the day afterwards

Thanks to everyone who supported our campaign-- through voting, volunteering, and giving financially. Thanks especially to my campaign team-- Melanie Hughes, John Harbeson, and Cathy Carman (my little sister)-- for their hard work. Thanks to my parents for their bigtime financial support. We had a nice run, learned a lot, built up some name recognition, tweaked the debate a bit, and at the end, made both Hill and Sodrel sweat a bit!

We had hoped for 4-5% at the beginning-- and with 4.5% in hand, we're happy. We're also content since we ran a good race-- honorable, policy-oriented, and effective given the resources we had available to us. We spent 1/500th of the money they sent in total. A nice votes per dollar ratio! That said, with the recent polls showing us (twice) at 5%, I had begun to dream bigger-- hoping we could get to upper-single digits or double-digits. If so, I think our campaign could have been a national story-- not just good for us, but also good to stimulate discussions about the roles of negative ads and third parties. Maybe next time!

In case you haven't played with the numbers-- or in case you run into people who speculate incorrectly-- I was not a spoiler in the race. My vote total exceeded the vote margin-- but only slightly. Sodrel would have needed more than 98% of my votes to edge Hill-- and as the polling indicated, I may well have taken more votes from Hill than Sodrel, keeping the race closer than it would have otherwise been.

It's not a done deal, but we plan to run again in 2008. If so, I look forward to a more effective campaign-- better organized with stronger resources. Until then, I'm sure we'll stay busy doing other things.

Grace and peace to you and yours, eric

NAACP banquet

It was a pleasure to attend the NAACP dinner/program this evening in Jeffersonville. My ad got dropped from the evening's program; it fell through the cracks somehow. But they offered federal candidates three minutes to speak-- and I took the occasion to speak briefly on wanting the troops out of Iraq the quickest, being the only fiscal conservative, and then working through my usual discussion of payroll taxes and Social Security. The point that African-Americans earn a negative rate of return on SS is increasingly known-- but for many, it's a sobering revelation. The keynote speaker talked about the need to earn African-American votes-- and Democrats haven't done that in most cases. The motto this year for the local NAACP was "vote your values and value our vote". With my presence at three NAACP events and the issues I emphasize, it is clear which candidate values their group's votes the most!

Debate II

It was good fun. I felt more relaxed going into this one (with one debate already under my belt) so much less of it seemed like a blur-- more humor, spontaneity, etc. I think it also felt better-- as in a warmer environment, including the presence of an audience. I don't know if it came across on TV, but it seemed like my stuff was warmly-received-- a lot of head-nodding, laughter, etc. I also went out in the lobby afterwards and enjoyed meeting a bunch of people. They were very encouraging and three people wanted to have their pics taken with me! ;-)

My favorite line was Don Mantooth's early blast about Sodrel and Hill being like two cats whose tails are tied together and tossed over a clothes-line! Funniest spontaneous moment: when Hill talked about those "fancy economists" and I got to do a little physical humor and respond that I'd never been called "fancy" before.

In terms of coverage: apparently, Indiana-9 had technical difficulties. But we were on C-Span live. Web traffic to our website was incredible-- with more than 300 hits yesterday and early this morning. Encouraging emails from around the district and across the country.