With a little more than a week to go before Election Day, here’s what I’m hearing out and about.

John McCan’t 2008

• More and more Republicans are expressing their frustrations with the John McCain campaign in Indiana.  As one high level official put it, “They are disorganized!”  He also added, “Luckily they are not so disorganized that they will lose Indiana, but you can forget about the nationwide race.”   By the way, Karl Rove has put Indiana in the blue column for Obama this morning.  That can’t be good.

Poll Dancing

• A Research 2000 poll is slated to come out this week showing the Governor’s Race only a couple points part, but it may be the odd man out.  Other internal polls are showing up to a 30-point difference between Mitch Daniels and Jill Long Thompson in some parts of the state.  By the way,  the political class agrees that there are going to be a lot of split ticket voting here in Indiana.  The conventional wisdom however is that Mitch can win with either John McCain or Barack Obama taking Indiana, but JLT only gets over the hump with a huge Obama win.

 Bizzarro Politics

• The world we live in just officially turned upside down.  The left-leaning Gary Post-Tribune has endorsed Mitch Daniels for Governor over JLT.  Also add the Ft. Wayne Gazette (her hometown paper) also endorsed Mitch.  This is not a good sign.

 Negative on Going Negative

• Republican Attorney General candidate Greg Zoeller has said “no” to going negative on Democrat Linda Pence.   The organization which funds Republican AG candidates wanted Zoeller to go negative against Pence, but he refused.  So the group pulled it’s funding for some television attack ads.  Zoeller’s campaign is still going to be on the air, they are just “taking the high road” in the last days of the campaign.

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

• I’m told some members of the former Peterson administration members may be facing criminal investigation for alleged wrongdoing over at the Indianapolis Bond Bank.  Stay tuned for that one, it could be big.

 Shake Em Up 

• There may be some rearranging the offices in the Ballard administration soon, but don’t expect to hear anything until after Election Day.

Uncivil War

• The only thing holding Marion County Democrats together these days is the Barack Obama campaign and their goal to deliver the County big.  But once that is over, there is going to be blood in the streets as civil war gets underway for control of the party.  Watch for the what I will fondly label in the future as “The War of the Wild Irish Roses.”

Indianapolis Public Schools have really stepped in it this time.

Not only is it being reported that the school district admitted to hiding plans to close four of the schools with enrollment under 300 students listed on the November 4 referendum construction ballot which would spend $278,000,000 of your hard earned property tax dollars, but I found out this evening that the District’s notified its principals about the potential school closings on about this on October 16.And think about this.  The deadline to submit the referendum (which lists the schools by the way) was August 1.   And I think it’s safe to assume the IPS administration had been thinking about this for a while.  And even if they weren’t sure about enrollment, the Election Board didn’t ratify the ballots until October 1, so you think someone could have said something by then.More damning details are slated to be released tomorrow, but think about this.A school district with declining enrollment and increasing costs and not the best reputation in the world, is floating a plan to spend nearly $300,000,000 of your money to repair schools that it was planning to close and not tell you about it until it was too late.I don’t know who’s advising Dr. Eugene White on all this, but they should be fired!

Word is the local branch of the NAACP is filing a federal lawsuit against the Marion County Board of Elections seeking a declaratory judgment that no citizen will be denied the right to vote if their home has been foreclosed and they have been forced to move.

Of course there has been no evidence of anyone in Marion County being denied the right to vote because of foreclosure.  Actually, under Indiana law unless you move out of your Congressional District you can still vote at your old address.  

Rumor also has it Democrats are going to try to accuse Republicans of using the small claims courts to force evictions on residents so they can be disenfranchised.

I find it interesting that the NAACP is filing a lawsuit over something that has not occurred, nor has there ever been a recorded victim.  Meanwhile, back in May 2007 the organization didnothing to protect or restore the voting rights of at least 3300 citizens whose voting rights were disenfranchised because their polling places never opened.

I just can’t figure out for the life of me why the NAACP is pretending to be relevant now when they never have been in the past.  (Insert sarcastic laughter here!)  Of course these are some of the same people who sued over Voter ID and couldn’t prove anyone had been disenfranchised.

