Indiana GOP voters pick between differing styles for Senate

INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana Republicans will choose a U.S. Senate nominee on Tuesday from two congressmen who rode a Tea Party wave to Washington in 2010 but now offer voters a stark style choice of either confrontation or pragmatism.

The race between U.S. Reps. Marlin Stutzman and Todd Young has featured increasingly biting exchanges, despite both campaigning as stalwart conservatives with similar policy platforms. They are bidding to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Dan Coats.

Young has campaigned as a pragmatic U.S. Marine who is more interested in getting things accomplished than lobbing verbal bombs. Stutzman portrays himself as an outsider and small-town farmer. He's also played up his membership in the House Freedom Caucus, a Republican faction that wanted to confront Democrats and made the GOP-controlled House so unruly that former House Speaker John Boehner resigned.

Both crisscrossed the state, but most of the campaign that has been fought over the airwaves through negative ads. The nonstop TV blitz has been dominated by Young, whose ads accused Stutzman of being a career politician who puts his own financial interests first. A smaller number of Stutzman-backed ads with a science fiction theme portray Young as a robot politician who will vote the way party leaders tell him.

Young had a nearly 2-to-1 edge in fundraising while racking up endorsements from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Stutzman found himself outgunned and additional money he counted on from conservative groups such as Club for Growth failed to materialize.

Stutzman also has faced a story from The Associated Press showing that he used more than $3,000 in campaign funds to take his family to California on what his wife described on Facebook as a "family vacation." The AP also reported that Stutzman paid his brother-in-law and business partner nearly $170,000 to work on his campaign.

Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne who is now a public affairs professor for Indiana University, said a combination of the hurdles Stutzman has faced combined with Young's fundraising advantage has put Young "in the driver's seat."

"They are both strong conservatives, but I think Young is seen as a little less extreme," said Helmke, who in 1998 won the GOP nomination for Senate but lost in the general election to former Democratic Gov. Evan Bayh. "Young has the money coming into his campaign, improved positioning on the political spectrum. Stutzman has financial scandals."

The winner of the primary will face former Democratic U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, who was defeated by Young in 2010.