Codie Ross: The Real Mudslinger

This election year has seen some contentious races, but here in northern Indiana, one of the most contentious is the race for State Representative here in the 51st District, between Republican Representative Dick Dodge and Democrat Codie Ross.

Yesterday, the Auburn-based newspaper The Star ran a front page article on Mr. Ross opening his teaching personnel file (you have to be a subscriber in order to view the article online in full), in response to inquiries about his record as a teacher, which he described as “negative campaigning”.  There are several things about what Mr. Ross has said that has left me fuming:

1) Mr. Ross cites two parties as requesting to look into his employment records from the school district where he worked: Rep. Dodge's campaign and Dr. David Powers.  The problem is the same article mentions one of the parties who made the request as a woman who left, for her address, the location of the Indiana Republican Party.  Rep. Dodge denies his campaign had anything to do with the requests, so why did Mr. Ross make the claim?


2) The inquiries made had to do with rumors about Mr. Ross during his teacher days.  I'm not familiar with the rumors myself, but I know Dr. Powers; all he has done is try to find out the truth behind the rumors, to find out what kind of character Mr. Ross is.  To call what Dr. Powers and the anonymous woman have done as “negative campaigning” and “smacks of mudslinging” is what I call damned defamatory on Mr. Ross's part.

3) It smacks of hypocrisy for Mr. Ross to apply terms like mudslinging and negative campaigning when he has done the very thing to his opponent in the form of mailings, attacking Rep. Dodge on illegal immigration.

The two mailings his campaign has sent claim Rep. Dodge voted against a bill designed to crack down on illegal immigration in Indiana.  There's one problem with that: the bill referenced to wasn't designed to crack down on illegal immigration, but was aimed at businesses in regards to unemployment contributions.  The two amendments cited featured portions of a bill designed to crack down on illegal immigration, and which had passed in the Indiana Senate, but was allowed to die by the Speaker of the Indiana House, Democrat Pat Bauer.  To say the least, inaccurate on Mr. Ross's part.

Codie Ross has made inaccurate and misleading accusations against his opponent, and has attempted to defame his opponent's campaign, as well as a friend of mine, with smears of mudslinging and negative campaigning, the very things he and the Indiana Democrat Party are guilty of doing.  Mr. Ross, you owe Dr. Powers, Rep. Dodge and his campaign an apology.