INDIANAPOLIS | Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels declared "straight-party, blind loyalty" to be on the decline before embarking on his final road trip of the fall campaign.
The prediction proved true for most of the state but not in Northwest Indiana. Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties were among only 13 counties Daniels lost Tuesday en route to an 18-point re-election victory over Democrat Jill Long Thompson.
"I don't think he was ever realistically thinking he'd win here," Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., a Democrat, said of Daniels in Lake County. "I think he was just trying to not get destroyed in Lake County, and in my opinion he accomplished that task."
The Republican governor received 35 percent of the vote in Lake County -- one percentage point higher than four years ago. In Porter County, he slipped a point, earning 43 percent of the vote.
Heading into the election, Daniels had stressed his hand in creating the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, his support for the Gary/Chicago International Airport and the more than 70 trips to the region he had made since 2005.
"He's visited you all quite a bit," said Andrew Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne." If I were him, I'd be a little bit disappointed at not fairing a little better, but you've got some pretty hard-core Democrats up there."
Despite the nearly 76,000 straight Democratic ballots cast in Lake County, Long Thompson received 17,000 fewer voters there than Barrack Obama. The drop off from John McCain to Daniels was only 1,600 votes.
Long Thompson didn't win her home county, Marshall, or the county where she grew up, Whitley. Daniels, meanwhile, won convincingly in Marion County, home to Indianapolis, despite nearly 2-1 support there for Obama.
The governor, who readily touts the untapped potential of Northwest Indiana, acknowledged last week being a bit disappointed he couldn't sway voters in the Democratic stronghold. He had predicted the election would play a pivotal role in shaping political perception of the region.
"If the electoral results don't change at all, it won't change my point of view," Daniels said in an interview last month. "But everybody else will get a real message if the electoral results don't change at all. Republicans will still say, 'You see? Right? You know, these people are hopeless.' Democrats will laugh and say, 'You see? We own em. They're in our pocket.'"
