One more stumble for Gary
GARY, IND. — As the nation impatiently waited Tuesday for primary results from Indiana's Lake County -- and the city of Gary in particular -- Hoosiers had a sinking feeling.
Once again, Gary was going to be the butt of a joke.
Brian Howey, a syndicated political columnist in Indianapolis, watched the news broadcasts until 3 a.m. with a growing sense of dread.
Cynthia Solomon, a retired accountant from Fort Wayne, buried her head in her pillow and groaned.
Robin Winston, a former chair of the state Democratic Party, screamed at the TV in a bar where he was watching the results -- "Get off our backs!"
"There were an overwhelming number of ballots, and a record number of voters turning out," Winston said. "But of course, any time something goes wrong there, people automatically assume it's a nefarious cover-up."
Beaten down, boarded up, and infamous for its crime rates and polluting industrial landscape, good news in Gary can be hard to find.
The predominantly black city of nearly 100,000, located about 30 miles southeast of Chicago, is where a federal jury convicted a city councilman three years ago of fraud and money laundering. Its current mayor, Rudy Clay, survived an apparent shotgun assassination attempt in the mid-1980s, soon after being elected a Lake County commissioner.
Gary civic leaders -- recently touting new construction projects -- cheered when Hooters Air began flying into Gary/Chicago International Airport in 2004 in a bid to draw passengers with cheap fares and busty flight attendants. (The enterprise was short-lived: The airline ceased operation in 2006.)
"It's the state's red-headed stepchild," said James McDowell, a professor of political science at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.
So, in some ways, is Lake County. The state's second-largest county stretches along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Indiana residents outside of the county often say it has more in common with Chicago -- and its notorious political past -- than with the rest of the state.
Rolland Beckham, a retired union official who worked with contractors and building tradesmen in Indiana, recalled how political operatives in the 1960s would drive people to different polling stations to vote multiple times.
"It happened in Gary, in East Chicago," said Beckham, a friend of Clay's. "They'd give them a couple dollars and say, 'Here, your name is this. At the next stop, your name will be this.' "
