V14 N41 Thursday, June 25, 2009 Budget brinksmanship at Statehouse to go down to the midnight deadline next Tuesday. GOP hopes for a quick resolution In essence, both sides are girding for a classic case vanish into hours of new testimony of brinksmanship, with the policy battlefield being educa - tion funding for poorer urban and rural school districts that as the Tuesday deadline looms are bleeding enrollment and, subsequently, state funding. Throw in a severe recession and a jobless By KATIE COFFIN rate expected to approach historic levels, and with INDIANAPOLIS – Republican hopes for a stimulus money from the Obama administration that quick end to the special session were vanquished has been a salve for a brutal reality, and you find Wednesday when Ways & Means Chairman Bill recipe for a long, long week. Crawford decided to take more public testimony in- Wednesday’s lengthy testimony prompted stead of beginning negotiations on the budget bill. Hoosiers are now confronted with a special session that many expect Continued on Page 4 Mitch for president? By BRIAN A. HOWEY INDIANAPOLIS - Mitch Daniels for president? In 2012? It’s all the buzz in the Statehouse hallways where Democrats and lobbyists speculate on the governor’s true motives as the special session races toward the wall. “I think we reached bottom and It was a question I asked him about on the way back from Kokomo last September. The we’re coming back up.” response was expected: No. I’m flat - - Ed Neufeldt, tered, but not interested. the laidoff It has been oft stated by the gov- Monaco Coach worker who introduced ernor, going back to his meeting with reporters in the summer of 2007 a day President Obama in Elkhart last before he kicked off his re-election. He February. He’s found a part-time job. emphatically stated that it would be his last campaign. Since then he has in- HOWEY Politics Indiana Page 2 Weekly Briefing on Indiana Politics Thursday, June 25, 2009 voked the “Cheri Daniels’ term-limits” Howey Politics toral-vote victory on the idea of hope and when HPI’s Mark Schoeff Jr. asked and change, Daniels ran on an almost Indiana him about it in Washington last Febru- identical platform, painting himself and ary, Daniels responded, “No. No. No. the Indiana GOP more broadly as the is a nonpartisan news- N-O. You think you’re going to catch reformers and Democrats as the old me in an unguarded moment.” letter based in Indianapolis guard. ‘We were the party of purpose,’ As recently as his May 15 Wall said Daniels.” and published by NewsLink Street Journal op-ed opposing cap and John Aloysius Farrell, trade, Daniels stated in his opening writing on the U.S. News & World Inc. It was founded in paragraph, “I’m not a candidate for Report’s Thomas Jefferson Street blog, 1994 in Fort Wayne. any office -- now or ever again ....” observed, “Daniels has a good sense What is fueling the Mitch for of humor and a fine appreciation of President thing is that when you sur- human frailty, is both a principled Brian A. Howey, publisher vey the potential 2012 field, there are conservative and a political realist Mark Schoeff Jr.,Washington problems. Just this past week, one po- (having learned his craft while working tential contender - South Carolina Gov. Jack E. Howey, editor in the Reagan White House), knows Mark Sanford - simply disappeared for government inside-out (from his years Beverly Phillips, associate four days with wife, chief of staff and as OMB director), and thumped the editor lieutenant governor openly unaware Democrats pretty good last November, Katie Coffin, intern of where he was. On Wednesday, he even as Barack Obama was carrying acknowledged he has had an extra- the state. As Michael Barone recently marital affair. That’s a problem. pointed out, Daniels is exactly the Subscriptions: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin? While kind of Republican that could woo many at the Evansville Right to Life $350 annually HPI via e-mail; independent voters and conservative dinner urged her to run, she and her Democrats — maybe even young folks $550 annually HPI & HPI Daily family have become tabloid fodder. — back to the GOP in 2012.” Wire. Her lightweight interviews during the In a National Review cover Call 317-254-0535. 2008 campaign will not escape her. story featuring Daniels as “The Blade,” Recently Reagan speechwriter Peggy Rich Lowry writes, “In a new Gal- Howey Politics Indiana Noonan described Palin’s style as lup Poll asking who is the national PO Box 40265 “yammering.” Next. leader of the Republican party, Indiana Indianapolis, IN 46240-0265. