IN - Ragnar Research (R?): Holcomb +26%

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Holcomb should run for President. He is smart enough to realize that 1) Good Policy should trump politics in a crisis and 2) good politics is also on the side of said policy since according to SUSA, 63% of Republicans support such, including of 80% of Republicans 65 and up.

Holcomb is going to outrun Trump by miles in Indy Metro, at the expense of some young, white, rural voters who think they are immortal, bought into online nonsense, confused by the Trump administration, and/or just plain don't give a crap about their parents and grandparents.

If Trump wasn't running around mocking masks, and getting Covid because of it so he can look like faux tough guy, support for masks would be at 90% among Republicans and this wouldn't be a partisan issue (it really isn't since vast majorities support it).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Holcomb should run for President. He is smart enough to realize that 1) Good Policy should trump politics in a crisis and 2) good politics is also on the side of said policy since according to SUSA, 63% of Republicans support such, including of 80% of Republicans 65 and up.

The reason he is governor is he was running 3rd in a Senate primary race to Todd Young and Marlin Stutzman, this was post-2012 Richard Mourdock, and the state party was scared of the Republican establishment vote splitting with Young leading to Stutzman winning the primary and being vulnerable in the general. So Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann who did not get along well with Governor Mike Pence suddenly had an opening for her come up to become the President of Ivy Tech, creating a LG vacancy that Holcomb was selected to fill, and suddenly the establishment vote was not getting split in the Republican primary, leading to a comfortable Young victory. Then Mike Pence gets called up to be vice president, and Holcomb is selected by the state party central committee to fill the vacancy (initial vote was Holcomb 9, Rep. Susan Brooks 7, Rep. Todd Rokita 2, and I think the initial 2 Rokita votes went to Holcomb).

I generally like Holcomb, but he's never faced a Republican primary in a Republican-heavy state. He was failing miserably in one, 3rd of 3, and was plucked out of it with a golden parachute for "good of the party", which wound up with him being Governor due to "extenuating circumstances". He literally went from possibly finishing 3rd in a Senate primary to inheriting the Governor nomination and winning in November in a Republican wave year in 9 months. Throw him in a presidential race primary and when he's never finished 1st out of 2 you're asking him to finish 1st out of 15 to 20.

The mask requirement how it was implemented was just dumb. He told everyone to wear masks but had nothing about enforcement, and suddenly all these county sheriff's offices were deluged with phone calls of how their neighbor wasn't wearing one at the Kroger: the most easy-to-see government dictating policy but washing their hands of it post-dictate saying enforcement was someone else's responsibility ever. I think a majority of the county sheriff's offices in the state had to put out policy guidelines for this locally on what they would enforce and not enforce (in short: mask mandate not constitutional per Attorney General, but businesses are allowed to mandate you wear a mask and we'll respond to disturbances at said businesses over this) which shows Holcomb pissed them all off. Holcomb was forced to roll back by the Attorney General (a political enemy of Holcomb for reasons I won't get into here) who said it was unconstitutional because the legislature had to make the policy law, not purely governor dictate. Another one that's not as politcally touchy but the same thing is Holcomb pushed on the legislature to make it law that using/touching a cell phone while driving was a crime. The legislature did pass this in their session earlier this year. I mean, I understand and get it, but at the same time does he really expect sheriff's offices to start pulling people over for this and enforcing this law when they don't enforce, say, the state's marijuana laws, or speed limits up to a point?

There's also been some "one law for the public, not for me". Closed all the state parks for Covid-19 which had negative effects on people that lived in those parks in RV's, but Holcomb had a residence at Brown County State Park... The stages of reopening, dear God. What the hell is Stage 4.5? This was an invented stage where we were supposed to go from 4 to 5 and then numbers got worse. Since his administration had telegraphed we were moving up but couldn't justify going to 5 and didn't want to say things were getting worse so had to stay at 4, they invented Stage 4.5 which we were at for a long time. You also had certain stages of reopening that happened to coincide with particular events and weekends, say the 4th of July or the Indianapolis 500. Coincidental how that happens for policies that are 100% science-based.

I remember his progression to the Governorship rather well.

Why is he doing so well, to the point of winning the early vote by 11% in your estimation, considering the issues with implementation and lack of enforcement considerations?