• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I live in Terre Haute. Sakbun is part of the corruption machine and the primary was rigged against Goodwin, who actually wants to change this city for the better. I’m glad Sakbun ousted Duke Bennett, the Republican mayor of Terre Haute that had been there for over a decade, but that’s about it. I do not have high hopes for his time as mayor. He’s basically run it on “I’m young and I have big ideas” but he really doesn’t have any plans on how to achieve them. He’s just another bullshit populist.

    Also, the cops lined up behind him. What does that tell you?

    Edited to add this comment from someone on the Terre Haute Reddit page:

    Lots of Republicans voted for Sakbun since there were no races contested. The local Dem establishment led by one of the Ellis lawyers downtown really hammered Pat. They jumped on a post from a supporter of his and framed it like Pat was shitting on cops. This prompted the official THPD to post a message from the city police chief where he defamed two private citizens and interefered in a local election using his official post. If I though the Attorney General would do something about this I would’ve tried to report it because it’s illegal as fuck.

    They had a guy that used to live in town put out a fucked up mailer defaming Pat. It’s no fun working against these folks and they all have a lot of power and prestige and they will use all of it against the rest of this city to keep themselves propped up.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People (especially dnc leadership) are way to quick to write states off as “red” and then just don’t try.

    Or they run someone that would have been a Republican 20 years ago and don’t understand why it’s not working.

    If people wanted conservative policy, they’d vote Republican. Running two conservatives just means lots of people won’t vote. Because the result is either bad or terrible.

    Give people a candidate that they want. And more people vote. The more people vote, the less likely a Republican wins. Even in “red states”.

    The issue is the party has abandoned voters.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Despite what I said above about Sakbun, it is pretty surprising he was able to unseat Duke Bennett, who handily won multiple elections and was in office the entire time I’ve been here, which is about 10 years. I do attribute it to people being fed up with Republicans, especially since this town is heavily populated by union members. We have a whole bunch of union halls and people with ‘union strong’ signs outside their houses. That didn’t stop them from voting Republican in the past, but maybe they’ve finally realized that Republicans have done nothing for them.

      That said, Indiana has had a Democrat for governor in living memory (Evan Bayh), a Democrat in the senate relatively recently (Joe Donnelly) and it went for Obama in 2008, so it’s not as red as it seems. And, of course, Pete Buttigieg was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

  • fuzzyspudkiss@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    As someone who has lived in Indiana for 31 years, if you actually talk to people without mentioning R or D, a large percentage of their values like up with Democrats. But as soon as you compare that to democratic policies, they immediately go into excuses for why they’d never vote for a Democrat. Abortion is really the only Republican policy that they support, and even then a lot of them still support it “but not the way the Democrats do, up to the moment before birth”.

    The issue is that Democrats practically ignore us here so there’s no information campaigns to correct all the misinformation they get from Fox news and the like.

    It’s really frustrating going back to my rural bumfuck town and seeing all the legitimately good people who have been brainwashed into Republican support by friends and neighbors.