credited to a nationwide political realignment in the suburbs, particularly among women and the college-educated. The trend has not been as apparent in Indiana; Brooks won her last term in office by more than 40,000 votes and 13 percentage points, but Hamilton County, the heart of the 5th Congressional District, has shown signs of it, most recently the unexpected election of Democrats to city councils in Carmel and Fishers that had never had a member who wasn’t a Republican. Democrats also won the mayor’s office in Zionsville in neighboring Boone County, where public office has always been a lock for Republican candidates. Whether Hale can hope for a similar outcome remains an open question.
Additional candidates on the Nov. 3 general election ballot include a Libertarian and an Independent as well as a write-in candidate.
—Kevin Morgan, The Indiana Citizen
IMPORTANTVILLE READS
Adam Fleming Petty, BELT Magazine: “The Fall of the Grand Dragon”
On a March morning in 1925, an unfamiliar car stopped on a residential street in Irvington, an eastern suburb of Indianapolis. A hulking man stepped out of the driver’s seat and went to the rear. He hauled the passenger out and hefted her in his arms, then proceeded up the walkway of a modest home. It was the residence of George Oberholtzer, local postal clerk, and his wife, Matilda. The passenger was Madge Oberholtzer, their daughter.
The man in the car, later identified as Earl Klinck, told Oberholtzer that his daughter had been in a car accident. Oberholtzer could see Madge was gravely injured, her body covered in abrasions and bruises, including deep gashes in her chest. Klinck took her upstairs to her room and left.
George and Matilda called a doctor. An examination found that the wounds on Madge’s chest were infected, and there were also traces of mercury poisoning in her bloodstream. Within a month, Madge Oberholtzer would be dead. But before that, she would dictate a legal declaration that described what really happened to her. She was not in a car accident. She had been abducted, attacked, and raped by DC Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, and, at the time, the most powerful man in the state.
Me, Indianapolis Monthly: “Ask Me Anything: Chasten Buttigieg, Author”
Many people don’t understand what it means to be gay in Mike Pence’s Indiana, and what it means to walk down a street with your husband in fear of holding his hand, even when he is a top tier presidential candidate. That is something that we need to continuously talk about. I hope the campaign gave people a perspective on that. The LGBTQ community is not monolithic. It is vast. There were a lot of opposing opinions on our campaign and our image. But I hope some kids living in the red, middle part of this country saw in it an image of hope. That you can be out, you can be in love, you can get married, you can run for office, you can do anything you want.
