Hate Mail from Republican Partisans Floods Libertarian Inbox
As this Washington Post article predicted, Libertarian Andrew Horning was the "Nader" of the 2012 U.S. Senate race in Indiana, winning enough votes to beat the margin of victory between the Democrat and his Republican rival. At least that’s what Republican partisans are saying.
Democratic Joe Donnelly won 1,263,885 votes and Republican Richard Mourdock won 1,124,058 votes. The margin of victory was 139,827 votes. Libertarian Andy Horning – who calls for upholding every right in the Bill of Rights, ending Obamacare and ending government-appointed central banking – won 146,002.
Whether or not Horning’s votes actually cost the Republican a victory is unclear. 97% of Horning’s voters would have to have voted for Mourdock for him to win, had Horning not been in the race.
Nonetheless, many assume that because he got more than the margin, the Republican would have won. Horning got cheers from his supporters – and the usual hate mail from GOP opponents, although less than he expected.
Here are Andy Horning’s comments posted to his Facebook page the day after the election:
"I only got about 30 nastigrams since last night. Far less than I’d have expected – far less, in fact, than I’d gotten any day last week. But among these were two people who claimed that I run for office to see my ‘name in lights.’
"Am I missing something? I suppose I really would like to see my name in lights; so could somebody send a picture of what these two people apparently saw?
"With the number of people over the past week who insist I’m doing this for power, fame and glory, I MUST be doing something terribly wrong to have missed it all.
"Over twice as many Hoosiers voted for me than ever before. In fact, after years and years of running, if I were to plot this on a graph, it’d look like my vote total just shot up like the national debt. It’s hard to be real crabby about that; though I will try. After all, We The People capitulated once again to the status quo. But…
"I’d be the worst sort of ingrate and short-sighted and selfish lout if I didn’t see that the leap in the number of out-of-the-box voters isn’t something I should be both grateful and hopeful about.
"Thank you, my liberty-loving friends, new and old. Thank you very, very much."
