Tag District 7

I’ve mentioned before that I’m voting for David Orentlicher in the primary as the Democratic candidate for Julia Carson’s former seat in the U.S. Congress. The slated Democratic candidate and current office holder is André Carson (elected in March in a special election) but I’m just not convince that Carson has enough experience. David has been a State Representative for many years. I’ve met him several times and heard him speak on a variety of issues.

The other two candidates running are Dr. Woody Myers and Carolene Mays. Mays is pretty openly homophobic and is universally opposed by the gay community in Indianapolis. Dr. Myers seemed like a decent guy, until we discovered that he opposed the Patient Bill of Rights, which I had supported back in 1998.

This morning, we found out his lawyers sent threatening letters to The Bilerico Project blog for posting the information about Myers opposition to the Patient Bill of Rights, and demanded the identifying information for the blogger who posted the information.

There’s pretty clearly no legal grounds for the threat, but I sure did get a good laugh out of it. And another reason not to vote for Woody Myers.

In other political news, Barack Obama visited my friend Rich’s family farm in north western Indiana and played basketball with Rich’s nephew, and talked for awhile with his family. Rich got lots of photos and I guess Senator Obama was pretty cool.

He also brought Rich’s family apple pies, one of which Rich brought to work. So this morning, I had a piece of delicious Barack Obama Apple Pie, which I heard isn’t store bought at all, but he baked all by himself on the tour bus, from apple he gathered from trees growing right there on the bus roof. Also, I heard he’s ten feet tall, breathes fire and is able to fly. I wonder how he keeps the press from finding all that out. He must be magic.

I still plan to vote for Hillary for a variety of reasons, but I have to admit, Barack’s magic pie is delicious, and if he ends up with the nomination, I’ll be excited to vote for him in the fall.

I presumed yesterday’s post on the special election would cause some consternation, but it’s always interesting to see how these things play out. Bil Browning of The Bilerico Project asked me to cross post my entry there, which I though would be fun.

From there, Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, radio personality and erstwhile former blogger at IndyUndercover got all up about it on his “I’ll admit this blog is mine” blog Indiana Barrister, and apparently has asked Jon Elrod if he’s gay on his radio show.

I’m presuming the answer he gave is no — I don’t listen to the show and haven’t heard one way or another what he actually said.

It’s really cute that in his blog post Abdul says “As one of the premiere bloggers in this state…” Aw. I’ll bet your mom calls you every morning to tell you how handsome you are, too, Abdul. That doesn’t mean it’s true, except in the “state of confusion in Abdul’s head.” Good grief.

Then Gary Welsh at Advance Indiana got all on the case about Abdul even mentioning it either place, referring to my blog post as “a baseless rumor the campaign of Andre Carson has been spreading about Republican Jon Elrod for the past two months.”

Dunno where that description comes from, as I haven’t heard a word about Elrod’s sexual orientation from the Carson campaign. I’m certainly not from the Carson campaign — I’m voting for him against my preferred wishes, and I only posted the entry yesterday morning. But it’s convenient for Gary to reassign the issue to Carson, since he can then claim it’s based in homophobia, as Welsh’s commenters immediately do on his post.

It’s a lot harder for Gary claim my motivation as homophobia – especially when he has a moratorium on talking about me on his blog. I believe I’m one of the people he refused to mention.

Whether any of this changes what I think about voting Elrod — I’ll have to get audio of Elrod’s answer and see what I think about it, and whether I believe his answer. I’m glad that he’s at least been asked publicly a question that half a dozen people emailed me to mention they wondered themselves. If the question is in that many people’s minds, it should be addressed.