'Off the Record': Bad candidates equal bad democracy

The following is a column from the Exponent's city editor. The views expressed in this column do not represent the views of the city desk, the Exponent or its entire staff.

Last week's local and state election shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. And the winners deserved their wins.

But calling this election a "race" would be generous because, in most cases, the choices in the election were disappointingly stark — and the margins were understandably large.

In politics, the content of your character is called "quality." While scholars can argue what the true definition of a "quality candidate" is, I see it as the ability to promote your agenda while your character (whether that be your personality, history or actions while running) doesn't take away from the salience of your policies.

But some of the candidates in this year's election were far from meeting that threshold — and it's obvious just by looking at some of the races.

Every single race in the Greater Lafayette community felt like an unsuccessful story of David and Goliath. When there was a decorated incumbent on the ballot, you could be sure that they were going to keep their seat — not because they earned it, but because the other option wasn't an option at all.

In the District 27 Indiana State House race, 22-term Democratic incumbent Sheila Klinker won against Republican Oscar Alvarez, a man facing two pending criminal charges; one for battery after allegedly throwing a screwdriver at somebody's mouth.

In the District 4 U.S. House race, four-term Republican incumbent Jim Baird won against Democratic outsider Derrick Holder, who didn't put any of his policy positions on his campaign website because "he wants people to reach out to him, to start a conversation about policies and beliefs," according to previous Exponent reporting.

In the District 26 Indiana State House race, Democratic incumbent Chris Campbell won against Republican outsider Jim Schenke, a man who allegedly knocked over a light post with his campaign motorhome and was arrested the day before Election Day for allegedly violating a protection order.

Even in the local races the disparities were painfully obvious.

Republican coroner incumbent Carrie Costello handily won her race against Libertarian Benjamin Milanowski, who told the Exponent he saw himself as a "paper candidate." In an interview with local journalist Dave Bangert, he also described that he had aspirations to arrest the sheriff with a "big net."

Republican incumbent Tom Murtaugh won his race against Jaime Ortiz Jr., a man whose profile picture on Facebook is Ted Kaczynski with the words "vote by mail" surrounding it.

Do you see the trend? The universal flaw with every race was that the incumbent's opposition wasn’t marketable in the slightest.

The first two, Alvarez for State House and Holder for U.S. House, were poor because they didn't make their agendas clear and their campaigns had no real hub for interaction.

Alvarez had no campaign website, instead holding multiple Facebook accounts with right-wing memes and long-winded live streams that would go on for hours.

He had no clear agenda and made no public appearances except for a booth at the 4-H fair in the summer.

Holder had a campaign website that was devoid of substance and without policy positions before the Exponent spoke with him. Sometime after the article was published, a new "blog/policy positions" appeared at the top of his website.

Today, there's 17 posts on it with policy positions ranging from marijuana legalization to agriculture in Indiana. When the posts were put into QuillBot, an AI detection software, the posts came up as 100% AI generated.

The candidate for coroner, Milanowski, was a poor quality candidate for several reasons, most pointedly because he didn't care about winning.

Baird won against Holder with 65% of the vote, a 118,000 vote disparity. Campbell won against Schenke with 64% of the vote. Klinker won against Alvarez with 61%. Costello won against Milanowski with 78%. Murtaugh won against Ortiz Jr. with 77%.

These weren't races. They were landslides.

So what's my argument? If your name is on the ballot, you should give a damn.
The above candidates lost their races by wide margins and frankly, it's a shame voters were forced to choose between decades-long incumbents with readily available policy agendas and newcomers who didn't have the time, experience, money or patience to run a political campaign.

But you don't have to take it just from me. The winners of these elections know that character matters.

"My name on that ballot is very important to me," Costello told the Exponent in August. "I very much love my job and I think we do great things in the community and I wouldn't do it just to see my name on the ballot. That's not my character."

Races should be competitive. Incumbents have the advantage (or disadvantage) of their record, but just because they're a known commodity doesn't mean they're the right choice.

Lafayette, West Lafayette and District 4 are deserts devoid of quality opposition candidates. Being one of the state's few districts with Democratic representatives and a Republican U.S. Representative, Greater Lafayette is prime real estate for quality candidates across the political aisle to disrupt the system and make a name for themselves.

But this election proved that if they're out there, they're not quite ready to run yet.