Mark Seabrook's challenge to Slick Jeffie regarded favorably by Indiana political analyst Brian Howey.

The veteran Indiana politics reporter Brian Howey inserts his New Albany mayoral reference up front, but offers no further details.

City halls most likely to see a party change include New Albany, where Republican Mark Seabrook is challenging Mayor Jeff Gahan

However, of the three races Howey rates as most likely for a party change, New Albany's is the only one without an open seat. Howey even mentioning this race is very interesting, indeed. Gahan has huge amounts of money, but the electoral math speaks a different language.

Horse Race: Mayoral races enter homestretch, by Brian Howey (Howey Politics Indiana)

INDIANAPOLIS - We’re a month out from mayoral elections and at this point, we do not detect a significant change wave as we’ve seen in past cycles that ousted more than a dozen mayors. There is little polling data available, so our assessments are based on past history, who’s advertising and how the various candidates and campaigns are acting.

City halls most likely to see a party change include New Albany, where Republican Mark Seabrook is challenging Mayor Jeff Gahan; the open seat in Kokomo, with Republican Howard County Commissioner Tyler Moore facing Democrat Abbie Smith; and another open seat in Elkhart where former Republican mayor Dave Miller is facing Democrat Rod Roberson after Republican Mayor Tim Neese decided not to seek a second term.

Howey: "The voters will not see the constitutional marriage amendment on the Indiana ballot until 2016, if ever."

The politician Silent Ron isn't saying much.

In which we finally hear Silent Ron's side of the HJR story -- except he says absolutely nothing at all.

But the journalist Brian Howey says it all, for the record: "The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees “equal protection” of all citizens in all states under the law. This will be at the crux of future debates either in the courtroom or on the ballot."

While you wait for Silent Ron to unmuzzle himself, read the whole story here:

Brian Howey: Lessons from the marriage amendment

INDIANAPOLIS - The voters will not see the constitutional marriage amendment on the Indiana ballot until 2016, if ever.

For much of the past two months, House Joint Resolution 3 has dominated legislative and media attention at a time when Indiana's jobless rate is north of 6 percent, we have a methamphetamine epidemic (and in some places, heroin), our health metrics are trending south, and we are potentially leaving more than $10 billion in federal Medicaid money that you taxpayers have already contributed on the table. We have so much more work to do.

So, what are the lessons of HJR-3?

Brian Howey: "Bosma and the second sentence."

It's now 1:30 p.m. What happens next?

Brian Howey: Bosma and the second sentence

... Why wouldn't attorney Bosma - acknowledging the amendment is flawed with the second sentence - insist on its removal? If this is important enough to enshrine in the state's constitution, shouldn't it be done correctly?

The problem is, Gov. Mike Pence - while being a long-time advocate of the amendment - doesn't want to run for reelection in 2016 with HJR-3 on the ballot. And he should know how hot button social politics can impact a campaign. He became the first governor in 50 years to win office with less than 50 percent of the vote in 2012, and it happened because another candidate on the ticket made outrageous remarks about abortion and rape, and it sent female voters fleeing the Republican ticket in droves.

As for maintaining a House majority, Bosma and the Republicans have 69 seats and HJR-3 might endanger a handful of them in college towns, urban and some suburban areas ...

Them angry white folks in the GOP are doing that shutdown thing again.

Anyone seen Mark Seabrook and Steve Bush lately, or have they already retreated to the command bunker?

This Week in ‘Nation’ History: Government Shutdown as Coup d’État, by Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation)

... Dramatizing the supposed precariousness of public services by forcing their arbitrary cessation makes it easier for conservatives to argue that the market alone should determine the proper distribution of wealth, goods, and services in American society. There is no smaller government than none at all. As the radical political philosopher Sheldon Wolin argued in a remarkable 1996 essay in The Nation, “Democracy and the Counterrevolution,” the effort “to stop or reconstitute government in order to extract sweeping policy concessions amounts to an attempted coup d’état.” Wolin’s brilliant essay reminds us how shutdowns and austerity economics fit within the broader Republican philosophy of governance—or lack thereof—and how that philosophy is antithetical to the defining principle of democracy: rule by the people.

Meanwhile, back home again in Indiana, the state Republican apparatus prepares to filibuster Obamacare to the ultimate detriment of its own people. That's leadership.

HOWEY: Obamacare, propaganda and statesmanship, by Brian Howey (N and T)

But Congressional Republicans are using their offices like political candidates do during campaigns. They have become fonts of propaganda, declaring that Obamacare has “failed” and is a “trainwreck.” This isn't an effort to help their constituents understand the new law. There has been little effort to “tweak” or even revise troubling segments of the law. Instead, they play to that 10 or 15 percent of their constituents who pose a threat in a May primary.

Howey sez: Indiana economic problems "local, not state problem."

It seems like we've been talking and writing about this for a very long time.

HOWEY: Indiana’s jobs problem may be local, not state, by Brian Howey (column in the News and Tribune)

— After 16 consecutive months of Indiana’s jobless rate above the national average — it’s 8.4 percent now, compared to 7.4 for the U.S. — the cold reality is that we have a problem with a quarter of a million Hoosiers chronically out of work.

Then came a Ball State University study showing Indiana’s per capita income has slipped from 30th in the nation to 40th with dozens of counties wallowing in wage levels in the 1990s and, some like my old home of Miami, in the 1970s range.

