Rep. Carson puts two-month stint in Washington to good use for primary

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) has been in office less than two months, but he has used that time to build up a number of the advantages of incumbency as a firewall in Tuesday’s primary.

Carson’s delivery Saturday of the Democratic radio address was just the latest opportunity for him to use his incumbent status in a crowded four-person primary. In addition to his budding national profile, he could also benefit from the recent endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the extra money that comes with the office.

{mosads}Those last two things will help him guard against two potential pitfalls for his candidacy: a split of the black vote among the three black candidates in the race, and the tremendous financial advantage of former state Health Commissioner Woody Myers.

If Carson is felled Tuesday, it will likely be either because he, Myers and state Rep. Carolene Mays split the black vote while white state Rep. David Orentlicher slides past them, or because Myers has successfully saturated the airwaves with his $1.6 million in self-funding.

While Carson is not listed on Tuesday’s ballot as an incumbent — Indiana does not denote incumbency — his image-building can only help what was already an invaluable last name.

His grandmother, former Rep. Julia Carson (D), held the seat until her death in December. He won the special election to replace her.

Over the last two months, Carson has introduced two bills and co-sponsored 210, many of which deal with healthcare.

Brian Vargus, a political science professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), said the race is the most expensive congressional primary in the state’s history, and political action committee (PAC) and member support have been invaluable for Carson.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) Frontline program has helped Carson raise about $500,000 in less than two months for the primary. The Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) political action committee has also chipped in $150,000 in ads.

“It’s not so much his incumbency as it is the Carson name, or we could call it the ‘Carson incumbency,’ ” Vargus said. “He’s got to be favored to win it, given the money he’s getting from Washington and those other things.”

Carson was selected by party leaders to run in March’s special election for the 7th district seat — a process that left the three other main candidates unsatisfied and led them to contest the general election primary.

An independent poll released last week by Gauge Market Research showed Carson leading Myers, 45-28, with Orentlicher and Mays in single digits. Another poll conducted three weeks ago for the Myers campaign showed Carson ahead of Myers, 34-28, with Orentlicher at 13 percent.

Orentlicher got a later start on advertising but has recently taken aim at both Carson and Myers, saying the incumbent has taken too much money from special interests and that Myers worked with Republicans to kill the patients’ bill of rights measure.

Myers has labeled the ads defamatory and has threatened legal action. Orentlicher has stood by them.

“This political stunt is designed to distract from the real issue in this race — the extraordinary influence of special interests on the other candidates,” Orentlicher said.

The battling between Orentlicher and Myers could help Carson, who has stayed above the fray, if they wind up damaging each other or Orentlicher cuts into Myers’s votes.

Myers said he didn’t know the latest on potential legal action, but he has joined in Orentlicher’s criticism of Carson for taking Washington money.

“He certainly figured out very quickly how to find the Washington lobbyists and PACs,” Myers said. “It’s amazing how somebody [who has] not been in Washington in elective office before has found that many PACs that fast.”

Carson’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Another potential boon to Carson will be the presidential race. While other vulnerable freshman lawmakers have in many cases declined to take sides in the increasingly divisive Democratic presidential race, Carson and Obama endorsed each other in recent weeks.

Obama also cut an ad for Carson, a new superdelegate, just as he did during now-Rep. Bill Foster’s (D-Ill.) special-election victory in March.

Obama is expected to win Indianapolis-based Marion County, which is contained in the 7th district, but Vargus noted that the endorsement could also motivate retired union workers in the area who tend to support Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Regardless, turnout is expected to be high in the black community, which comprises 30 percent of the district and much of its Democratic base, and Obama’s help with those voters could avoid the split that would open the door to Orentlicher.

The winner only needs a plurality, meaning the crowded field should dilute whatever anti-incumbent vote there might be.

“He won his special election by taking big margins in the African-American precincts and with very low turnout in the mixed and mostly white areas,” Vargus said. “Whether he can keep that margin in those African-American areas and not have somebody else do well in the white areas is an open question.”