I think you’re right. Steve Carter couldn’t not endorse his deputy without causing problems in the office. But, you are right that Mitch Daniels’ endorsement will carry a lot of weight — especially since there are a lot of open convention seats from Indianapolis that are being filled right now with Costas supporters.

After all the banter back and forth yesterday from southern Indiana and our site picking up the shots taken at Jon … it was nice to see Hoosier Pundit back down finally.

Yes, Steve Carter has endorsed his deputy, why would he diss the guy that’s been doing most of the work? It’s pretty similar to Doug Olson endorsing Olga for Portage Mayor. You can’t diss your own people.

The Governor’s endorsement should bring in roughly 1/3 of the delegates. The county chairs will bring in more as they line up on either side with endorsements. In this case endorsements do matter.

Mitch Daniels has done a good job reaching out to NWI’s GOP contingent and he’s doing a good thing by keeping the overall ticket balanced by choosing to endorse Costas.

I don’t think NWI should be written off — there are a lot of conservative people in NWI — they are just overwhelmed at election time by all of the push to vote Democratic by the union and the folks who have been rotating from job to job in the government.

I did see that Steve Carter is endorsing the candidate from his office.

I have first hand knowledge this isn’t the case. Sure, Jon’s asking delegates to support him. Sure, the endorsers are emailing and calling delegates. But no one is threatening these delegates.

As the comments continued today though, it became more apparant that this was really a Southern Indiana contigent saying they didn’t think Northwest Indiana was a strong enough political area for GOP … and Southern Indiana was perhaps even a bit more important. My opinion from the comments, read up and see what you think.