Keep an Eye on the Camm Trial

Springboard or Sandbag?
For those of you not either from southern Indiana or obsessed with those criminal expose and lawyer debate shows, let me introduce you to the ongoing courtroom drama that is the trial of one David Camm and the potentially interesting political implications of its outcome.

David Camm was a former Indiana State Trooper who was convicted for murdering his wife and their two children. This verdict was later overturned on appeal, and a new trial was ordered. A second jury found David Camm guilty, and the case is now making its way through the appeals process. A request for a new (third) trial was recently denied, opening the door to the case being heard by the Indiana Supreme Court.

The first Camm trial was botched by Stan Faith, who was then Floyd County's Prosecuting Attorney. Faith, a Democrat, narrowly lost a reelection bid to Republican Keith Henderson in 2002 by just over four hundred votes. Henderson, a 45-year old lawyer (see the News & Tribune election bio), recently won a "thumpin'" reelection by over 6,300 votes. A Republican that can win by that sort of margin given the '06 election environment for the GOP is one to be watched.

The youthful Henderson is articulate and ambitious. He was appointed to serve as prosecutor in Floyd County to clean up election fraud and other government mischief, and was comfortably elected (in terms of Crawford County's small electorate) to that post in his own right in 1998. He is now starting a second term as Floyd County prosecutor.

It is not a stretch to think of Keith Henderson, who could win in both the Democratic bastion of Crawford County and by a landslide in swing Floyd County, as a contender for the Republican nomination to challenge Baron Hill for the 9th District Congressional seat in 2008 (assuming, of course, that Hill runs).

But any thought of Henderson running for Congress depends upon the outcome of one of the very things that has given the Republican prosecutor such relatively good name recognition and significant public profile across southern Indiana (and the entire Louisville media market, given the obsession of news organizations there with the Camm trial). If the guilty verdict for Camm is upheld, then the path becomes much more clear for Henderson to--should he be so inclined--take a shot at running for higher office. If the verdict is overturned, and Camm walks or there is yet another trial, Henderson's chances are all but dashed.

Few in number are those Republicans in the 9th District capable of standing against an incumbent Congressman. Two times in a row, Mike Sodrel was one of the few that could be found. Keith Henderson could be a potent addition to that list, if the Camm trial proves to be a springboard and not a sandbag.

Baron Hill could not surmount a Republican challenge by Sodrel in a presidential election year, and he was elected this year by a relatively narrow margin despite it being such an incredibly Democratic year. Faced with a popular and well-known fresh face (with a proven ability to garner large margins in Floyd County and win in Democratic strongholds like Crawford County) and with a presidential election year in a district heavily tilted to Republicans, Hill might think it better to take his chances against Mitch Daniels than to be turned out by the voters again. That's not political reasoning exclusive to Keith Henderson, but it is a line of thought made even more sharp by someone like him.