So I guess their legal strategy is that as long as there is no proof of disenfranchisement, a lawsuit is in order.  Go figure.

Here are examples of some those moments in politics when things don’t go quite the way they were planned.

The Obama campaign wants to charge the press for access to their election night party in Chicago.The RNC apparently spent quite a few bucks on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and hair.The Jill Long Thompson misspelled the campaign Treasurer’s name in its latest ad.A woman  convicted of stealing from her church last year managed to make it as an election judge in a voting center in Marion County.  She was discovered by the judge who sentenced her who notified the Clerk who notified the local GOP who notified the woman her services were no longer needed.Oh well, I guess it just goes to show that nobody’s perfect.

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson this week called the property tax caps passed by the Legislature “gimmicks”.Thompson made the statement while participating in a candidate forum in Indianapolis on Sunday.She said she supports capping how much property taxes can increase, but she says the caps passed by the legislature were a bad idea.Thompson reiterated her call to reform Indiana’s tax code, but was short on specifics.I have a message into House Speaker Pat Bauer to see if he agrees with Thompson’s assessment of the bill his chamber passed 3-to-1.  I’ll let you know what he says.

Politico is reporting Barack Obama is coming to Indianapolis on Thursday.  There are no details on the visit except it will happen in the morning and Obama will head to Hawaii to visit his 86-year old grandmother who is seriously ill.

Update: Two seconds after I put this up the Obama campaign put out an official advisory.  He will be here Thursday morning talking about the economy.  No time and location yet.

I’m trying to decide who had a worse Sunday, Peyton Manning or John McCain.   

Between Barack Obama drawing a collective crowd of 170,000 during two campaign stops in the battleground state of Missouri, raising a record $150,000,000 for the month of September (more the George W. Bush and John Kerry combined in the Fall of 2004) and the endorsement of retired General Colin Powell, infighting between the McCain camp and the Florida and Virgina Republican parties, the list goes on.

Now depsite all that, I still don’t think anyone should right the obituary on the McCain campaign, but someone might want to look for the coroner’s phone number.

By about two weeks out, most races are pretty much and not a whole lot changes unless there is some major disaster and I would argue we had that during the meltdown of our nation’s financial sectors.

I would not count out John McCain’s ability to come back for the near political dead, he’s done it before, but even a cat only has nine lives.

Feel free to share your thoughts.

This cannot be good news for the Jill Long Thompson campaign.

The NW Times of  Indiana has endorsed Mitch Daniels for Governor over JLT.  While I never think newspaper endorsements do much to move voters, it does show something when the premiere paper in an area where JLT should do well and Daniels not so well  chooses the latter over the former.

Here are some excerpts.

Each has experience at the federal level, Thompson as a former congresswoman and Daniels as a former director of the Office of Management and Budget.

What separates them most is that Daniels has detailed plans and ideas without adding taxes, while Thompson has plans that lack specifics, including how she would pay for her generalist ideas.

Thompson, always on the attack, has tried to link Daniels to President Bush and the national budget deficit, but Daniels is no longer the president’s budget director. In fact, as governor, Daniels has pulled Indiana out of the red ink left by his predecessors and placed the state solidly in the black.

Here’s another on the lease of the Toll Road…

A key issue that Thompson has attacked Daniels over time and again is the long-term lease of the Indiana Toll Road for $3.8 billion. She is wrong, for the facts are on Daniels side. That lease, the centerpiece of Daniels’ Major Moves transportation initiative, generates more interest on the state’s invested money in just one year than the previous 50 years of tolls collected under the state’s operation.

Thompson says a new analysis she spawned shows the road was worth more than $11 billion over that time if the state would have increased tolls it charged.

In other words, she would have passed along a quasi tax increase.

Here’s what they said on jobs…

For economic development, Thompson proposes a complicated three-tier system for counties that would move away from tax incentives and reward companies for such things as hiring at least five new employees, providing half the cost of premiums for group health insurance and making other investments. But she provides no specifics.

Daniels helped create the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority to leverage economic development money to get more bang for our tax dollars. It is already helping attract jobs to the region and holds great promise for future job growth. And while it has helped bring jobs to the region, the program is being guided by local people.

