(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)

Presenting our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where the post office has been stolen and the mailbox is locked.

We begin in Indiana, where a woman named Jennifer Pace won a Republican primary election to run against incumbent Rep. Andre Carson in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. And this was a remarkable victory because Ms. Pace had become not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead, two months before she won the primary. From Fox59 in Indianapolis:

The leader in the Republican race for Indiana’s seventh district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been dead since March. According to results from Tuesday’s primary election, Jennifer Pace is leading the race with 31.2% of the vote, or 7,704 votes, as of Wednesday morning. Pace reportedly died of a heart attack in March after she qualified to be on the ballot.

Naturally, Ms. Pace’s victory raises a number of questions, the biggest one of which is how the hell this happened two freaking months after her death. Was every GOP voter in the district simply not paying attention? Did nobody notice that the leading Republican candidate mysteriously stopped campaigning in March, or did we have a Weekend at Bernie’s thing going on here? Not that any of this matters; Carson’s going to win re-election from here to there, but it does seem to indicate that somebody in the Indiana GOP has to start noticing whether their candidates have joined the choir invisible.

We move north to Wisconsin, where the president made a very shrewd move on Wednesday. He showed up in Racine to announce that Microsoft was going to invest $3.3 billion in developing an AI data center there. The really nifty political move was to announce that the new plant was going to be built on the proposed site of the Foxconn debacle, the site of the monumental bait-and-switch pulled on saps like the former president* and the former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. From The New York Times:

The Microsoft data center will be built on grounds where Mr. Trump, as president, announced in 2017 that Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels. Mr. Trump promised that it would be the “eighth wonder of the world,” and visited the site with elected officials and golden shovels. But the project never materialized as expected. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden took direct aim at the failed promise. “Look what happened—they dug a hole with those golden shovels, and then they fell into it,” Mr. Biden told the crowd. “During the previous administration, my predecessor made promises, which he broke more than kept, left a lot of people behind in communities like Racine,” Mr. Biden said. “On my watch, we make promises and we keep promises.”

It’s always nice when you can feed yourself a layup.

We move along to West Virginia, where there are massive costs looming regarding the cleanup of abandoned coal mines. The state has a fund to finance this monumental job, but as Ken Ward Jr. of the Mountain State Spotlight reports, that fund is one corporate bankruptcy away from being tapped out—and the people of West Virginia are one corporate bankruptcy away from holding the bag.

The bankruptcy of just one significant mining company could wipe out the fund, according to the state’s top regulatory official. And auditors for the Republican-controlled Legislature said at least five major companies were “at risk” of dumping cleanup costs on the state. At $15 million, the state’s fund for restoring land is at its lowest level in more than 20 years. The program’s latest published actuarial report in 2022 warned that a related water cleanup trust fund will lose half its balance over the next 10 years. These are costs the coal industry was supposed to cover. Unreclaimed mine sites can not only damage the environment but also endanger coalfield residents who live nearby. Coal waste dams sometimes leak or break, flooding downstream communities. Cliffs of rock and debris left behind after mining can collapse. Runoff that isn’t contained or treated often poisons fish or water supplies.

Working with the good people at ProPublica—and nice job, Pulitzer Committee—Ward points out that this is not a problem that suddenly cropped up.

State and federal officials have been warned repeatedly over the past 40 years that this reckoning was coming but have failed to prepare for it. Again and again, the review found, auditors questioned whether West Virginia’s reclamation program would have adequate funding. But neither state lawmakers nor regulators required coal companies to have enough reclamation bonds as insurance should they go belly up. Nor did legislators raise the tax on coal production enough to make up the difference. Federal officials in both Republican and Democratic administrations who were supposed to oversee the state program cautioned there were problems but didn’t step in.

Just two years ago, West Virginia’s legislative leaders ignored recommendations from their own auditors to bolster the fund. Instead, they called for an $8 billion bailout from the federal government. And last month, Gov. Jim Justice’s administration removed a key critic from an advisory panel that monitors the fund, just as the group was about to review a new study on the fund’s future health. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Taking care of the public’s money is undeniably part of the government’s job. But decades of anti-tax nihilism have resulted in governments that act out of reflexive fear and not out of reasoned caution. Problems go unresolved until they evolve into crises. Then the public gets angry at the emergency remedial costs anyway.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Gully Spelunker Friedman of the Plains brings us a tale of local dogs hungry for homework. From KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City:

U.S. News and World Report says the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) did not grant them access to schools’ AP testing data, causing numerous Oklahoma schools to plummet in U.S. News’ rankings the past two years. OSDE claims they sent the data, but it must’ve been lost in the mail.

