Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
As part of his last-week campaign push, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Luke Messer stopped in Warsaw for about a half hour Wednesday to talk to about a dozen supporters at the Pizza King on East Winona Ave.
Messer had been in Elkhart, South Bend, returned to Elkhart and had left Warsaw for Kokomo, all before noon Wednesday. He ate a few slices of pizza and discussed the campaign before heading out to his next stop.
“It’s that end-of-the-campaign time when you’re sprinting around from community to community, letting people know you’re hustling and working,” he said. “I feel really great about where it is, but it’s going to be a really close race.
“The bottom line is it’s a very close primary and people have a big decision to make. My census people are sincerely trying to figure it out; doing their best to wade through everything and figure out who’s our best candidate to take on (Democrat and incumbent) Joe Donnelly.
“I’m optimistic that as we continue through these last five to six days, I’ll be the nominee.”
The current congressman said that he’s running basically a clean campaign, trying to steer clear of the mud slinging that has been commonplace almost from the beginning, despite the media coverage of the campaign.
“I think there’s a sense that there’s no civility, but we’ve tried to conduct ourselves in a fact-based way. But I also think what’s hard is folks see all this stuff flying around me, and they don’t know.
“In some ways the media really hasn’t done their job in this race. I’m not talking about local media, but I think the constant narrative has been ‘all those guys, all those guys,’ and frankly I think that’s not a fair description of the campaign as it’s played out, whether it’s through the debates or the facts and things folks have thrown around.”
While the length of primary campaign has been a grind, Messer said that was by design. With the passage of time, he said people will reveal their true character, including opponents Mike Braun and Todd Rokita, and that would ultimately work to his advantage.
“The message I take everywhere is I am who I say I am; I’m a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment conservative who supports President Trump.
“Throughout this campaign I’ve tried to stay laser-focused on Joe Donnelly. I’ve tried to stay laser-focused on the truth. A lot of attacks have been floating around over a period of the last four months.
“For example, it is a fact that Mike Braun calls himself a lifelong Republican, but he’s voted in Democratic primaries for 38 years. We’re trying to determine who will be a conservative champion for us in Washington, and I think that’s a factor to consider.
“I‘ve known Todd Rokita since we were teenagers. But he’s run a campaign that independent fact-checkers have deemed to be mostly false. Most of what he said just isn’t true. And I think those kind of things reflect on what kind of a leader it will take to beat Joe Donnelly.
“I’ve thought from the beginning that a long campaign was our friend. I really felt like the longer period we had for people to really get a sense of who everybody was, or really is, that will be to our advantage.
“It’s going to be close, and every vote counts. We’re going to keep hustling to the end.”
Messer said he feels his record of service will come through, and his experience in Congress will play a role in his successfully completing the primary campaign season.
“Once people get elected, they rarely get better. They are who they are before they get there, and many people stay the same,” he said. “I try to run as a person of integrity and try to serve as a person of integrity.”
“I’m very confident because I trust the people of Indiana. I think when given the right information, people will make the right choice. So the question is, ‘Have we been able to get them the right information?’ Hopefully, we have, and that will make the difference.”
