Incumbent-ruled election headed for recounts

INDIANAPOLIS -- The 2002 election season is over in Indiana. Sort of.\nThe tally in Indiana House District 86 has yet to be certified, and even if the 37-vote victory for Democrats holds, recounts in that contest and a 64-vote win an another seem certain to go through recounts.\nIf the end result remains the same, Democrats will still have a 51-49 majority in the state House. But there will still be fallout, and it could take months and months to settle.\nHere is a look back and a look ahead at last week's election:\n• Once again, Rep. Julia Carson showed that polls don't mean a lot in her mostly Indianapolis district.\nIt's numbered the new 7th District now, but despite the new number, (it was the 10th before redistricting), some additional pockets of GOP territory and a well-funded campaign by Republican Brose McVey, Carson returns to Congress.\nLooking back and looking ahead, Republicans must wonder again whether all the time and money and energy they spent for McVey and against Carson was worth it, and whether it's worth going through again with another candidate in 2004.\n• Of course, Carson isn't the only incumbent member of Congress to win again.\nDemocrats in the Indiana House who wielded the redistricting pen tried to draw enough new Democratic territory to knock off conservative, Republican Rep. John Hostettler in the state's so-called "Bloody Eighth" district in southwestern Indiana.\nThey have been saying since 1994 that Hostettler only won that year because of the once-in-a-hundred-years GOP landslide. It was a crazy outcome. A fluke.\nBut it's time for a different claim. Hostettler won again in 1996, 1998, 2000 and this year, November 2002.\nThe southwestern boot of Indiana is largely rural, pro-gun Dixiecrat country. Neither party can stake a lasting congressional claim by virtue of the territory alone.\nFor two more years, however, it again will be Hostettler territory.\n• Lost in the turmoil over control of the Indiana House is the fact that the Indiana Senate is GOP territory.\nRepublicans ruled that chamber going into the election 32-18, and that's still the count. Nothing was expected to change, and nothing did.\nSenate President Pro Tempe Robert Garton, R-Columbus, keeps the top spot he has held since 1980. Senate Finance Chairman Larry Borst, R-Greenwood, keeps the same title he has held for all but two years of the last three decades.\n• Control of the Indiana House is in Democratic hands now, but just barely, and there are recounts coming.\nThe 2002 election season in Indiana seemed to settle some things, but as always, it set up something else -- the 2004 season.