News-Sentinel.com

Friday, 12/22/2000

SON OF A SON OF A POLITICIAN

CHAPTER 3

A political animal

When I finished my first term in 1991, I always assumed I would run for a second. It wasn't automatic, but it became clear you couldn't accomplish a lot in a four-year period.

Annexations and police changes took at least another term. I believed I was in pretty good shape. But we started to experience an economic downturn at the end of 1990, the same that affected George Bush's re-election.

The situation was tricky. I had started community-oriented policing, for example, but it took longer to accomplish. We didn't have all the success we were hoping for at the time, and crime stats were actually going up. But during neighborhood walks, I had a sense from residents I would win. So I wondered who would run against me.

In polling, we checked my numbers against Win Moses Jr., Mark GiaQuinta and Tom Henry as possible Democratic opponents. I did well against any of the well-known Democrats. By close to primary election time, it became clear those people weren't going to be running. Most of the well-known Democrats figured I'd be tough to beat.

As a result, I was surprised my opponent turned out to be Charlie Belch. I first heard about it at the YMCA, where I saw Moses. He asked did I know who was running against me. And it's when I first heard it was Charlie Belch.

Election issues

The issues that came into play were annexation and the income-tax vote, as well as the controversy over the Adams Center Road hazardous waste landfill expansion. In the primary election, David Roach opposed me; it was the first time he had run for office.

I remember a debate with him at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, a chance to get some publicity. We had the debate and Roach didn't know how to do it. It was something where I almost had to tell him what questions to ask me and how he were supposed to respond to what I was saying or doing. One of his campaign issues was to put a dome over the city or build a racetrack for it.

Needless to say, I won the primary. There was a 10 percent vote for Roach, the anti-Helmke vote.

Belch and rough politics

The race against Charlie was tough. Charlie knew politics well, and understood what needed to be done. He did it well. He raised issues where I might have been weak, say on economic development.

He did a good job pulling quotes, sometimes out of context, from newspaper clipping about when different businesses were doing cutbacks or leaving town. He arranged them as a list of failures: "When Falstaff left, Helmke said that's not my job. When November, comes along, it's time to tell Helmke, it's not your job."

It was a pretty effective piece of speechifying and campaign literature. It's tough being mayor; you're blamed for things out of your control. On economic development, the beer business is beyond your control, although I think I quipped we weren't drinking enough beer.

He tried to score points on the crime issue as well. A print piece of his went a bit too far. It raised the issue of crime, saying look at Chicago, Detroit and then, Fort Wayne. We're in a crime wave. Blame Helmke for it.

He made a good argument politically but it didn't resonate with the public. People saw what we were doing to curb crime and attract jobs.

Belch and taxes

I was attacked on COIT. I wasn't so concerned about defending the income tax, because it was a part of our fiscal recovery package. But there was talk Charlie was going to say that I had said I wasn't going to raise taxes, and of course, it was something Bush was getting attacked for. We had to do our own research to counter the argument; I found one clip where I said I wasn't going to raise taxes until I had a chance to see the books and study the city's financial situation. Then we had to pre-empt the media on the tax issue. I was willing to fight Charlie on the tax issue, but I didn't want folks to believe I had broken a promise.

We put together an ad campaign, and brought in a political media consultant. We talked in commercials about our accomplishments.

One of our concerns was that Charlie could go negative on us. We tried to pre-empt Charlie with an ad, attempted in a humorous sort of way. We tried to publicize the fact of Charlie's background as a political organization person. He was the 4th District Democrat chairman.

As a result, we put together an ad called "Smoke-filled Rooms" where you saw people playing poker, and all you saw were their hands. It talked about Belch's background as a backroom-type of politician. We pulled out some quote where he said good things about Mayor Richard Daley's machine system in Chicago. We had a picture of Win Moses Jr., and he was with Daley.

We tried to point out to voters that whatever they had heard from Charlie, to remember it was being said by a rough-and-tumble political figure. And Charlie was good in that role.

Debates

We had several debates. Our argument was, he just didn't get it. The issues he was bringing up, we had already taken steps to correct. But he was a tough opponent, and he was a gentleman, too. I liked him and got along with him.

I wound up winning with about 59 percent, a very solid win.

The one thing I wasn't sure of was how the first phases of the St. Joseph Township annexation would affect the election. I remember saying, "What a lousy time to bring in these disgruntled voters into the city just two months before the election."

We still won nearly all those areas, although the numbers could have been less than the typical GOP results in the suburbs. We also picked up another Republican on council; it became 6-3 Democrat. It showed that despite some people who said the only reason I won in 1987 was as because of an anti-Moses vote, the 1991 vote showed people supported what I was trying to do for the community. I was very encouraged by the 59 percent win; it was a good stamp of approval.

Staying put

Meanwhile, I had looked closely at running for Dan Coats' congressional seat in 1989 when he gave it up to become U.S. senator. I felt I could have won. I had good approval ratings as mayor, but I was in the middle of too many things -- COIT and annexation, for example -- and it wouldn't be good timing.

