Midterms roundup 10/19
SOUTH BEND, Ind. —U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly is trending after his latest 30 second TV spot drew parallels to the TV show Veep.
Going viral
The Democratic incumbent senator’s unlisted video titled, “axe” hit more than 40,000 views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.
In the ad, Donnelly chops away at what he’s calling his opponent Mike Braun’s lies. In a similar video, Jonah Ryan, a fictional New Hampshire congressional candidate on the HBO comedy, takes a few axe-swings at wooden logs to emphasize his talking points.
Timothy Simons, the actor who plays Ryan, also had fun with the ad. He sent out a tweet saying he’s sending Donnelly a cease and desist, before plugging his character’s fictional 2026 presidential run.
The Republican National Committee didn’t find it so funny. An Indiana spokesman ripped Donnelly for ripping off the show.
Helping small businesses
Mel Hall, second congressional district Democratic nominee is looking to help local entrepreneurs. He held a round table Friday afternoon with the folks behind Invanti.
Invanti is a startup generator in South Bend that marries entrepreneurship with problem-solving.
Friday, Hall asked the second wave of small business owners in the program, what problems can their U.S. representative help them solve? The common denominator was healthcare.
“Making sure it’s affordable and I would say the other thing that almost everyone said was please, please protect people with pre-existing conditions,” said Hall. “Make sure to make insurance portable and to try to make sure that healthcare does not become a barrier to business growth.”
Sen. Sanders in Indiana
Folks in South Bend fighting for good jobs took their cause downstate to Bloomington Friday morning. That’s because Vermont senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders kicked off his 9-state tour in at Indiana University.
Although he was rallying for district nine congressional candidate Liz Watson, he had a brief meeting with Honeywell retirees, a few local members of Good Jobs Nation and South Bend Common Councilwoman Regina-Williams Preston about their fight with the company to keep jobs in the city and restore healthcare coverage to its retired staff.
“It’s really important that we keep our promises to our retirees,” said Councilwoman Williams-Preston. “They’ve worked hard their entire lives and they deserve to be taken care of.”
This group has traveled quite a bit to get their message out. They’ve followed president Donald Trump to his rallies in six cities around the country, hoping their stories would garner attention.
“When we were in Erie, Pennsylvania last week on live broadcast we had on Facebook was over 500,000 views that day,” said John Carter, Honeywell retiree. “It’s starting to pick up. People are starting to notice what’s going on.”