Two state candidates attending Wednesday’s Kosciusko County GOP Fish Fry said they feel confident about their prospects going into the November general election.
Indiana Lt. Gov. and Republican Governor candidate Eric Holcomb and Attorney General candidate Curtis Hill both made appearances at the event at the fairgrounds in Warsaw.
Holcomb said everything was going “full steam ahead.” “We’re on a good path and we’ve got 33, 34 days, depending on if you count election day,” he said. “We want to make sure we get our message out before we get to election day, but I feel great about where we are. I feel very encouraged.”
Holcomb’s running mate for lieutenant governor is State Auditor Suzanne Crouch. His opponent for Indiana governor is Democrat and former State House Speaker John Gregg, whose running mate for lieutenant governor is Christina Hale.
Holcomb said his campaign will be in perpetual motion until the election. “I’m in Warsaw right now, and tonight I’ll be in French Lick. So you can imagine. I was in Fort Wayne earlier today. Last week, I was in Jeffersonville and over to Lake County and central Indiana. Every day is full-steam ahead and the team has formed up.”
He said they’ve raised a record amount of financial resources to get the message out, and have teams in all 92 of Indiana’s counties working. “It’s really going to come down to getting our message out and keeping the state moving forward, or going back to the days when my opponent was in charge,” he said. “There’s a real sharp contrast between the future and the past.”
Holcomb became the Republican governor candidate after Gov. Mike Pence agreed earlier this year to be the vice president candidate under presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Holcomb said he still has his day job and continues to carry out his job as lieutenant governor very seriously.
“We have a great team. Staff is very important, and the governor and I keep in close contact. Our job 1 is our job 1, and we keep that in line. It’s an election year, obviously, so you try to squeeze out every minute of the day,” he said.
Holcomb said they had 100 days to run a gubernatorial campaign, so “we try to do about a week’s worth of work about every day, understanding that we’re wearing two hats. But that’s what comes with campaigns.”
He said they feel blessed and are having an “encouraging day after an encouraging day that fuels you.”
Hill, the Elkhart County prosecutor, is running for the state attorney general against Democrat Lorenzo Arredondo, a retired circuit court judge from Lake County. “We’re feeling really good about the election. We’re working very hard across the state, meeting all sorts of people, learning about their issues, learning about their concerns, not only about the attorney general’s office but also the state of Indiana and the issues of interest of the future of our country,” Hill said.
If elected Nov. 8, he said the first thing he wants to do is to make sure his office is service oriented. “The office of the attorney general is a very large office, around 400 individuals working there, a lot of good people, but we want to make sure we have a good, solid direction and purpose in providing services to folk. We want to evaluate the staff and make sure that everybody has a new energy and new leadership level,” he said.
“Then we’re looking to work with folks. We want to make sure that our consumer protection division is solid so that the complaints that come in are adequately and sufficiently handled. We want to make sure that the issues from the federal government that are coming in are constitutional, so we’ll be watching for federal agencies that go outside of Congress to impose their will on our state to make sure we maintain our freedom.
“For me, public safety is always a big, big concern, having served as prosecuting attorney in my home community for the last 14 years. So I want to work with the General Assembly, with the law enforcement and prosecutors to make sure that legislation is moving forward from a public safety standpoint has the right tone to keep people accountable and also provide appropriate alternatives,” Hill said.
“So it’s a very big job in terms of the scope and I’m looking forward to getting started.