Those were two issues I was committed to. By running, I'd be sacrificing the income tax and annexation for my own political agenda. I also believed people didn't like politicians who just jump from office to office. I had been mayor just a year, and that would have been jumping off too quickly. I was voted in for a four-year job and I felt I needed to live up to the voters' choice of me as mayor.

Some people thought I'd more enjoy being a legislator. But I enjoyed being mayor. I enjoyed being in charge and I wasn't sure I'd like to be in Congress, in a minority party as well.

For Congress

So I decided not to run; there was a lot of maneuvering by others for the job. Prosecutor Steve Sims was making noise about it; Dan Heath, my campaign manager, was interested in it. Also state legislator Mitch Harper and Jeff Turner, who was part of Coats' inner circle, were interested. I decided to back Dan Heath. I backed him big, and got involved in the campaign to get him elected in the GOP caucus. It was one of the most exciting political events of a long time.

It was a caucus that went several rounds among the GOP precinct committee members. Sims had dropped at this stage. Sims apparently felt he had been promised a lot more support than he had gotten. Les Gerig, the longtime CEO of Mutual Security Life, was on board for him and Sims believed it would deliver a lot of Coats support since Gerig had been a longtime Coats mentor.

There was some rumbling Gerig had switched his support to Jeff Turner or withdrawn his support. It was interesting that Sims' deputy, and at one time my public safety director, Michael McAlexander, was jockeying to become prosecutor. And he had it lined up with then-Gov. Robert Orr to get named prosecutor while Orr was still governor. So there was a timetable for Sims to make his decision.

It's amazing, once you leave office, how much jockeying goes on.

Heath wins

Heath ends up winning, even though you got a lot of the old Coats' people backing Jeff Turner. It came down to Turner and Heath. Harper's people eventually went to Heath more than Turner. I felt good about it. It showed I had good political clout within the party for my support of Heath.

Then things turned for the worse. National Republicans came in to help. Heath ran against Jill Long, who had lost twice before. She was a good candidate, and attacked Heath for the things the city was doing, like annexation and income tax. It tied into the anti-annexation feelings.

The timing was about the worst possible; the election was at a time of anti-annexation animosity. Long used those to her advantage. Meanwhile, the national Republicans told Heath not to associate himself with me, to pretend not to know me.

Barbara Bush came to town, and I was asked specifically not to show up at the airport or at the campaign event at a local high school. This was the first lady of the United States and it didn't make much sense. But I wasn't the political expert. I believed they were wrong, but I wanted Heath to win, so I stayed out. And I didn't go.

My advice would have been to address the issues, and argue the actions were needed because of the lousy shape Moses had left city finances in. A simple explanation could have been, "Blame Moses for the problems." Instead of taking that kind of simplistic political response, their way was to question who's Helmke and that these issues weren't relevant to Congress.

Heath loses

These concerns were never really met head-on. Long won for 4th District Congress in a close race.

I still blame the national Republicans for screwing up the race. Long, meanwhile, turned out to be good for Fort Wayne. She worked closely with us for flood control funding, for example.

While I blamed her campaign for tarnishing my image and making it a bit tougher to live down that negative reputation on taxes and annexation, those issues weren't responded to by Heath. Maybe I should have responded on my own to those charges, but I didn't want to mess up Heath's election. All the attacks came without an answer, which experts in politics say is the worst kind of situation. And I've spent a lot of the last 10 years responding to the charges Jill Long first brought up.

I didn't consider running in any of the elections against Jill Long once she got into office. But by 1994, she was perceived as vulnerable, and Mark Souder defeated her. By then, I really enjoyed being mayor and didn't really give running for Congress a lot of thought.

By 1994, I had already gotten some flak for supporting the Clinton stimulus package a year earlier. By the time of the GOP primary election that Souder won for the right to challenge Long, I didn't see Congress necessarily as a step up from being mayor. I enjoyed being mayor and enjoyed being in charge.

Did I blow it?

If the goal was to get to Washington, then I blew it by not running when situations presented themselves. I felt pretty confident I could have gone to Washington in 1989 if I had wanted to. Even though folks don't like you jumping office, I was well-known with a good approval rating and could have won easily, especially since Heath, with no name recognition, came within a point of winning the race.

Instead, I became more active in national issues through the National League of Cities and U.S. Conference of Mayors.

A third term

Meanwhile, I decided to run for a rare third term as mayor. It was a tougher decision, however, to run a third time in 1995. By then, we had made a lot of progress. Community-oriented government was just taking root.

I remember speaking to neighborhood groups about community-oriented policing and community-oriented government. Some people said it sounds good, but success depended a lot on Police Chief Neil Moore and me bringing this along. "How do we know you're going to be there with the election just a year away? We don't want to invest a lot of time and effort in this new way of doing things if someone new is going to shoot it down," they argued.

I took the opinion to heart. It was a new philosophy for local government and the Police Department. I became convinced those initiatives weren't far enough along they would be there in the future.

My challenge was more with rumblings in the local party, with talk that Sheriff Joe Squadrito was going to take me on in the primary election. This was when GOP Chairman Steve Shine orchestrated a meeting with Squadrito, himself and me at the Fort Wayne Country Club in late 1994 to make peace, and to prevent attacks from the sheriff on me. This was at a time Squadrito was second-guessing a lot of things we were doing in the Police Department.

