Social Conservatives Fall Short
Earlier this year the folks who supported HJR-3, the marriage amendment, were livid at the fact that House lawmakers were looking at eliminating the second sentence. They were so upset that the in several e-mails and public statements they threatened to primary any Republican who voted to alter the amendment.
On January 27, 23 House Republicans voted to remove the second sentence from HJR-3 and another 11 voted against it altogether on the final vote. Why does that matter? Well, the primary filing deadline was last Friday. The rest requires a little bit of math.
There are 82 House Districts with a Republican running in the May primary, out of those 82 only 14 are contested. Out of the 14 contested races, five are to fill an open seat, so that takes us down to nine. And out of those nine where incumbents have a challenger only three of them voted to remove the second sentence from HJR-3, Jerry Torr of Carmel, Rebecca Kubacki (Kosciusko and Elkhart Counties) and Kathy Heuer (Allen and Whitley Counties).
Now you have to look at when the challengers filed; Kubacki’s opponent filed on January 21, Torr’s opponent filed a primary challenge on February 3, and Heuer’s opponents filed on February 6 and 7, virtually at the last minute.
Ok Abdul, where this is going? Give me a second.
It’s no big secret that Advance America and the Indiana Family Institute actively recruited and encouraged their members to file in primaries against House Republicans who wouldn’t vote for HJR 3. I think I have a couple of e-mails to that effect. And after all that trouble, at best you could argue they only found three people to run and two of them are running against each other.
Even organized labor found six “Lunch Pail” Republicans to run in 2012 because of right to work. I would label these guys paper tigers, but that would be an insult to paper tigers.
And to add more insult to injury, two supporters of HJR-3 actually have primary challengers, author Eric Turner and Elections Committee Chairman Milo Smith. However, in all fairness to Turner, his opponent has told the media HJR-3 wasn’t the reason he was challenging him.
So after all the threats, posturing, weeping and gnashing of teeth, the best HJR-3 supporters could come up with is three primary opponents against 23 Republican lawmakers, two of which are running against each other.
Maybe it’s time to just let this one go and move on to other issues that actually matter.
