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Now Jill Long Thompson must assume the mantle of Gubernatorial nominee of a party which has spent the better part of a year undermining her candidacy—the success of which going forward could now lay in her ability to wrest control of the state central committee from Evan Bayh.
Schellinger's fall was a particularly dramatic blow for the Indianapolis-centric Democratic Party establishment that supported the architect in near unanimity. The Bayhs, O'Bannons, Kernans, Carsons, Parkers, and O'Connors of the party all backed Schellinger's losing campaign, much of which was also headed by One North Capitol staff, notably including Mike Edmondson, who served a stint as campaign manager, Tim Jeffers, who later relieved Edmondson, and Jennifer Wagner, who became press secretary after the departure of Robert Kellar.
Though the state party remained officially neutral, Kellar in his final days once awoke to an email from himself that he had not written. Emailed from his communications shop without his knowledge, Wagner had publicized an attack on Long Thompson's role in the 1992 House Banking Scandal while still on the party's payroll. Previously she attended at least one organizational meeting at Schellinger's home months before departing the state party.
Neutrality was at once artifice and apparent, and it will make Long Thompson's task of unifying the party a difficult one. Asked on her blog in March whether Wagner would work for Long Thompson's campaign after the primary, she responded, "Nope. I play to win. Thanks."
The former congresswoman doesn't even maintain an Indianapolis office.
Parker's staff might reluctantly go through the motions for Long Thompson while remaining privately convinced that she can't win. But even for the candidates the whimpering establishment has enthusiastically supported, Schellinger's effort is just another example of a campaign squandered. If anything should send a cold chill down Jill Long Thompson's spine, it's the prospect of the same people who brought Indiana Democrats back-to-back Kernan-Kennedy-Peterson-Schellinger losses now inheriting the responsibility of electing a nominee for whom they have seething contempt.
Jill Long Thompson has the opportunity to mount a coup d'état within the party, a prospect which has now become not only a practical necessity for her campaign's survival, but also a long-awaited chance to make the Indiana Democratic Party something more than an organ for the personal ambitions of Evan Bayh.
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Indeed, the only party-backed candidate who had a good night Tuesday was Congressman Andre Carson, but his was a victory wrapped in irony after bucking Bayh and Parker to support Barack Obama.
This is not a coincidence, and Long Thompson should follow the lead of other electorally successful Hoosier Democrats like Carson, Pete Viscloskly, Jonathan Weinzapfel, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, and Baron Hill, all of whom learned long ago not to conflate Evan Bayh's success with their own, staying, for their own sake, always a step ahead of the Indy establishment.
Weinzapfel, Carson, and Hill did just that in endorsing Obama before Tuesday's primary, and they've been since vindicated. Fewer than 15,000 votes of 1.2 million cast separated Hillary Clinton from Barack Obama, who despite losing the state has nonetheless managed to drive what appears to be the penultimate nail into Clinton's coffin.
Hers was the rare campaign not run into the ground by Bayh, but it was fitting that her margin was just wide enough to save Bayh from embarrassment—and little more. Schellinger may have benefitted from the public backing of Bayh—he certainly had his backroom support—but then, he couldn't tempt the senator with the Vice Presidency. Not least for that reason, Schellinger has expressed private regrets about getting into the race at all, even before his Tuesday loss, feeling abandoned by Bayh and Parker, both of whom talked him into running last year.
Clinton's margin and Schellinger's loss speaks to the diminishing influence of Bayh in the state.
Now Long Thompson has the opportunity to diminish it in the party, and she should seize it.
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