We had put together a plan to work closely with Metro Squad, a joint police effort with the city and county. There were tensions with him, but I still tried.

So here we're in this private room, just the three of us, with some discussions about politics and police. We wound up smoking cigars and drinking cognac. As a result, Squadrito decided not to run.

I had a few primary election opponents this time. One was a city utility worker; the other, a janitor. Still, it was good to get publicity. I won big time as expected, and saw only scant party dissatisfaction.

Vs. Essex and Kempf

I ran against Tom Essex, who was Wayne Township Trustee. He was a candidate to take seriously, and a person who had worked for the city when I had started, as a labor relations official.

He always treated me well, and had even given me a book once for my birthday.

The race also had a Libertarian, Bill Kempf, which made it interesting. He was someone who believed the federal income tax was unconstitutional and people shouldn't be paying it.

Most of the campaign was a referendum on what I had done. The economy was in good shape; unemployment was down, although crime was still serious. We were making progress with money for new police officers from the federal Crime Bill. We ran ads talking about what we had done, and won re-election with close to 65 percent of the vote.

Republicans captured a majority, 5-4 on council; the first time since around 1967. I felt good and we were in solid shape.

Looking around

After the third election in 1995, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run again. I started to look around although nothing was happening. I assumed the Senate race in 1998 would be Evan Bayh vs. Dan Coats. As a result, it was a shock politically to me when the incumbent, Coats, announced in late 1996 he wasn't going to run again.

With an open seat, you look at it seriously. An open primary was probably my best shot to get a statewide nod. At this stage, however, I'm hearing otherwise: "You're too liberal. You're a friend of Clinton. You've raised taxes. You're too moderate. You're not Republican enough."

People also didn't want to risk nominating me for lieutenant governor; there was this feeling I'd never get a slot in a GOP convention.

Vs. Rusthoven and Price

As a result, my best possibility was an open statewide primary. Peter Rusthoven and John Price jump into the race. As I watch what's developing, I realize I can win this primary election. It was obvious to me beating Bayh was going to be tough, but establishing myself with the statewide Republican Party that I was someone to be looked at seriously was important to me.

In July 1997 I decided to run, believing I could win because I had good name recognition in this part of the state and was the only one of the three who had won an election. Most of the organized party was behind Rusthoven; he had most of the county chairmen, and the moneyed people. Even in Allen County, he had Sheriff Joe Squadrito, Pizza Hut magnate Dick Freeland and State Sen. David Long behind him.

But I believed I was stronger than some people were giving me credit for. I wanted to check out what it would take to run statewide. I put together a campaign on a shoestring.

My Republican credentials

My early battle was establishing my Republican credentials and winning the primary. There were several Lincoln Day dinners in various counties, and many of them had all three of us on the agenda. Eventually, you start learning your opponents' speeches by heart. I enjoyed it.

A big challenge was trying to collect petitions to get on the ballot. To get on the ballot for senator or governor, you need 500 signatures from registered voters on a petition, 500 from each congressional district. It doesn't sound like a lot, just 5,000 signatures altogether. But most people are reluctant to sign anything, and the place you get these signatures is at these Lincoln Day dinners.

I was starting a lot later than the others and was behind by the start of 1998; it had to be done by mid-February. We're playing catch-up, and the dinners are the easiest way to do it. Standing at a shopping mall, for example, you might get signatures from people who aren't registered voters or don't live in the district. It's a screwy system, and we weren't sure we were going to get it.

The hardest area was around Indianapolis: two congressional districts there, the 10th and 6th. It's hard to figure out where the boundary lines are. So when we went to political events in Indianapolis, we weren't sure if folks were signing for the 10th or the 6th. You can't put two different districts on the same sheet of paper because you can only send it to one clerk. So a petition with two sets of names gets counted as only one set from one district. You can't send the other set of signatures from that same petition to another clerk.

We got real worried about the 10th District, where there's more Democrats. We had misspellings, bad addresses; those would get thrown out.

It's the final day in mid-February. I'm heading to Evansville after a speech. My campaign manager, Peter Slen, picked me up and we're trying to get information on the phone about how we're doing with signatures in each of the 10 districts. The one my manager is waiting on is the 10th District. We finally get the call around 5:30 p.m. and we're about 30 people more than we need.

My campaign manager stops the van and goes out to throw up because of nerves. If we had come up with 490, for example, we wouldn't be on the ballot. If we hadn't gotten the right number of signatures, I was going to suggest pulling over at a bar on the way to Evansville and drinking away our sorrows instead of continuing the trip.

In the primary

During the primary, we were in southern Indiana for a debate with the other two. One question was on gun control. I was a firm supporter of the Brady Bill and the assault weapon ban. I support common sense gun measures.

I led off by telling southern Indiana Republicans I'm a firm believer in the Second Amendment, but you can have common sense gun measures because I'd seen the results of shootings in the streets of Fort Wayne. It didn't go over well with the crowd.

Meanwhile, Rusthoven's view was there was no need for more legislation. Price's view was that every person ought to have a gun and carry it. The crowd is getting all revved up and my campaign manager is in the back gesturing: If we had to beat a hasty retreat, this was the way to the exit.

