Courthouse and Politics

I was passing through downtown Rensselaer on Wednesday and I noticed buzzards circling the courthouse. A closer look revealed that some were sitting on the roof sunning themselves.

You can see the shadow of the bird with its wings outstretched catching the morning sun.

Below is a different group on another roof.

All these turkey vultures on the courthouse reminded me that the the primary election is drawing near. I searched for a while on the Internet to find something about the candidates who are running and found very little. I did find the list of those on the ballot in Jasper County, but it is a pdf file and I think it was made by scanning in the documents as picture files rather than as text files because I cannot extract text. You can find it here.

There are plenty of signs around town but not much real information about the candidates. A cluster of signs is near the stoplight on College and Grace.

Most of the contested races are in the Republican primary. There are five candidates for Senate (Bates, Behney, Coates, Hostettler, and Stutzman) and eight for House of Representatives (Dombkowski, Holtz, Leyva, Lindemulder, Olson, Pastore, Petyo, and Reeves). For State Representative District 16 there are two, Gutwein and Kallenbach. Three candidates want to run for Sheriff, Cain, Ricker, and Risner, and also three for Assessor, Hoffman, Lackey, and Potts. Two candidates are competing for Councilmember District 1, Davis and Sipkema. There seem to be races for some of the rural township boards, including Marion Township Board (Barton, Nesius, and Potter). The Democratic side of the ballot has almost no contested races, except for at-large Democrat State Convention Delegates, where there are 13 names. (How many are selected?)

If you know of any site that gives information about what these people are about so that we the voters can make an informed choice, please tell us in the comments.

I do not know why Bozell has signs--the list shows her as unopposed for Clerk of the 30th Judicial Circuit Court.

Update: Links to campaign sites for Senate and Congress can be found at www.politics1.com/in.htm. Here is coverage of the House candidates in the Chesterton Tribune.

Update 2. See if you are registered and see the ballot here.