Indiana: Eighth District

Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D)

Brad Ellsworth (D) Elected 2006, 1st term up
Born:	09-11-1958, Huntingburg
Home:	Evansville
Education:	U. of S. IN, B.S. 1981, IN St. U., M.A. 1993
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Beth)
Elected  Office:	Vanderburgh Cnty. Sheriff, 1998-2006.
Professional Career:	Chief Deputy, Vanderburgh Cnty. Sheriff’s Office, 1982-98.
DC Office	513 CHOB, 20515 202-225-4636 Fax: 202-225-3284 Website: www.ellsworth.house.gov
State Offices	Evansville:812-465-6484; Terre Haute:812-232-0523;
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“Evansville,” wrote John Bartlow Martin in 1947, “is the capital of a tri-state area comprising the neglected tag ends of Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois.” It was a factory town then, building car parts and refrigerators, drawing workers from Kentucky, Tennessee and the picturesque but not very fertile hills of southern Indiana. Today Evansville has become the headquarters for many mid-size companies, bringing with them many high-paying and skilled jobs. Car parts still get made here, though it's auto assembly that helps anchor the local manufacturing economy. Toyota in 2000 opened a plant in nearby Princeton that builds SUVs and minivans and employs 5,200 workers, some making $28 an hour. It has seen hard times, such as the terrible flood of March 1997 and a November 2005 tornado that killed 24, but it also has Indiana’s first riverboat casino and claims to have the nation’s second largest street festival, second only to New Orleans’s Mardi Gras celebration.

Evansville is one of two major focuses of the 8th Congressional District, which covers most of southwest and west central Indiana. The other, in Vigo County, is Terre Haute, an old manufacturing town and the boyhood home of Socialist Eugene Debs. It hosts a maximum-security penitentiary, which includes the only federal death chamber, where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed in June 2001. This southwest corner of Indiana was the first part of the state settled by whites. Vincennes, now a small town on the banks of the Wabash River, was once the metropolis of Indiana, and Scottish philanthropist and visionary Robert Owen established the town of New Harmony downstream. Owen’s son was the first congressman from the area, elected in 1842 and 1844. Southern Indiana is ancestrally Democratic, just as northern Indiana is ancestrally Republican; these southern counties were hostile to the Civil War. In New Deal times, workers in Evansville moved again toward the Democrats.

The result has been a very close political balance, and this district has become known as the “Bloody Eighth” for its tight congressional races. At one point in the 1970s it elected four different congressmen in four successive elections. In 1984, the state certified the Republican as the winner by exactly 34 votes, but the Democratic U.S. House, in a fight that left many Republican members bitterly aggrieved, overturned the result. Since then, it has been as fiercely contested as ever. The trend in presidential politics, however, is away from national Democrats: Bill Clinton twice carried it by 2%, but in 2000 George W. Bush won 56% followed by 62% in 2004.

The new congressman from the 8th District is Brad Ellsworth, a Democrat elected in 2006. He was born in Jasper, not far outside the current district, and his family moved to Evansville when he was 10 so his father could take a job as crane operator at a nearby Alcoa plant. He graduated in 1981 from what was then called Indiana State University at Evansville, where he worked in the Sears paint and hardware departments to pay for college, and joined the Vanderburgh County sheriff’s department as a deputy a year later. Ellsworth steadily rose through the ranks while also earning a master’s degree in criminology during weekend courses at Indiana State University. He easily won his first election as county sheriff in 1998 and ran unopposed in 2002. During his eight years as sheriff, Ellsworth became a familiar name in Vanderburgh County, which is part of the district’s largest media market.

Ellsworth entered the race early against John Hostettler, a conservative Republican iconoclast who had held the seat for six terms. Hostettler had never won with more than 53% of the vote, and his policy of never accepting PAC donations made him a poor fundraiser and a perennial Democratic target. He frequently bucked party leadership and took unconventional positions, such as votes against the 1995 balanced budget amendment, the Violence Against Women Act and the use of force against Iraq. Republican strategists each election cycle worried about Hostettler’s re-election, but also took comfort in his uncanny ability to eke out victories by mobilizing support among anti-abortion and Christian conservative groups.

After a string of disappointing challengers, Democrats thought they’d found the ideal candidate for this culturally conservative district. Ellsworth supports gun ownership rights, and he opposes abortion, gay marriage and a hasty withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He could run on a quarter century of local law enforcement experience. When a tornado devastated parts of Southern Indiana in November 2005, Ellsworth was the face of the disaster recovery; Hostettler was nearly invisible. Hostettler was also in the uncomfortable position of asking for federal disaster aid just two months after he had voted against Hurricane Katrina relief.

Hostettler made relatively few appearances during the campaign and did not run a campaign ad until October, leading to rumors that he had given up the race. In October he did run a radio spot, in which an announcer impersonated Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character and warned that a vote for Ellsworth would be a vote for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. “Pelosi will then put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda,” the announcer warned. The attacks alienated many women, while most voters did not know who Pelosi was and were baffled by the attacks against her. Ellsworth shone as a top-tier candidate for Democrats. Weeks before the election, The Washington Post featured a photo of the “swaggering Indiana sheriff” on the front page with a story about the unusually good looks of Democratic candidates running in 2006. Hostettler’s lackluster campaign was not enough to overcome the unpopularity of President Bush and Governor Mitch Daniels. Nor could it trump Ellsworth’s strong candidacy and financial advantage: Ellsworth had spent more than $1.7 million, more than three times Hostettler’s $580,000 campaign. On Election Day, Ellsworth crushed Hostettler 61%-39%—a stunningly weak election performance for a non-scandal-ridden incumbent. Ellsworth carried 14 of the district’s 18 counties, beat Hostettler by 11,500 votes in Vigo County and by nearly 15,000 more votes in Vanderburgh County (63%-37%).

Committees

• Agriculture (14th of 25 D)
  Conservation, Credit, Energy & Research; General Farm Commodities & Risk Management.
• Armed Services (21st of 34 D)
  Seapower & Expeditionary Forces; Terrorism, Unconventional Threats & Capabilities.
• Small Business (14th of 18 D)
  Rural & Urban Entrepreneurship; Finance & Tax.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: R + 9
• Area size: 7,132 square miles
• Urban Population: 58.1%
• Rural Population: 41.9%
• Population 2000: 675,564
• Population 2005 (est): 680,251
• Median Income: $36,732
• Poverty Status: 10.7%
• Military Veterans: 13.9%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 93.7% White; 3.7% Black; 0.6% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 0.8% Two+ races; 0.1% Other; 0.9% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 18.1% German%; 11.9% USA%; 8.1% Irish%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 31.9%; White collar 51.9%; Gray collar 16.2%;