Candidates eat tenderloins, talk up small business.
Presidential Primaries Come to Indiana
On Tuesday, Donald Trump won Indiana’s presidential primary.
But in the two weeks leading up to Indiana’s moment in the political sun, candidates crisscrossed the state, talking up the needs of small business and lauding the state’s economic progress and Gov. Mike Pence.
The Republican primary in Indiana became the center of the political universe in the final days of April and the early days of May. Donald Trump became the first candidate to visit the state, followed by his competitors. Ohio Gov. John Kasich held a fundraiser at the Columbia Club, but avoided campaigning here as a result of a pact with Ted Cruz, to whom he ceded the state in exchange for Cruz agreeing to not campaign in New Mexico and Oregon. And Cruz, meanwhile, barnstormed the state, recognizing it as perhaps his last chance to stop Trump from clinching the party’s nomination before its July convention in Cleveland.
“Now Indiana is a battleground,” Cruz told a group of Hoosier voters at the Boone County Fairgrounds in April. “The entire country and the eyes of America are on Indiana. Indiana has a platform. Indiana has a national megaphone, and we can decide which path we want to go down.”
Earlier in the day, he made a pit stop at the Oasis Diner in Plainfield.
Cruz said his administration would “reign in the regulators.”
“If you want to unleash an incredible engine of economic growth, you simply lift the boot of the federal government off of the neck of small businesses,” Cruz said. “If I’m elected president, we’ll repeal every word of Obamacare.”
At the Indiana State Fairgrounds, Trump also spoke about jobs and the economy. “Our jobs are being ripped out of states,” Trump said. He also praised Gov. Mike Pence, whom he said worked hard on behalf of Hoosiers.
In other statewide primaries, Todd Young defeated Marlin Stutzman in a sharply contested Republican race for U.S. Senate. Young will square off against Rep. Baron Hill in November.
In the 9th Congressional District, businessman Trey Hollingsworth defeated State Sen. Erin Houchin, Attorney General Greg Zoeller, and State Sen. Brent Waltz. Hollingsworth will face Monroe County councilwoman and former Miss Indiana Shelli Yoder in November.