But people respected my views even if they were things people didn't want to hear. Polls showed it a close race; experts predicted I'd come in third. The Indiana Policy in Review, other publications, none had me winning.

I win

I knew it would be a close, uphill race. On Election Day in May, the returns were so slow. All of us are in the 30 percent range. Finally, with more than 80 percent tallied, I pull ahead with a 1 or 2 percent lead. But Allen County had not yet turned in all its results. While I expected to do well there and expected Allen County would boost my lead at the time, who knew? With folks in Aboite Township upset with me over annexation, with the Squadrito, Freeland, Long group maybe delivering the county to another candidate, who knew?

Finally, around midnight I realize I had won. I ended up winning 35 percent; the others got 33 and 32 percent.

So now what?

I won the U.S. Senate primary, and I'm excited. Then the issue is how to put together a decent campaign against Bayh, and I recognize it's going to be an uphill race.

At this stage, I'm looking toward the party for support. One of the biggest disappointments was how little structural support I got from the party. I'm looking primarily at the state party. I'm getting a lot of good moral support but basically, no money and no real organization. We got some space in the state Republican headquarters and we might have been charged even for that.

I had hoped there would have been more guidance, structure and money and help we could have had from the state party.

I'm not naive about politics, but I believed the party itself was stronger than it actually was. Over the years, political parties aren't as strong as they used to be. The state party has lost a lot of clout; it lost the 1996 gubernatorial race when it had a lot of money and a very attractive candidate in Steve Goldsmith.

Legislative control was pretty even, but Democrats had a lot of say. The party had a lot of trouble raising money, in part because it didn't have control of the governor's office. For a lot of the party officials, the situation was like this: "Things are tight, the senatorial race is an uphill battle. Let's put the focus on getting enough seats in the Legislature to get control there." I can understand the outlook but I still had hoped there would have been more help.

Thanks for nothing

Another big disappointment was the lack of help I got from the national Republican Party. They were considering the race a long shot, but as the campaign developed, there was nothing from the national party. I felt there should have been something.

For me, the real kick in the teeth came near the end, when we were on television with debates and are looking for more dollars to get more television time than we had been able to afford. The national Republicans sent out a letter saying how it was important to hold Dan Coats' seat and how important it was to send the national Republican Party money.

When I heard about the letter, I called them up and said, "You are using my race as a way to get money. You're sending this letter to potential contributors in Indiana. Am I going to be able to see any money from this?" They said no. To me, it smacked of false advertising. Send your dollars today but we're not going to use it to try to hold on to Dan Coats' seat.

Misguided strategy

The other frustration with national Republicans concerned where they were putting money. I pointed out to them they were putting money into the California Senate race; from what I had read, the GOP was in an uphill battle there, too. They ended up losing the race.

I tried to let them know a dollar goes a lot farther in Indiana than California, just a couple of hundred thousand, anything. Fifty thousand, $100,000 buys a lot of TV time in Indiana. It didn't move them one bit. It was a cold-hearted analysis my race wasn't on their radar screen. They had written it off from the start. I know, if Coats was the candidate, they would have paid more attention. Instead, they put their money elsewhere.

It's the name of the game with federal elections. If it looks like you are behind from the start, the national party isn't going to do anything to make it closer. I believed I had credibility as a candidate, was a successful mayor for many years, was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Yet the political analysts described me as the best candidate who was going to get wiped out in the fall.

We ended up raising $700,000; Bayh raised about $7 million. With that kind of disparity, the race is almost over before it starts. With our limited resources, we weren't able to do television advertising in Fort Wayne. But Bayh was running heavy ads here attacking me, and I couldn't respond.

A tough lesson

What did I learn from all this? It's going to be a long time before I send a check to the national Republican Party. I'll send it to my candidate of choice from now on.

The situation certainly didn't make me get any closer to the national party structure. Even a token amount of support would have helped. The GOP usually raises a heck of a lot of money. If the party isn't going to help those people who've helped the party in the past, than there will be less loyalty to it. It's clearly my reaction personally and from a lot of people who supported me and had sent checks to the national party. When they realized what the party was doing, their attitude was they were going to stop sending checks to the party as well.

Frustrations

The frustration with the campaign was to engage Bayh. In the primary election, at least there always was an event where opponents and I showed up. It lent itself to a lot of discussion. Against Bayh, there was less of it. There were just a few debates, a few news conferences. From Bayh's perspective, of course, he didn't want to get engaged. But for me, and a voter who's trying to make a decision, it didn't help.

Debate serves the voter, and the system, well. It was difficult to handle with Bayh, because he tried to delay the engagement as long as possible. What's smart for politics often isn't good for the system.

We tried to push Bayh to debate, and we did a few at the end. It was tricky with Bayh: Whenever I'd raised an issue, he'd agreed with me. We tried to come up with issues that would show a difference between us. Instead, so often he agreed with me on issues. His response was that he agreed with me.

Obviously, his campaign was based on trying to make him look as much a Republican as possible, or at least a centrist Republican. It made it difficult to engage him on issues because of the strategy. What were the lines of difference? Whenever I brought up something, he'd agree with me. He wasn't coming up with ideas on his own.

