Advance Indiana's editor Gary Welsh shows prejudice against Libertarians

It's no secret that activists associated with HOOSIERS FOR FAIR TAXATION have a lot of respect for Gary Welsh who writes Advance Indiana. He's likely the best conservative blogger in the state. Because of Gary's reporting, we often know the next direction to take as activists. In other words, we rely a lot on Gary being here.

It's no secret that Gary supports Jon Elrod for Congress. He is even hosting a fundraiser for Elrod. It's also no secret that many of the activists with HOOSIERS FOR FAIR TAXATION support Sean Shepard for Congress. Afterall, Sean helped start the property activist movement in Indianapolis back in July 2007. Sean, as a state Fair Tax director, was there before any of us were. In fact, the first property tax protests were organized in effort to bring more awareness of the Fair Tax.

Indiana is no longer a two-party sytem. We are a three-party system. Like it or not, there are many Libertarians who are as good for our state as the best of the Republicans, and some better for Indiana than the Republicans.

Lately we've seen our state senators get behind and endorse two very inexperienced candidates for Congress. Exactly what experience do these candidates bring to the people to cause us to have faith in them? Exactly WHY are they being endorsed. No one has sufficiently answered this question.

Gary's reasoning behind not supporting Sean Shepard for Congress has nothing to do with Sean's experience or qualifications for Congress and has everything to do with the fact that Sean is a threat to Elrod because Sean, even without senatorial endorsement, will earn a lot of conservative votes . Gary didn't mind one bit when the Libertarians opened their arms to republican Greg Ballard and supported him with our time and money and helped him win the biggest political upset in the country.

We do wish Gary would open his forum and interview both candidates. You would think since Elrod is pro property tax repeal, that he would want to interview with the very people who started the tax protests. We asked and Elrod refused.

Gary, we challenge you to host a Q & A with the candidates on your blog. Shouldn't we be more concerned with finding the person who is best to represent the 7th district than partisan politics? That's what we get from Wilson Allen and Jenn Wagner, not you!

Here's what Gary had to say today on his blog about Sean's candidacy:

I don't know what Klopfenstein is doing in the special election race, but
I've seen e-mails Maguire has been sending around promoting Sean Shepard's
candidacy. Clearly, those efforts will only hurt Jon Elrod. If you look at the
profile of the people who vote Libertarian, they are people who would have
otherwise voted Republican. The only thing a vote for a Libertarian can
accomplish in any Marion County election is to sabotage a Republican candidate's
chance of winning. A Libertarian will never win an election in this county-at
least nowhere in the foreseeable future. The Republican precinct
committeepersons should be slamming every member of the GOP council right now
for giving these two Libertarians these key appointments. It is an insult and a
slap in the face of the people who worked to elect these GOP councilors to put
people dedicated to defeating Republicans on city boards and commissions. It's
also probably why the GOP's re-emergence will be short-lived in city government
at the pace they're going.