District 9 debated at WTIU

Abortion, jobs and negative advertising dominated an exchange Wednesday night between the candidates for Indiana's 9th district as they met on campus for their only debate in one of the tightest congressional races in the nation.\nThe debate, hosted by WTIU-TV, was a repeat contest for U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, the district's incumbent Democrat, and Republican businessman Mike Sodrel. The two faced off previously for the seat in 2002, when Hill defeated Sodrel by about 9,500 votes, roughly five percentage points. \nAl Cox, the district's Libertarian candidate, played a low-key role in the debate.\nSodrel, a trucking company businessman from New Albany, Ind., criticized Hill's congressional record as say-one-thing-do-another, saying what Hoosiers want to hear but not voting the way they want.\n"You have to follow through," Sodrel said. "It's not enough to say the right things. You have to get it done. If people say the right things and they won't vote the right way, they've done half the job -- you can't stay in business if you've done half the job, and you shouldn't stay in Congress either."\nHill said his three terms in Congress have given him the knowledge and experience necessary to help Indiana, and defended himself as a bipartisan cooperator during polarized political times.\n"I've established myself as an independent, a practical person in the Congress, in the tradition of Lee Hamilton, who was my predecessor," Hill said.\nThe two disagreed on many topics throughout the debate, but perhaps no more contentiously than on the topic of abortion. \n"I'm pro-life," Sodrel said. "If you're going to be pro-life, you've got to be pro-actively pro-life."\nHill said while he personally believes abortion is wrong, he wouldn't want to impose his personal beliefs on others, and said the last person a pregnant woman would want to consult is a member of the U.S. Congress.\n"It's a personal choice, not a congressional choice," Hill said. "I do believe there should be restrictions, but we shouldn't ban abortion altogether."\nHill said he supports parental notification restrictions for underage women seeking abortions and also voted to ban the procedure colloquially known as "partial-birth" abortion.\nThe two differed on the proper way to attract jobs to the district. Hill said he coauthored a bill in Congress to give tax credits to manufacturers who keep their jobs in the U.S. \nAlso, he said southern Indiana has a "golden opportunity" to create life science jobs by giving tax dollars back to universities, which can perform research and development to spin off new high-tech jobs.\nSodrel said while he's in favor of the life sciences jobs and high-tech jobs, the district cannot afford to lose its current manufacturing jobs. The government, he said, must reevaluate some trade arrangements and encourage private sector growth.\n"Government doesn't create jobs. Government creates an environment conducive to jobs," Sodrel said. \nIndiana's 9th district cups the lower portion of the state along the Ohio River, extending from the eastern Cincinnati suburbs as far west toward Spencer County, and reaching as far north as Bloomington and the IU campus while dipping down south to the suburbs of Louisville, Ky. \nDemocrats have held the seat for 42 years. Six of those years belong to Hill, while the other 34 belong to Lee Hamilton, who served as the House Foreign Relations Committee chairman and who recently served as the co-chairman for the 9-11 Commission. \nBut today the district is surrounded on all sides by Republican congressmen and has voted with Republican presidential candidates since 1968. President Bush clobbered Al Gore in the district 58 to 40 percent in 2002, a fact that Sodrel said after the debate might allow him to ride the president's coattails.\nThe race has attracted national attention since Republicans only hold a slim 229-206 edge in the U.S. House of Representatives. It's also becoming one of the district's most expensive -- and nastiest -- races.\nBoth candidates have worked to discredit the other, but Hill took time out of the debate to call on Sodrel to end negative advertising.\n"If I believed everything you said about me, I'd vote against me myself," Hill joked. "There's so much negativity in this election, when I walk into my home, my dog starts growling at me."\n-- Contact senior writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.