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jin- Gov. Mitch Daniels didn’t even rate dahl? Not ready for primetime. For- an asterisk. That’s unsurprising. The mer Speaker Newt Gingrich? An idea governor of the country’s 16th-most- Contact Us machine who shoots from the hip (his populous state won’t normally garner www.howeypolitics.com criticism during the recent piracy res- much national attention, especially cue earlier this spring is an example) [email protected] when he’s an unassuming, old-school and has a checkered personal past. budget cutter. It’s also a shame, Main Office: 317-202-0210. Mike Huckabee? Next. because more than any other Repub- Howey’s Mobile: 317-506-0883. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. lican officeholder, Daniels points the Indianapolis Fax: 317-254-0535. Tim Pawlenty or Florida Gov. Charlie way ahead for his bedraggled party. Crist? All credible but it’s unlikely any He’s a Reaganite who is not trapped in Washington: 202-256-5822. of them can close down the field be - 1980s nostalgia; he’s a fiscal conserva - Business Office: 317-627-6746. fore 2012. tive who believes not just in limiting ©2009, Howey Politics And in this seeping void, government, but in reforming it to ad- with the last Washington Post-ABC Indiana . All rights reserved. dress people’s everyday concerns; he’s poll revealing only 22 percent call a politician of principle who refuses to Photocopying, Internet forwarding, themselves Republicans and the GOP’s sell his program in off-puttingly parti- faxing or reproducing in any form, fav/unfavs at a sorry 36/56 percent, san or ideological terms.” in whole or part, is a violation of the chattering class has discovered And Lowry asks a most per- Our Man Mitch. tinent question: As they grapple with federal law without permission from Chris Cillizza of the Washing- President Barack Obama, Republicans the publisher. ton Post blogged, “In a year where at the national level could do worse President Obama swept to a 192-elec- than ask themselves: What would HOWEY Politics Indiana Page 3 Weekly Briefing on Indiana Politics Thursday, June 25, 2009 Daniels do? stated in the previous paragraph, Daniels is a former It became part of a spring spate of punditry, op- White House budget director who departed before Iraq eds, a national Saturday Republican address, magazine and deficits went haywire, as well as a two-term governor covers that have fueled talk of an orchestrated “Draft coming off an 18 percent win, who balanced budgets and Mitch” movement heading into 2012. Daniels staff eagerly has brought limited reforms to the state. He raised $35.5 transmitted the laudatory writings. As with the campaign, million for his two gubernatorial races. Those are stellar these are not loose sparks of high-heeled boys at work in credentials. isolation. Staff follows instructions from the man sitting What if a groundswell developed around the under the saintly gaze of Theodore Guerin on the first floor governor? This is a guy who Gov. Robert Orr wanted to fill of the Statehouse. Vice President Dan Quayle’s Senate seat back in 1988 and Fearful of even askin g Daniels the presidential he turned it down. Not many political people would turn question again, there are self-evident truths worth stating. down a Senate seat. This is not a person who envisions his There is talk that Daniels obit teeming with a steady climb up the is orchestrating a “draft,” and they foodchain. Family is paramount. He ran point to 2003 when he returned from for governor because he believed Indiana Washington and quickly elbowed 2000 was on course to fulfill its gloomy station nominee David McIntosh, Sens. Luke as the “Mississippi of the North.” It’s the Kenley and Murray Clark out of the essence of public service. field. It is no easy task to do that to There’s another aspect to con- people who look in the mirror, see a sider: The Daniels governorship has been future governor and invest time and engulfed in a second term crisis. Experts resources to get there. There’s only are stating that the jobless rate could been one true presidential “draft” reach 11.5 percent between now and in the past century and it occurred 2010. This is hardly a scenario for a sit- when both parties sought to lure Gen. ting governor to expend the huge amount Dwight David Eisenhower to their of time it would take to run a presidential tickets in 1952. In 1984, there was campaign. Hoosiers will need a full-time a potential Mario Cuomo scenario governor over the next three years and until he slammed the door. As astute Daniels knows it. as Daniels is politically, he is not in Having said all that, why is the a class of generals like Washington, governor’s staff pushing all the punditry Jackson, Grant and Eisenhower who and why is the governor emerging as a capture the hearts and minds of an adoring people.