Menu
Dems picnic in park with District 4 hopefuls
One thing is as certain as fried chicken on an Indiana Sunday afternoon, the race for the Democrat nomination to be the 2018 District 4 congressional candidate won’t be a picnic.
The primary filing deadline is still eight months off, and although this is an election off-year, already four political hopefuls are out campaigning, introducing themselves and talking about health care and other issues hotter than Sunday’s June weather.
Three of those four declared Democrat candidates for Indiana’s District 4 seat in the U.S. Congress -- currently filled by Republican Todd Rokita -- visited Putnam County Sunday afternoon for a picnic in the park.
Tobi Beck of Avon, Joe Mackey and Sherry Shipley, both of Lafayette, shared informal conversations with small groups of Greencastle and Putnam County residents whose bellies may have been full of Putnam Inn fried chicken and fixings but whose appetite for knowledge left them hungry for more about health care, immigration and education.
“We need to stop talking about parties and start talking about issues,” Beck, a military combat veteran and law school graduate, said.
“We need a candidate that disenfranchised Republicans will vote for and Democrats will vote for,” she added, stressing she vows to “demand that Democracy work the way I was taught it was supposed to.”
Mackey, who recently retired from Caterpillar after more than 30 years, boldly depicted American in 2017 in a not-so-positive light.
“This is not the country we want,” Mackey stressed.
He expressed disappointment in how healthcare was handled, stating that the Democrats in Congress “took it right to the brink and then lost faith in everything they were doing.”
“America is not under assault by ISIS,” Mackey said, “but by the 115th Congress.
“Diseases are killing us, not some foreign entity.”
Shipley was also discouraged by how things are being done at the national level.
“I want us to be a country where people aspire for us to be the leader in the free world in terms of education, in terms of research and in terms of democracy,” Shipley, an Ivy Tech Community College dean, said.
A first-time candidate, Shipley said she has “no illusions of how big of a horse this is to mount,” explaining that she hopes to inspire students with her candidacy to help get them involved in the political process.
“Another reason I’m running,” she said, “is that I am so sick of the hypocrisy.”
Beck, the latest entrant in the District 4 Democrat field, was advised that the name Beck has been synonymous with the Republican Party in Putnam County.
“I’m told it has a lot of name recognition,” she smiled.
Meanwhile, Mackey said he enjoyed the informal nature of Sunday’s meet-and-greet program rather than trying to explain issues like healthcare within a two-minute window.
About 50 people attended Sunday’s picnic at Robe-Ann Park. Not in attendance was a fourth Democrat congressional candidate, George Reed of Brownsburg.