Politics

Less than six weeks before Election Day, Democrat Joe Donnelly and Republican Richard Mourdock are in a statistical dead heat for Indiana’s U.S. Senate seat.

The Howey-DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll puts Donnelly ahead with 40 percent compared to Republican Richard Mourdock’s 38 percent, which is within the 3.5 percent margin of error. The survey of 800 likely voters follows many other polls that have depicted the contest as a neck-and-neck race to replace outgoing Sen. Dick Lugar.

Close to $10 million has been spent in the race thus far, and outside groups, such as the conservative  Super PAC Crossroads GPS, has spent close to $1 million this week opposing Donnelly's candidacy.

But Donnelly campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Shappell says her candidate’s two-point edge shows Hoosier voters are rejecting Mourdock’s approach and the heavy amounts being spent to defeat him.

"This is the same man who said that the highlight of politics to him inflict his opinion on others, who has questioned the constitutionality of Social Security and Medicare," she says. "Joe Donnelly is the true bipartisan, common sense candidate in this race and he has the record to prove it."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and University of Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich are squabbling over talks of bringing an NBA franchise to the city.

Recently, Fischer met with business leaders and local boosters about the prospect of bringing professional basketball to the KFC Yum Center. The downtown arena has been facing financial troubles, and the parent company of the current arena manager—Anschults Entertainment Group (AEG)—has announced plans to sell the subsidiary.

But as The Courier-Journal's Tom Sullivan reports, Jurich took exception to Fischer holding a meeting about bringing the NBA to Louisville without including the arena's main tenant.

"(Mayor Fischer) is a guy full of signals,” Jurich told the newspaper. "He needs to work a little bit more with transparency. He likes to throw that word (transparency) around, but you need to practice what you preach."

Louisville’s NAACP branch and other local organizations have announced an aggressive campaign to register voters before this fall’s election.

Over the next couple of weeks Louisville’s NAACP, the Louisville Urban League and churches will visit supermarkets, drug stores and high schools to reach unregistered voters. 

Local NAACP President Raoul Cunningham says some local elections are just as important to their constituents as the presidential race.

Fundraising numbers in the race for Kentucky's Third Congressional District seat have been wildly uneven. Accountant Brooks Wicker raised $2,600 during the second quarter, compared to the $184,000 raised by his opponent, three-term incumbent John Yarmuth.