Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Flanked by a President Donald Trump cut-out, 4th District U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita told the Kosciusko County GOP movers and shakers Friday why he’s the best choice to be the Republican nominee to face Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly this fall.
In Tuesday’s Republican primary, Rokita is up against businessman Mike Braun and Congressman Luke Messer. Rokita’s stop Friday at Mad Anthony’s in Warsaw was one of many stops he had on the campaign trail, telling the several dozen people there his campaign was doing “600-700 miles a day.”
If elected as Indiana’s next U.S. senator, Rokita said that’s also the way he’s going to serve the state. “I’m not going to dial it in from Washington. You’re going to see me every weekend, somewhere in Indiana. It’s just how I do it.” He said he sleeps in his office during the week and has no residence in Washington, coming back to Indiana every weekend “because this is where I get my marching orders.”
Rokita said he’s getting great results from the 57-city tour he’s on. In exiting polling on the early votes, he said he’s leading by a 10-percent margin.
“I am the fighter in this race, and I am the conservative in this race, I’m the pro-Trump candidate that’s going to have his back in the United States Senate,” he said.
When Rokita asked the crowd if they thought Trump was doing a good job, it responded with a round of applause.
“I want you to explain that to the media elite. I don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. I can only imagine what our president is going through, just based on this bus trip and what they’re doing to me. Anonymous sources and stories, making stuff up literally. I don’t know what’s worse, some of this negative advertising or the actual news stories. It’s just ridiculous,” he said during his 15-minute speech.
Rokita mentioned that Rex Early, chairman of Trump Indiana for 2016, and Tony Samuel, the vice chairman, had been with his campaign for the first 26 stops of his 57-city tour. They were unable to make the Warsaw stop because they had to tape an Indianapolis news show.
“They have endorsed me. That team, and the thousands that they’ve lead, have endorsed me as the pro-Trump conservative. The one they want to see help President Trump in the United States Senate,” Rokita said.
He segued into specific topics by saying that places like video stores require photo identification so it shouldn’t be a problem for people to have one when they vote. When he was elected Indiana’s secretary of state previously, he said, “I looked around and said, ‘OK, guys, let’s do voter identification. And some helped get it in, getting the law passed. Some were very helpful. But I knew the only way I could implement it was to go around the state again.”
He met with precinct committeemen, poll inspectors to make sure “that we had the right education, to make sure we were trained, that we put out a great election for the world.” National media came in, he said, waiting for Indiana to “mess it up.” He said everyone who was eligible to vote and had their proper credentials were allowed to vote. “We had an excellent election,” he said, adding that turnout went up when people were saying the voter turnout would be suppressed.
“The point being, the liberal elite were calling us names. The media elite were waiting for us to screw up, pretty much saying we were. Even the Republican establishment was whispering in my ear, ‘Todd, we know you just got elected. Todd, we know you just got elected on the Republican label. Todd, don’t you dare have voter identification at the polls because you’re going to get us called names. You’re going to ruin our brand.’ I said no,” he recalled.
He ignored the “elite” and it was an “excellent” election, Rokita stated, adding he only got sued four times but the U.S. Supreme Court sided with him and the state.
After Indiana was the first state to have the voter identification law, Rokita said now 30 states have it and they’re modeled after Indiana’s “to have that same Constitutionally protected safeguard. To stop illegals from voting, to stop Democrats from cheating. If you’re not a citizen, you shouldn’t be voting. You shouldn’t be cheating the system anyway.”
Shifting gears, Rokita said he was “100 percent pro-life with no exception.”
“My faith calls me to believe that. Science calls me to believe that. You will never get me to say that it’s OK to intentionally kill innocent human life. You’re just not going to get me to say it,” he said.
Rokita said he believes in the “God-given inalienable right for us to defend ourselves ... and you’re never going to get me to say anything that will hinder the right for us to protect ourselves and our families. It is a right not given by government. It is inalienable, it is God-given, and therefore government can’t hinder it and take it away.”
He said he has an “A” rating by the National Rifle Association, and the Gun Owners of America have given him their highest mark.
Of Donnelly, Braun, Messer and himself, Rokita said he’s the “only one” who has never voted to raise taxes and he never will. “Government doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem,” he said.
“I am the only one from the majority party in Congress on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Here we are, President Trump and I, cutting taxes. But even before President Trump got here, we passed a bill out of Transportation Committee that got into law that gave Indiana a $1 billion per year over five years. We’re in the middle of that right now. It’s the first time it was done in 11 years, and I helped write it,” Rokita said.
Rokita said he wants to help Trump end illegal immigration.
“If we’re going to be a country of laws – if the laws are going to apply to all of us equally – then we shouldn’t abide by any kind of amnesty. Amnesty by definition is ignoring the law. Sanctuary cities defy the law. Not only do I want to defund sanctuary cities, I want to slap handcuffs on local politicians who don’t abide by federal immigration law,” he stated, adding he wanted to “build the law.”
Before a little question-and-answer session, Rokita told the Republicans, “You’ll always know where I stand because you will have looked me in the eye, and I’m true to my word.”