Bayh was always polite; you never really felt angry with him. The tough part was trying to find out what was there; what was he thinking about? It was almost so neat, so well-scripted, so well-groomed. I kept waiting to find out if he was a robot, like one of the old "Twilight Zone" episodes where you cut the skin and there's wire underneath.

Bayh and self-control

It showed, however, how good Evan was at self-control and keeping emotions in check. The only time I saw him get riled up was back in 1990, when I did a fly-around for Bill Hudnut when he was running for secretary of state. Bayh was governor, and his man Joe Hogsett was running against Hudnut for secretary of state. I was stumping for Hudnut.

A few days later, I'm in Indy, and had to be in Fort Wayne as well that day. It got so I was going to fly back to Fort Wayne with the governor. So I get out to the airport and Bayh is very cold to me. As he starts walking toward the plane, Bayh looks over his shoulder to the back where I'm following, and he says he didn't like the nasty things I was saying about him or Susan during my fly-around with Hudnut.

I thought, "Where's my car?" But my people had already left; I didn't know how it would be to fly back with that guy.

We got to the plane, and it was one of the few times I saw him show any real emotion. He's somebody who can show emotion, but he's very controlled, and stayed that way throughout the Senate campaign.

Engaging the enemy

One time, however, we're trying to engage him with a television ad. It showed what I had done in Fort Wayne, with a clip of Bayh introducing Clinton at a rally in Michigan City in 1996. Obviously, this is during the Clinton impeachment, and Republicans had been pushing me to tie Bayh with Clinton. The ad then showed Bayh speaking, and afterward, he used the word values. And we used the tag line of "values." We were criticized for dirty politics; Democrats came down hard on us for it.

Another time, Susan Bayh had been named to some Great Lakes, U.S. and Canada commission, a sort of cushy job. It deals with trade and boundary issues, although we laughed that the commission's job was to make sure we didn't go to war with Canada, and so far, it's been successful. She's on this commission, and got paid about $80,000 a year. In one of our debates, I brought it up in the context of how could Bayh judge Clinton fairly if his family is getting $80,000 from a Clinton appointment?

At the debate, Susan was sitting in the front row, next to my brother, Mark. She was very upset by my mention of her. Bayh didn't say anything to me, but he was bristling some. It really didn't rattle him at the debate, but his campaign manager came up to me afterward and said, "How dare you do that?" Bayh's used to having things run smoothly for him.

The best politician?

I still believe Win Moses is one of the best at politics. In a lot of ways, Moses was tougher to go against in debates than Bayh. Bayh was structured, and had a "don't make mistakes" kind of approach to things. With Moses, you were never sure what he was going to do. Win's bright and he's able to shift gears or throw something unexpected at you. With Bayh, it would rarely be unexpected.

On election night, the numbers came in solidly against me, like the polls had said. Final numbers showed I was beaten by about 28 percentage points.

The road show

I always got treated pretty well in other parts of the state. It's just that my name ID outside Fort Wayne was pretty low. There were some party chairmen and activists who were supportive, but it's tough to get your name out if it's the first time you are running statewide.

One of the fun things we did was a weeklong bus tour of the state. It started in Fort Wayne, and had a lot of stops. By the end of the trip, the bus was getting trashy and smelly, and you wound up passing places because you weren't sure where it was.

We were in eastern Indiana to see Jean Ann Harcourt, who had been a national committee person, and was a neat woman. She has a factory where they make pencils and school supplies. It's a small town off the beaten path. We had to take an unmarked side road through the middle of a cornfield, and it's as high as the window. We had to drive the bus nearly off the road whenever a car came from the other direction. It was like being in some horror movie, the Land of the Corn.

You'd get these lonely moments on the road, but they were balanced out with good times. I really enjoyed campaigning. I liked seeing new places and meeting new people. While Indiana has different concerns and issues, it contains good-hearted people.

A better politician

I've become a better politician over the years. Many people who've seen me say I'm a lot more relaxed. A lot of politics is self-confidence. You feel you can answer any questions and handle any issues. And you do better if you're not uptight.

Experience helps a lot. Giving speeches constantly as mayor, you get better. I did a good job with the Senate race because of my background and knowledge of national issues. I've improved a lot with my people skills. I used to be a lot more shy than I am now, but I've gotten a lot better working a crowd and going table to table.

It's a lot easier in Fort Wayne, when you're well-known, to walk through a diner and shake hands with customers. What I'm weak at as a politician, however, is attack. I can attack if attacked first. But I try not to get nasty. Sometimes in politics, folks want you to do the "red meat, chew them up and get nasty" way of politicking. Supporters would have liked to have seen more of it against Bayh. But I wasn't going to get nasty; it's not my style.

Looking at myself in the mirror

I want to be able to look myself in the mirror, say I raised good issues, but in a fair way. Maybe it limits me as a politician, but on one level, it's what most people want from a politician.

You have to stay civil; these are people you are going to continue dealing with. If you disagree, do it fairly and aboveboard.

I tend to confuse my opponents because I'm not your normal politician. In the Senate primary, I was considered not a serious threat because my opponents didn't perceive me as a "real Republican." They didn't think I'd appeal to people and wouldn't get treated seriously.