There is nothing worse than imaginative bureaucrats, and Oklahoma seems to be plagued by a number of them. I mean, seriously—lost in the mail??? This kind of obvious f*ck-up calls for multisyllabic words in dependent clauses in insanely complicated sentences, a kind of government-speak that’s halfway between Harvard Business School and Finnegans Wake. Of course, you can still say it got lost in the mail, but the point is to say it in such a way as to wear out your superiors so that they’re too exhausted to notice that your uncle, the county commissioner, put you into a job you’re too dumb or lazy to handle. That’s the American way.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Before she makes her official WNBA regular-season debut, Caitlin Clark will have one more chance to get acclimated.

Clark and the Indiana Fever will be playing their second and final preseason game Thursday against the Atlanta Dream at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, marking the first time Clark will play in front of her home fans.

Clark was the No. 1 overall selection in the 2024 WNBA draft in mid-April after a wildly productive college career with the Iowa Hawkeyes, in which she broke the all-time scoring record for men’s and women’s basketball.

Here’s everything you need to know about Thursday’s preseason game between the Indiana Fever and the Atlanta Dream.

What time is Indiana Fever vs. Atlanta Dream?

Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever will host the Atlanta Dream Thursday at 7 p.m. ET. The game will take place at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

How to watch Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever play the Atlanta Dream tonight

The Indiana Fever game against the Atlanta Dream is available on the WNBA’s League Pass. Fans can get League Pass by downloading the WNBA app. Preseason games are free. The game also is available for streaming on Fubo here (regional restrictions apply).

The game is otherwise not televised.

How did Caitlin Clark do in her first preseason game?

In what was maybe the most anticipated preseason game in the 28-year history of the WNBA, Clark and the Fever played in Dallas against the Wings last Friday. Indiana dropped the game, 79-76, but Clark played well in her first-ever WNBA action.

She started the game and played 28 minutes, and finished 6-of-15 from the floor — including 5-of-13 from 3-point range — to score 21 points. She also added three rebounds, two assists and two steals, but committed five turnovers. She made all but one of her five free throw attempts.

As she did throughout her college career at Iowa, Clark flashed her ability to elude defenders in the perimeter with her dribbling and showed off her deep range.

When do Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever open the regular season?

Caitlin Clark and the Fever will open the regular season on the road against the Connecticut Sun on May 14. Their home opener is May 16 against the New York Liberty. 

As the dust settles from Tuesday’s primary, low turnout continues to plague Indiana’s elections. But some new faces will populate Indiana’s ever-changing political landscape while other politicians didn’t see the comeback they’d hope to achieve. 

“Probably the biggest takeaway that I would have is that, in many ways, this was the most competitive primary Indiana has seen in a while. And yet, voter turnout was still exceptionally low,” said Greg Shufeldt, a political science professor at the University of Indianapolis. 

He noted that in Marion County, the largest population center in the state, turnout was as low as 20% even with a historically competitive — and expensive — governor’s race.

“Having a multi-candidate governor’s race — and having as much money that was spent in the race — it was disappointing how few voters turned out to vote,” Shufeldt said. 

A final turnout report from the Indiana Secretary of State’s office won’t be ready for weeks but preliminary reports suggest that turnout hovered around 20 to 25% for many parts of the state. 

For comparison, 2022 primary turnout for the state was 14%, lower than the 24% turnout for 2020’s primary — which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and permitted expanded use of absentee ballots.

Indiana ranks near the bottom of the country when it comes to voter turnout for elections, according to the latest Indiana Civic Health Index. Out of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the Hoosier state ranked 50th out of 51 for voter turnout in 2022, and 40th when it comes to registration.

Still, state officials announced last week that the state has seen an increase in voter registration leading up to Tuesday’s elections.

The Secretary of State’s office reported an increase in voter registrations in the last month before April’s deadline when compared to data from the past five years. Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales pointed to a statewide voter outreach campaign as a driving force behind registration increase.

The latest voter registration and absentee ballot numbers have yet to be released by the Secretary of State, but the office indicated that 4,674,413 Hoosiers were registered to vote as of Jan. 2. That’s equal to about 69% of the state’s population.

Indiana’s late presidential primary

Hoosiers voting for president had no primary choices — Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been their parties’ nominees for months — but that didn’t stop some from checking the box for comparatively moderate Republican Nikki Haley. She dropped out of the race in March, but garnered votes from one in five, about 21%, of Republican voters.

That may have been a protest vote, per Shufeldt. Indiana has open primary elections, so Democrats and independents may have pulled GOP ballots and voted against the former president.

Although moderate group ReCenter Indiana and others have encouraged such primary-swapping, Shufeldt said getting voters to do so “systematically” would require a “more concerted push.”

Votes for Haley tallied at close to 125,000 as of Wednesday, according to the Indiana Secretary of State. Trump led in all Indiana counties, however.