Thompson hammers Daniels over the state’s rate of job losses, yet the fact is that Indiana’s unemployment rate is less than any of its neighbors and the state has been recognized nationally for its business climate. This during a time of economic crisis in the nation.

Here’s the bottom line…

In all three gubernatorial debates this fall, Horning proved the comedian and Thompson the vicious attack dog — neither of which Indiana needs for a governor. Daniels has been the sole voice of sanity and reason, offering solid ideas with the details showing they can work.

The bottom line is that Daniels has proven himself to be an out-of-the-box thinker who gets good things done for the people of Indiana. He was honored this year by Governing Magazine for his accomplishments and for being a strong state leader.

Like I said, newspaper endorsements don’t move voters, but they can certainly catch attention at times.

Editor’s note: A number of my friends in the newspaper business reminded me that the NW Times is a right-leaning newspaper.  In that light, I also promise to post the endorsement of the Gary Post Tribune.

I spent some time yesterday looking at the Electoral Map and came to a startling, but obvious, conclusion. Come election night, Indiana could determine just show how soon the Presidential race ends.  It requires a couple assumptions which I don’t think are too far off the plantation.  

Let’s assume Barack Obama takes most of the Northeast.  He’s got Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and D.C.  That gives him 111 Electoral votes.

Let’s assume John McCain does well in the South. He’s Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and West Virgina.  (Put aside the fact some polling data shows a somewhat competitive race in West Virgina and Georgia could switch based the heavy African-American turnout and Bob Barr pealing off some Libertarian-leaning Republicans.) That puts McCain at 62 votes.

Now here is where it gets interesting.  

If Obama runs the North Carolina, Virgina and Florida table he’s got an additional 55 electoral votes which takes him to 172.   Now let’s keep heading west.  McCain gets Lousiana and Arkansas (15 electoral votes) taking him to 77.  Obama gets Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and I’m putting Missouri in his column after 100,000 people showed in St. Louis for an Obama rally, 75,000 showed up Kansas City.  That takes Obama from 111 electoral votes to 248.

You only need 270 to win.  And I still haven’t counted the other half of the country nor Indiana or Ohio.

Neither candidate winning Ohio will put them over the 270 mark.  An Ohio win takes McCain to 97 electoral votes and Obama to 268.  If either candidate wins both states, McCain goes to 108; Obama 279 and is the next President.

Granted, these are based on some assumptions, but if Obama wins Indiana the show is over and everyone can go home and go to bed because there is no way McCain catch up without pulling some big, giant rabbit out of his hat on the West Coast.

So not only is Indiana in play, it is a crucial place for McCain to stay in the game.  I think the fundamentals still favor McCain for a victory here, which is good news for the candidate because he’s gonna need it.

The only thing that wasn’t standard about the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee’s speech this afternoon is that it was in Indiana with less than three weeks before the election.

Thousands of people (about 15,000 according to the fire marshall) jammed the Verizon Music Center in Noblesville to see Sarah Palin.   The speech she gave was basically the same speech she’s given in other parts of the county sans “Hoosiers” being one of her favorite films and a couple of Indy 500 references.

In a nutshell, here’s what she said…

Taxes/Economy

• Obama wants to raise taxes, McCain wants to lower them.

Voter Fraud

• People are concerned and Obama should come clean about his associations with ACORN.

Experience

• She talked about her record as Governor for cutting taxes and reforming government.

Life

• She alluded to abortion and that every child should be placed first.

Energy

• She called for the “all of the above” approach to solving America’s energy issues.

Campaign Tone

• Palin said it wasn’t negative campaigning to point out Obama’s record.  She also said Obama and Joe Biden were looking to the past while she and John McCain were looking to the future.

Palin did a good job of electrifying the GOP crowd, which they will need in the tough race ahead.

The only thing that wasn’t standard at this rally as opposed to others is that there was a rumor floating that I would be introducing Palin to the crowd.  But somehow I think a Black attorney from the south side of Chicago whose middle name begins with the letter “H” who is also mistaken for being a Muslim might have confused some people.