Parties bitter after 'Bloody Eighth' mudslinging

EVANSVILLE -- Brian Kemp, who works at an Evansville Shell station, woke up early Tuesday morning.\nHe cast his vote promptly at 6 a.m., when the polls opened.\nHe felt he had a personal stake in unseating the incumbent in the eighth district Congressional race. \n"John Hostettler's a complete hypocrite," he said. "I really hate that guy. He says he's pro-life, yet he always votes against the minimum wage. A single mother can't raise a child on minimum wage."\nBut Kemp didn't get his wish.\nThe three-term Republican Congressman coasted to an easy victory over Democratic challenger Dr. Paul Perry. After campaigning hard for 15 months and spending more than a million dollars, Perry only managed to carry Democratic bastions like Monroe County and Vanderburgh County, where Kemp resides.\nBut Hostettler won big almost everywhere else, widening his lead in more conservative counties like Orange and Lawrence. He held his own in swing counties and even won Pike, which would have been a cornerstone of a Perry victory. \nFor the first time, Hostettler won big. But the his six-point margin of victory didn't mean that anything has changed with the "Bloody Eighth," a battleground district notorious for being hotly contested. The campaign was as nasty and vicious as ever. \nAll throughout, both sides accused each other of lying and illegally funnelling political action committee funds into their respective war chests, among other things. During an afternoon campaign stop at a polling site, Perry bristled at negative ads run by the Hostettler camp.\n"He's a master of distortion," said Perry, who ran his campaign on health care issues like prescription drug coverage. "He portrayed me as in favor of a Canadian-style system, while all I've wanted is patients and doctors back at the center of medical decisions, instead of the HMOs. \n"He's an incumbent who can't run on a record of legislative accomplishment."\nVictorious by the widest margin since he first unseated six-term Democrat Frank McCloskey in 1994, Hostettler had no bad blood for his opponent.\n"When he called me to concede defeat, he was more than gracious," he said during his acceptance speech at 4-H Fairgrounds in Vanderburgh County. "He's been more than gracious this whole campaign. I wish the best for him and his family."\nBut Hostettler's supporters were not nearly as charitable. Watching Perry's concession speech on television, they jeered and made sport of his campaign slogan: "It's time to put a doctor in the House." Suggestions were whispered that he'd "go back to fleecing patients" upon returning to his private practice in Newburgh.\n"He tried to criticize the Congressman's voting record," said Stan Whipkey, Vanderburgh County Coordinator of the Hostettler campaign. "He flat-out lied about it because he was just a one-issue candidate. The people of the eighth District were smart enough to see through that."\nBill Gillenwater, finance chair of the Posey County Republicans, took some of the mud-slinging personally. Local Democrats accused his commission of illegally pouring political action committee money into the Hostettler campaign.\n"It's simply not what happened," he said. "I don't understand why candidates can't substantively debate what's better for the taxpayers of this district. I don't understand why they have to distort the truth"