The former United Nations Ambassador earned the highest support in Boone, Hamilton, Marion, Tippecanoe and St. Joseph counties, where 30% or more of voters opted for Haley. The most votes — 35.1% – came from Republicans in Marion County, equal to nearly 16,000 Hoosiers.

In the 2020 primary, almost 92% of Indiana’s Republican voters supported Trump. In a much more crowded GOP field in 2016, Trump topped eight other candidates, earning 33.6% of Republicans’ votes.

Braun walks away with it

Indiana’s most expensive gubernatorial primary ended in a whimper just an hour after most of the state’s polls closed, with U.S. Sen. Mike Braun finishing 18 percentage points ahead of his closest competitor.

Braun nabs early win in the Republican primary for governor

He came into the race with a hefty war chest, as did Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, but he didn’t spend the most; that was businessman Brad Chambers, who finished third. Chambers and Eric Doden, both wealthy entrepreneurs, poured money into their respective campaigns — including several multimillion dollar loans on Chambers’ part.

“This is kind of the power of incumbency and status quo,” Shufeldt said.

But, he noted, Braun did not win over a majority of primary voters; the senator won a plurality of about 40%.

Meanwhile, former Attorney General Curtis Hill’s political comeback ended with him at the bottom of the pile of Republican gubernatorial candidates — behind a conservative activist running on a shoestring budget but backed by dedicated volunteers.

“Other candidates with similarly sullied reputations that have been rejected by voters can find second or third chances, so I wouldn’t necessarily rule (a rebound) out,” Shufeldt said. But, he added, “Who Curtis Hill would have needed to win an election was so very clearly already in Sen. Braun’s camp.”

The Indiana Supreme Court in 2020 suspended then-Attorney General Hill’s law license for 30 days after finding that he committed criminal battery, and he lost in a 2020 convention to sitting Attorney General Todd Rokita.

Changes coming to the Statehouse

Two incumbent state lawmakers lost their seats in Tuesday’s elections: Rep. Sharon Negele and Sen. David Vinzant of Hobart. Several others narrowly survived close elections.

Vinzant narrowly won the seat in a January caucus vote over Mark Spencer, but Spencer won the voters on Tuesday. Negele, on the other hand, had held her seat for five terms, losing to military veteran and teacher Matthew Commons by over 2,000 votes. 

The Attica Republican has represented House District 13 since 2012. The seat is geographically large, covering all of Benton and Warren counties, and portions of Fountain, Jasper, Montgomery, Newton, Tippecanoe and White counties.

She has been known in the Statehouse as an effective legislator with clout in the House Republican caucus. Earlier this year she spearheaded a bill to tackle the criminalization of revenge pornography using artificial intelligence.

But the race against Commons was about local control, said Dave Bangert, a local journalist running the Based in Lafayette Substack.

The biggest part of that was the move by the state to pipe millions of gallons of water from Tippecanoe County to central Indiana for the LEAP Innovation Park. Negele filed legislation to slow down or curb that process but it went nowhere.

Elsewhere in the district, a controversial carbon sequestration project that Negele supported also loomed large. And even a local puppy mill ban got caught up in a preemptive new law taking power from communities.

“Commons said there is nobody down there who can save us. We need a change and a different voice,” Bangert said. “The rural communities came together with a loud voice.”

He also added that Negele’s defeat will be felt by Purdue University and Tippecanoe, and noted the district will lose a lot of influence in the caucus.

Commons ultimately took 60% of the vote in the race.

A preview of races to come

A wave of Republican General Assembly retirements opened up seats that attracted several primary contenders, including one four-way race that was decided by less than 100 votes. The Indiana Democratic Party hopes to flip some of these in November’s elections, especially those in vulnerable suburban seats around Indianapolis, meaning that the deluge of spending and advertising is far from over. 

Congressional primary victors emerge from crowded Indiana races

A “Break the Supermajority” tour by the party launched in Carmel, featuring Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn alongside House candidates Matt McNally and Josh Lowry as well as Senate candidate Joel Levi. 

Democrat Garcia Wilburn’s seat was previously held by a Republican who retired, longtime educator and lawmaker Tony Cook. McNally, a retired military veteran, and Lowry, an attorney, hope to also flip Republican seats vacated after the retirements of Jerry Torr and Donna Schaibley, respectively. 

Lowry will face off against former Colts player Hunter Smith while McNally is running against business leader Danny Lopez in November.

Pharmacy technician Levi, on the other hand, is targeting incumbent Noblesville Sen. Scott Baldwin. 

All three seats cover portions of Hamilton County, long a Republican enclave but one of the fastest-growing parts of the state — which Democrats hope can be used to their advantage in November’s elections.

However, breaking the GOP’s decade-old supermajority in both chambers is easier said than done. Republicans currently hold 40 of 50 seats in the Senate and 70 of 100 seats in the House, meaning any action requiring a two-thirds majority vote can advance without Democratic input.