2018 General Election Lost 51 – 45
Senator Joe Donellyhttp://www.joeforindiana.com/ is the third Senator in the Chuck Schumer and Patty Murray trio. If all three of the trio of Senators (Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill are the other two) come out of the November, 2018 elections as victors, the Democrats may also have found three Republican Senators to defeat so that they can take control of the Senate.
Joe Donelly came to Indiana from Long Island to go to college at Notre Dame.And stayed. He graduated from Notre Dame Law School in 1981, practiced law for fifteen years, then opened a printing business. He served on a Catholic School Board and on the state election board. He ran for Attorney General in 1988 but did not get the nomination. He ran for Congress in 2004 and lost to the Republican. He ran again in 2006 and won.
Joe Donnelly is not in it for the money. His financials show him as being in Joe Biden territory. He describes himself as continuing the common sense Hoosier tradition of Senators Vance Hartke (the last Democratic Senator from Indiana) and Richard Lugar (the moderate Republican who defeated Hartke but was primaried in 20012 by the right wing candidate for Senate who Donelly defeated).
Continuing the traditions of Vance Hartke and Richard Lugar is an admirable goal. Vance Hartke may have been the most liberal Democrat elected to office in Indiana. He opposed the Vietnam War early. He worked for Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights, student loans, Head Start, and car safety. A former mayor of Indianapolis and the longest serving Senator ever from Indiana, Richard Lugar opposed the embargo of Cuba, supported gun control, supported the DREAM Act, and moved away from GW Bush’s war in Iraq after initially supporting it.
Joe Donnelly can make a decent claim for being in the Hartke/Lugar tradition. He supported Dodd-Frank, minimum wage increases, the Lily Ledbetter Act, CHIP and subsequently the Affordable Care Act. On the other hand, he has opposed gun registration, the DREAM Act, and abortion.
In most cases, Joe Donnelly has been a vote for working people. In his victorious race for the Senate, he was blessed with an extreme right wing opponent who, among other things, explained that if a woman who was raped became pregnant, it was God’s will.
We don’t know who Joe Donelly’s Republican opponent will be. We do know that he will need help to beat him. Take a look at Joe Donnelly’s web page http://www.joeforindiana.com/and support him.
