Former Marion County coroner John McGoff, who surprised almost everybody by garnering 45 percent of the primary vote against longtime U.S. Rep. Dan Burton in 2008, is running again and probably poses the greatest political threat to the Indiana Republican lawmaker in his thirty-year career in the House.
McGoff, a decorated Iraq War veteran and longtime emergency room physician, was outspent by a 5-to-1 margin in that campaign.
McGoff announced his candidacy for Indiana’s newly-drawn 5th congressional district seat lat week — his third try for the seat.
In 2010, everybody smelled blood in the water and consequently McGoff was one of six challengers to the 72-year-old Burton, who narrowly escaped a career-ending disaster with a relatively meager 30 percent of the primary vote. McGoff finished third in that crowded contest, garnering 20,679 votes, or 18.6 percent.
Former state Rep. Luke Messer, who finished second in that hotly-contested primary — about 2,500 votes behind the fifteen-term Burton — has already indicated that he‘ll be running in the newly drawn 6th district currently held by U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, who’s giving up his seat in the U.S. House to seek the Republican nomination for governor.
Messer’s Shelbyville home was recently redistricted into the 6th district.
McGoff believes the demographics of the reconfigured district are much more favorable than in 2008 and 2010, particularly since more areas of Marion County that he represented as the county’s two-term coroner are now included in the district.
In addition to adding territory that could potentially benefit McGoff, Indiana lawmakers also removed several rural counties near Fort Wayne that went heavily for Burton in 2010 when they redrew the district earlier this year.
Like Messer, most of Burton’s other 2010 primary challengers also no longer live in the heavily Republican 5th district, which is good news for the former coroner, who hopes to be Burton’s lone challenger for the Republican nomination next year.
McGoff, 51, has been harshly critical of Burton, who was first elected to Congress in 1982 and is probably best known for pursuing a number of high-profile investigations during the Clinton administration, many of which failed to bear fruit.
Burton recently indicated that he plans to seek a sixteenth term in the U.S. House, but McGoff insists there’s little reason for keeping him there. He’s no longer relevant, says the doctor.
“Take a look what’s going on in the last few years,” McGoff told WISH-TV in Indianapolis. “We’re drowning in debt and what has he done. He’s worried more about baseball and steroids, wrapping the House floor in Plexiglas, and not running this country, and that’s why I’m getting back into this race.”
Ironically, Burton himself was elected to Congress on his third try in 1982, a decade after waging unsuccessful congressional campaigns in 1970 and 1972.
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