Northwest Indiana Discussion

Or you can stick with your 1/2 wit Dems and Repubs.

Horning brings wit, ideals to governor's race

BY PATRICK GUINANE
pguinane@nwitimes.com
317.637.9078 | Sunday, November 02, 2008
A lousy sidewalk led Andy Horning into politics.

Horning, the Libertarian candidate for Indiana governor, said he began writing the mayor of Indianapolis more than a dozen years ago to complain about the sorry stretch of concrete outside his family's north side home. He said his acerbic wit, first in letters and later at public meetings, got noticed. And he in turn discovered his inner activist.

"I started just communicating to various politicians through letters, trying to get some kind of help," he said. "In my idea, I would tell them about the problem, and they would take it as their personal mission to fix it. Of course I realized it just didn't work that way."

Horning recalls witnessing affluent members of his gentrifying Meridian Park neighborhood using zoning laws to get a neighbor cited for a rusted car rather than helping out with a few bucks for the tow. He developed a distrust for the power of government that he traces to the founding fathers.

"I read the federal Constitution for the first time when I was 30. I got some suspicions of wrongdoing right at that moment,"

Horning said. "All of our founders understood government to be our chief danger, not our biggest friend."

And so it should be no surprise that Horning, 50, has wrapped his no-frills campaign in the Constitution. Visitors to horningforgovernor.com will find his campaign platform: a copy of the Indiana Constitution with notes in italics.

Horning, who argues drugs should be legalized, asserts the state has no business sending drug peddlers away to prison on longer sentences than murderers. The right to bear arms, in his view, is unequivocal, meaning all firearm regulations are unconstitutional.

It's difficult to imagine what state government would look like with Horning at the helm. He insists that most of the state bureaucracies that have sprung up over the years are unnecessary, if not illegal.

During one of the gubernatorial debates, Horning assailed the Indiana Department of Child Services, saying it takes children away from parents without due process and should be completely dismantled.

"Oh, Andy," Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels responded. "In the name of children, please think about that further."

The three fall debates, which kicked off last month in Merrillville, served as the premier showcase for Horning, whose campaign has raised less than $6,400. By comparison, Daniels has raked in more than $15 million, and Jill Long Thompson, the Democratic nominee, has raised $4.5 million.
[Hmmm, I wonder how much of that campaign money comes from big businesses seeking favors they will get from the easy-to-buy Dems and Repubs? - MM]

Horning brought moments of levity to the rhetorical showcases. When the sparring between Daniels and Long Thompson got heated in Merrillville, Horning offered to place his lectern between the two adversaries.

When he visited a high school class in Wheatfield last month, Horning reiterated his view that government is there to protect us -- but not from trans fats or cigarettes.

"You don't need government as much as you think you do," he often says.

But despite his loathe of an overreaching government, Horning is on his seventh bid to infiltrate. He ran for Congress in 1996, county recorder in 1998 and Indianapolis mayor a year later. In 2000, Horning made his first bid for governor, capturing less than 2 percent of the vote.

"I've been dead-on right in every race I've ever run in, and the other guys have just been flat wrong," Horning said in frustration. "That isn't the story. The story always turns into: 'Why are you running? You know you're not going to win. What is this all really about, Andy?'"

Eight years ago, he warned that the "Ponzi schemes" of Medicare and Social Security would teeter under the strain of retiring Baby Boomers. He urged a decade of 7 percent annual cuts in state government spending. And he argues his premonitions are vindicated as the nation finds itself in a recession.

In between gubernatorial bids, Horning ran for Congress twice more, as a Libertarian in 2002 and then two years later as a Republican. He lost to the late Rep. Julia Carson, a heavily favored incumbent Democrat, both times. But his GOP conversion was good for an increase of more than 93,000 votes.

"I go from getting 3 percent as a Libertarian to getting 44 percent as a Republican without changing anything but my team jacket," Horning laments. "Who knows, I might get 2 or 3 percent again."

That is about where the polls place Horning, at least the few that have included him in the question. But Horning is not deterred.

His distress regarding the state of government runs counter to a placid personal life. Now an independent contractor, he has spent more than a decade helping design medical imaging devices. Horning and his wife, Wendyl, a competitive badminton player, and their three children moved to Freedom, Ind., a small town near Bloomington, four years ago.

Did city hall ever fix that nettlesome sidewalk outside the old home in Indianapolis?

"No," Horning said. "In fact, if you go into Meridian Park on my street, it's still the one that has the worst sidewalks."

There's government for you.
http://nwi.com/articles/2008/11/02/news ... 7e5f9c.txt