There also was the perception I was too controversial and independent. Party types like folks who follow the party line. defined the party line, instead of what someone told me the party line is. I tried to define Republicanism my way. As a result, they considered me a weak primary election candidate.

Against Bayh, there was a sense I wasn't going to be real nasty and could be dealt with differently. I wasn't going to be a bomb thrower coming out of nowhere.

Helmke, the leftist

Often, Democratic pundits tried to position me to the left and Bayh to the center. That way, Democrats wouldn't vote for me and Evan would take over the great center. They tried to give Bayh the conservative label and to marginalize me on the left.

They attacked me for having raised taxes. It really bothered me when you look at things logically, although you should never do that in politics. Bayh's position was that economic development should be carried out on the local level. But when I did that, the response was, "Oh, he raised taxes a few times!"

Waiting for a tidal wave

Bayh's people were more concerned how the Clinton mess was going to affect them. So they tried to stay away from Clinton, and the Democrat label, and paint me as more liberal than they.

The only real shot I had to win was if there was a serious tidal wave against Clinton that turned against Democrats, but it didn't happen. I was hoping for a tidal wave and instead, I got one going the other way on me that helped Democrats.

No one to talk to

I learned the mayor's job doesn't offer too many people who you can talk to about broad issues. Talking with other mayors facing similar problems was one of the best ways to bounce off issues on how to deal with crime and drugs. Maybe you're competing with their cities, but such feedback gave you insight on how to do things differently.

Having someone from Akron come here and look at our city, and tell us their impressions, was good. We put out a lot of promotional stuff, so did other cities; but it was good to have someone look at the other side of what we were doing. It was a way to promote our city. I believed if I could be with a national organization like the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and be seen on CNN or quoted in Time magazine as mayor of Fort Wayne, I was helping promote the city. It got the name out there; it's good advertising.

Stay home, young man

I'm used to the criticism that this kind of approach was my way of hogging the limelight. It's shortsighted. There were folks who criticized me any time I left the city. It's ridiculous to think that I could do this job just by sitting inside the city limits.

You've got to go out and learn from others, to promote yourself and lobby for federal dollars. We were trying to get money for the airport, the flood control project and for transportation improvements.

I had gone out with the Airport Authority at one time to make a presentation on airport issues and needs. Later, I had a meeting with the Conference of Mayors, and I told local airport officials I was sure I could meet with the transportation secretary. I met with the secretary, told him I had met him before and these were the local issues of concern. I passed along my card and sent him information, and in a few weeks, we got approval.

Being able to do some personal lobbying of the Cabinet is very important. People pay a lot of money to get lobbyists just inside the door to speak with these people. I'm standing around and speaking with them on a regular basis, and not just because I'm a mayor, but as president of the Conference of Mayors. It got us some inside contact, and it translated into dollars.

It paid off for the city. But then I'd see these letters to the editor, "He shouldn't leave the city until he's fixed every sewer and pothole." Yet, you were were able to do these things because you were getting the federal dollars or stopping federal mandates. The most ridiculous one involved a piece by the Indiana Policy Review about me, a cover story. They talked about how much time I had traveled out of the city. One time I was giving a speech in Pine Valley, and they counted it as going outside the city.

Excuse me. Why can't I attend a meeting or an organization that meets in Allen County but outside the city limits without being accused of excessive traveling outside the city? The argument showed they're crazy.

The presidency of the conference of mayors was a real honor, a one-year term as top dog of all mayors from cities over 30,000 in population. We never had a Fort Wayne mayor hold the position. Lugar and Hudnut, both of Indianapolis, had been president of the National League of Cities, the other organization, and it's prestigious as well. Richard Hatcher of Gary was the only other Indiana president of the Conference of Mayors.

It put Fort Wayne more on the map. I enjoyed it. Despite the time it took, I kept things in balance.

Sister Cities

Sister Cities, meanwhile, is a program we've been involved with since about 1976 and it started with the first city, Takaoka, Japan. It created a lot of opportunities by helping us contact Japanese businesses looking at the Fort Wayne area.

We had one meeting with an older Japanese gentleman, a head of a company, with the aid of a translator. One of his concerns was how will his company be treated? Any anti-Japanese backlash? He was concerned about it. But the fact we had a Sister City with Takaoka, where he wasn't from, put those fears to rest. This is a city with a strong relationship with a Japanese community that shows we weren't going to hold their Japanese nationality against them.

A lot of our Sister City programs provided cultural acclimation for schoolchildren; it showed them how we are competing worldwide. Every year, five Japanese students would come here or five from Fort Wayne would travel overseas.

We also developed ties in Poland with Plock. Why would you do Poland? You learn; this was an Eastern European country where we got a chance to open things up. We did the same with Gera, Germany, especially with our German heritage here. It's been a good one as well.

It's not just getting jobs or businesses to invest here. It's also being part of a way to avoid getting into wars with other countries if you treat them like your sister.

What's next?

Where do I stand now with politics? The Senate race was exhausting, but I enjoyed it and would do it again. It was fun except for the last night. I didn't have the enthusiasm to take on another mayoral term right away, and the reality of even another campaign.