I wrote an analysis in which I noted that for almost the past nine years, we’ve had Republican governors who have made job creation and education reform top priorities, and yet we’ve been over 8 percent unemployment since early 2009.

At some point, a political reality comes into play, perhaps as early as 2014 and if this trend persists, by 2016. It used to be that a jobless rate over 7 percent would mean the boot from voters. Yet, Gov. Mitch Daniels left office with a 60 percent approval rating and President Obama was re-elected.

Gov. Mike Pence gets it. Speaking before the Indianapolis Kiwanis recently, he acknowledged, “There’s a great sense of optimism, there’s reason to be encouraged as Hoosiers, but this is a difficult time for too many in our state.”

At Hobart, Pence told local Realtors, “I want to see where the young people can graduate from high school and can have an industry certification or even an associates degree right that day.”

There was one interesting response to my analysis, and it came from Ball State University economics Prof. Michael Hicks.

“Indiana’s problem is not that the overall business climate for investment is poor [it is great] or that we have too few students graduating from college with the right degrees [they are] or that people outside Indiana don’t know how great these things are [they know],” he explained. “The problem is not statewide [we have 12 counties growing much faster than the nation as a whole]. These are just facts. I also don’t believe that the overall problem is one of rapid technological progress or any of the national [and hopefully transient] problems in labor markets.”

No, the problem here is much closer to home. It comes in your city or town.

Hicks explains: “This is a really a local, not state problem. Almost all our local economic policies target business investment, and masquerade as job creation efforts. We abate taxes, apply TIFs and woo businesses all over the state, but then the employees who receive middle-class wages [say $18 an hour or more] choose the nicest place to live within a 40-mile radius. So, we bring a nice factory to Muncie, and the employees all commute from Noblesville.”

The real problem here is that Indiana Republicans parade under the banners of Reaganism, of smaller government and one that stays out of our bedrooms and personal lives. But when our cities and towns seek what we call “local control” over tax options, legislative leaders politely listen, and then tell them to shove off.

Brian Howey: "Soul searching in Indiana and America in a post-Newtown era."

"I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got thrown into this war I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!"
--Hawkeye Pierce

I grew up around guns, and as an adult, I'd prefer guns not be around me.

To, me, firearms are roughly akin to cars, sports and Viagra as penile enhancement devices, and I already have a penis, thanks. Pieces of machinery generally are value-neutral, their performance dependent on the guiding mind of humans. Conversely, human minds infected with machismo, conspiracy theories, hatred, kitchen table formica and just plain variable mental health issues offer as much cause to be frightened as the typical armed robber, who after all, just wants money.

But: I'm no prohibitionist. My own professional world of alcoholic beverages symbolizes "legal but heavily regulated," and that strikes me as utterly appropriate. You need a gun to cope, and I need a bottle. More alcoholic beverages to redress alcoholism? I'll get right on it. Whatever gets you through your life, it's all right.

Apart from all that, I've little to say that isn't already being said. From a rotten national cultural perspective, Frank Rich hits the center of the target in terms of what is significant. In reddened Indiana, Brian Howey does the same. Here's an excerpt.

Soul searching in Indiana and America in a post-Newtown era, by Brian Howey (Howey Politics Indiana)

NASHVILLE, Ind. – A couple times a year, I invite friends to come down to my cabin here for some target practice in the valley below. We shoot into the base of a ridge.

Most of the guns brought were shotguns, .22s and pistols. But one friend brought a Chinese assault rifle with a clip and at one point, squeezed off a succession of 30 shots. After about the 10th shot, I found the sequence unnerving. The fire power was – choose a word here: awesome, spectacular, overwhelming, catastrophic . . .

My Friday morning last week seemed normal until I caught an initial, brief CNN report of a school shooting in Connecticut. Returning to the cabin about an hour later, the scope of the horror was only beginning to emerge. By Sunday, we would learn that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had used a Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic rifle to gun down 20 children ages 6 and 7, along with the school principal, five teachers and his own mother. The kids suffered three to 11 gunshots each.

So this is the first set of thoughts I've deeply pondered, taking personal experience with the utter tragedy in Sandy Hook. The assault rifle is a military weapon, designed for battlefields. It really has no civilian application. I don't know any deer or turkey hunters who would take to the field with one. You don't need firepower of that magnitude to protect your home or property. On that front, an Elkhart police chief once told me that a pump action shotgun would be best for protecting home and self. "Anyone who hears you pump that will think twice about proceeding," he said.

Howey on political innovation.

The last of Howey's talking points should be required reading on the part of every Democratic Party decision- and/or king-maker in Floyd County. Another election doing it the Dixiecrat way is in the books, and it wasn't pretty.

HOWEY: The positives and negatives of campaign 2012, by Brian Howey (N and T)

6. Democrat Glenda Ritz’s upset of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett opens a new era of campaigning. She raised only about $250,000, compared to more than $1.5 million for Bennett, who spent most of his money on TV.

But network affiliate TV viewership is in rapid decline, and Ritz campaign operative Dave Galvin designed a social media program using Twitter and Facebook that looped in scores of teachers who were upset with the Bennett reforms.

Ritz pulled off an astounding upset and became a campaign pioneer.