Struggling Sen. Lugar makes plea for help from Dems, independents

Sen. Richard Lugar's campaign came down to one word Friday: "help."

In the political equivalent of an SOS, Lugar, a Navy veteran, urged Hoosiers of any political persuasion who like what he's done in his 36-year career in the Senate to help him stay there.

"Every person in Indiana who wants me to continue, every person wherever they might be at this point, I encourage them to come out," he said. "Come out immediately, as fast as you can."

The reason for the urgency: The election is Tuesday, and a new poll shows Treasurer Richard Mourdock defeating Lugar, 48 percent to 38 percent.

That's a dramatic slide for Lugar, who won in 2006 with more than 80 percent of the vote after Democrats didn't bother to field a candidate against him. Only a month ago, another Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground poll showed Lugar leading Mourdock, 42 percent to 35 percent.

Robert Dion, a University of Evansville political science professor, summed it up in one word: "devastating."

Mourdock's campaign spokesman Chris Conner said the poll --taken Monday and Tuesday of 700 likely GOP primary voters statewide, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points -- confirms what that campaign has believed:

"Hoosiers are tired of Senator Lugar's willingness to support liberal causes in Washington, they feel he is out of touch with the values they hold dear and they firmly believe it is time for a change."






Senator Lunar is a strong supporter of DA and it looks like he won't be here for the next DA vote.

We won't need him anyways. DA is bound to pass.

The world you live in, in which you are nonchalant about a pro-dream act REPUBLICAN senator not being able to win his primary challenge against an ascendant tea party republican who probably won't advocate for the cause, never fails to amaze me. The fact you even state that he won't matter just astonishes me, this to a man who helped introduce this back into the senate in 2009 with Richard Durbin.

I know that. He is just one vote though.

you call a guy who supports us just one vote? A total disrespectul comment to someone who cares about our cause.

I love how DA User is still annoying people

Lugar does support the Dream Act. This is something Dreamers cannot control.

I don't know what DA user plans to go in if something does one day pass, but I doubt he has a future as a political advisor or analyst.

Anything is possible. I could be in Congress someday pushing for the next Dream Act.

The fact you would even be supporting the next huge wave of minor immigration after our own is just shocking. I hope this next wave of immigration reform legislation(if it ever happens) is truly the last. Plus with the rise of ever greater security enforcement, stories like ours will never ever happen again. The climate alone will just be that strict.