But I remain interested in politics and government. That stage of my career isn't necessarily over and done with. I want to remain involved in public policy. Whether I run for public office again, I don't know. If the right opportunity comes along, I will. If it doesn't, there's other ways to get involved.

You never know for sure; you wait to see what happens. I'm still fascinated by the issue of how people govern themselves. That's what it's all about. How do you excite them, how do you balance competing interests? I have a lot I can add to an organization, and I can do a good job as an elected or appointed official, or even in consulting. Whether it's as a lawyer giving advice to mayors and governmental officials, or in academia dealing with public policy, I want to stay involved. I like dealing with public policy and politicians. Politicians do think a little bit differently. I can speak their language.

The challenge is how do we make government work for us, with changing technology, like the Internet. How do you set up government that will have people's confidence? Those are the challenges.

Fort Wayne's home

Fort Wayne's home, even if I'm working somewhere else. I'll have ties here, even if I don't have a home here. Fort Wayne defines me; you need to have a base in politics. It's where my heart is. It's a good community, where my family's been involved and part of. I don't want to give that up, but I'd like to take those lessons from here and maybe apply them elsewhere.

We're 200,000 people; Fort Wayne's a decent size. We have an independent identity. As mayor, I had an opportunity to make a difference. I can drive around town and say that park is there because I pushed to get it there. You play a role in almost everything that goes on in town.

There are others who play a role with you, but the power of mayor also can keep things from getting stopped, whether it meant Headwaters Park, Courtyard Green or the baseball stadium. When you're making those decisions and they involve risk and political capital, they're not always easy decisions. You're spending dollars and staff time, and making some people with different perspectives angry. But you push them through. When you drive around and see the things you had a hand in happening, it's a good feeling. It doesn't matter if your name is on a plaque or not, it's a feeling you made the community a better place.

It's the same when at the grocery store. Folks know who you are. Sometimes they complain, and now that I'm out, it seems more people compliment than complain. Maybe because now when I get complaints, I say, "Call the other guy!" Folks have always been nice. Even when they complain, they are usually decent. At some level, government is easy.

A happening job

The trickiest thing is you're dealing with so many different issues. The mayor's job isn't very structured; you're jumping from police issues, to economic development issues, to park issues. You have a little bit of everything constantly.

Even if you tried to focus on one thing as top priority, events would make you shift out of necessity. You had to become a little bit of an expert in everything but with experts around you to get things done. It made it challenging. It was fun coming in just about every day because you didn't know what was going to happen. You never had one day quite like the other. It could be the weird phone call or an unforeseen incident that made you shift gears.

Life right now is a little calmer; it's off the hectic treadmill. But part of the excitement was not knowing what would come up. That living-on-the-edge kind of feeling, I did a good job of handling. I don't like to be bored and you are never bored with the mayor's job.

I probably could have stayed on and coasted; I know some mayors who are probably doing that right now. One of my strengths, however, was I always brought a lot of enthusiasm to the job. If I stayed another term, I don't know if I would have had the same enthusiasm and whether I would wind up overstaying my welcome. I sort of felt I might have enough for the rest of 1999 and even this year, but not for the rest of the term. It would have been unfair to the people and to me as well.

Sometimes, shaking things up is good.

I didn't want to get to the stage where people were opposing initiatives because I was the one proposing them. My controversial stands on some issues, like annexation, could have led to that kind of result on similar issues in the future. It wasn't happening, but it was getting to the stage where I wanted to make sure proposals weren't being rejected just because they came from me.

Unigov

The most frustrating thing was not being able to do more with the structure of government. I always tried to get people to think about things outside the box, to look at things differently as if things weren't always this way. I used to carry around a map, and ask people to envision that they had come from another planet and had to decide how to operate government. How would they set it up, the delivery of police and fire services being just two examples? There isn't anyone who would set it up as we have.

You wouldn't draw up these boundary lines, you probably wouldn't have townships, and you'd do a lot of things differently. So, I'd tell them to look at it like there was no past and create something new. I couldn't get people to do it. Instead, people would say that's how things have always been and how they should be. Even if not, it's too hard to change. I tried to point out what we have now was brand-new in 1850, some of what we did then, like townships, made sense then because they dealt with services you needed daily. You needed townships of such a small size where you could walk to the township schools, hear the fire alarm and help your neighbor rebuild your barn. They were things you could walk to.

And counties made sense. They were things you could ride your horse to in one day. Or twice a month you needed to go to the county seat.

Today, that governmental structure doesn't reflect the fact we have the telephone and car, much less the Internet and television. We need to look at these things anew. A lot of how we structured government was based on how quickly we could interact with others.

Townships, as a result, are irrelevant today. Counties, maybe, could do the things the townships used to do and we could do away with townships. An urban county, it makes more sense to have a city government structure, where a strong executive and a city council run the show.

County structure is set up to deal with rural issues, where in the past the commissioners met once a month. It's why there are three of them. They also were the legislative body and got together only once a month. Maybe we ought to be looking at a multi-county area. The congressional district here plays the role the county used to play. Most of northeast Indiana looks at Fort Wayne as the capital. This is where the news comes from.

This is where people come to shop and for entertainment. We now work with Auburn and Huntington on transportation and economic development plans. We used to be uncooperative because they were the competition. They're not the competition anymore. Even if a business isn't locating here but in Whitley County, it's not a loss for us. Those people, because of our importance as a center, are still spending their money and time in Fort Wayne.

Resistance

Our old township and county lines have been outmoded to a great extent. I've had a lot of ideas how this all could be set up. It didn't have to be one way. But I wanted people to think about redrawing the structure to make it fit with what has happened over the past 150 years.

But there was so much resistance to it. We got Sen. Tom Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, to introduce a charter county government bill. We pushed for more local control, and some charter authority for here from the Legislature, which otherwise calls the shots in these areas. But the concept never went too far.

We tried to use a Consensus Committee to get folks to think about new ideas. It sort of fell over on its weight. It was the suspicion of let's not let the politicians get involved too much. The lesson I learned is you need a group with the authority to get things done. It's what I believe happened with the Consensus Committee. We had boycotts from some elected officials, and attempts to frustrate from other elected officials. As a result, the effort became reports on a shelf instead of ideas put to action.

Here, we were trying to paint the big picture and folks were saying, "Let's combine the parks departments." It makes sense to combine them, but you don't want to use all your political capital on that and skip combining the executive branches of city and county government. If we advocated incremental change, people argued against it because of the slippery slope argument. If you went with a large change, people said you were going too big too quickly. So we wound up going nowhere on these issues.

Before I was mayor, I tried to push for these changes with such groups as Fort Wayne Future, whose members worked on a vision for the community. One of the lessons I learned is you can't do it without someone on the inside, like the mayor or some other elected official. When I got elected, I started to do it. Then I was looked at too suspiciously. "Helmke's power hungry. It's a power grab."

I knew what I was doing. I worked as an assistant county attorney for 14 years. I knew their system and setup. When I was on the inside, I couldn't find any outside support. And you needed support of the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, the business community and neighborhoods, in addition to from politicians.

I had to make skeptics realize they were getting messed over when the system wasn't being changed to reflect changing times. Here, we're paying a ditch assessment to the county surveyor, a storm-water fee to the city, and yet our back yards are still flooded.

Myopic

The business community saw the issue in terms of taxes. Should we have an income tax? How do we handle zoning and permit issues? No one group is in charge of the tax rate. The same was true with zoning and permits for businesses. And that makes it tough to do business here.

To me, it never mattered what you called the new system. I was even open to the idea of getting rid of the city and its boundary lines, and having everybody in the county vote for an executive responsible for the entire county.

Taxes would be paid for the entire county law enforcement, as well as planning and highway departments. It meant county commissioners would be in charge. But the county tax rate would go up to handle these urban areas in Fort Wayne as well.

At the same time, people would question whether the Fort Wayne area needed three people as executives to run local government. Hopefully, there would have been a move to have just one commissioner. Then you'd have what I've advocated all along: one executive.

Regardless if you do away with city government or county government, we need to have a jurisdictional area that makes sense, and right now it doesn't.

Even if it was done on a countywide basis, like Indianapolis, it would make more sense to call the new setup Fort Wayne, not Allen County. It's like dealing in product brands. There's higher product identification with Fort Wayne than Allen County.

It didn't have to be me as mayor; it didn't have to be the city in charge. We could have gotten rid of elected county officials only after several years had gone by, until everyone finished their elected terms.

Hard to get a quick response

On big issues, the city and county worked together. The divisions, however, were noticed in the little details. When somebody needed something, like in economic development, you couldn't just say yes but you had to wait until the city and county got together for a response. Maybe it resulted in a delay of an hour or a delay of a day, but it risked that a prospective business would wind up going elsewhere.

We would try to resolve issues regarding lot size requirements, for example. For new developments, we worked with the county not to make the requirements that much different than the city's urban standards if those new areas were just a few years from being annexed into Fort Wayne. Sometimes we got things worked out; other times, not.

Almost every day, an issue came up where it would have been a lot easier if some one person was in charge, not several. It wasn't like I was always right. Instead, we don't have a mechanism to resolve disputes in the community. You could have hard-fought battles with the City Council and mayor, but there's a process where the issue comes to a head and you vote.

But when it's an issue of city vs. county, there's no way to resolve it. Maybe the county is right, but there's no way the community is well served with one set of rules for smoking in the city limits, another outside the city. We ought to have some consistency.

We've set up a structure that works best when there's no controversy and you don't need a decision. In today's world, with emergencies and a changing economy, you need quick decisions and it means a single decision-maker. It works better than multiple decision-makers. Sometimes you need to make a decision quickly.

Cast of characters:

Charlie Belch -- Long-time local Democratic party official, he lost to Helmke for mayor in 1991

Dan Heath and Jill Long -- Heath served as Helmke's campaign manager and chief adviser; lost to Jill Long for 4th District U.S. Representative in 1989. Long, meanwhile, was defeated by U.S. Rep. Mark Souder in 1994

Peter Rusthoven and John Price -- Indianapolis lawyers, they lost to Helmke in the GOP primary election for U.S. Senate in 1998