COMMENTARY: Four presidential candidates have a hint of Terre Haute in their backgrounds

Maybe they’ve caught Indy 500 fever, captivated by the race’s 100th running next month. Or they’ve developed a hankering for fried morels, picked fresh from the woods by genuine Hoosier mushroom hunters. Or they’re lost.

No. Instead, their fascination with all things Hoosier centers around the unusually relevant Indiana primary on May 3. The Oval Office hopefuls need delegates to win their parties’ nominations, and Indiana’s allotment — 57 for the Republicans and 92 for the Democrats — could prove decisive. Typically, the presidential front-runners have locked up the nominations by the time Hoosiers vote, but not this time. Thus, all five candidates will undoubtedly show up in numerous Hoosier towns, perhaps even Terre Haute.

Whether any of them — reality TV star Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich on the Republican side; and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic ticket — pass through Terre Haute this spring, at least four of them already had experiences with this city, either directly or from afar, prior to the 2016 election cycle. 

If historical points count, Sanders holds an edge on the others in the Terre Haute connections category. He slept here once.

A couple you may remember, others not so much. Let’s look back ...

• Five years ago, a contingent of Indianapolis Motor Speedway staff — led by then-Speedway president Jeff Belskus, a Terre Haute South High School graduate — flew to New York City to meet with Trump in his Big Apple office. The IMS chose Trump to drive the pace car to start the 2011 Indy 500, on the race’s 100th anniversary.

The trip to NYC helped finalize the deal. Trump, star of “The Apprentice” then and daily headline-maker now, handled himself and the meeting in unsurprising fashion. “He is the way he appears, I guess,” Belskus recalled last week by telephone from Indianapolis, where he now serves as president of the Indy Eleven pro soccer team.

“I would say his candidacy and the things he’s been doing, they don’t surprise me at all,” Belskus added. “It’s him.”

The agreement with Trump as pace car driver took months to complete, Belskus said.

Trump withdrew from that role, though, less than a month before the race. Publicly, Trump told the Indianapolis Star then that “time and business constraints,” especially involving the necessary practice time, conflicted with his schedule.

However, the Star also reported that thousands of people opposed the controversial billionaire as pace car driver, following Trump’s obsessive insistence that President Obama prove he was born in Hawaii. A Facebook page, bluntly labeled, “We Don’t Want Donald Trump to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car,” attracted 14,500 likes. A Trump aide told the Star the page was politically motivated.

Whether the social media backlash or time commitments caused Trump to back out, Belskus couldn’t say. “I don’t know the answer to that. You’d have to ask him on that,” Belskus said last week. “He didn’t share his reasons with me, other than to say he had other obligations.”

The Speedway promptly enlisted, instead, four-time 500 winner A.J. Foyt to guide the pace car. “Foyt was an appropriate choice,” Belskus said.

Belskus politely declined to say which presidential candidate he favors this year. Besides, the first week of May is important for him, too. Belskus’ Indy Eleven play their second home game May 7 against FC Edmonton, with hopes of becoming the 2016 front-runner, in the North American Soccer League, that is.

• The tight, prolonged and contentious race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination also brought luminaries to the Terre Haute area. Actors Ted Danson and Jeremy Piven visited the city in support of Clinton and Obama, respectively. Chelsea Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also spoke on Hillary’s behalf.

Both candidates visited twice — Obama to Terre Haute North High School and the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds, and Clinton to the Saratoga Restaurant and Terre Haute South High School. One incident between Clinton’s stops in March and May of 2008 made headlines around the country.

On April 11, hours before Clinton’s husband, Bill, was to eat breakfast at a downtown Terre Haute diner and then speak at South Vermillion High School, a fire damaged the South Third Street building serving as Hillary’s Terre Haute headquarters. Two campaign workers safely escaped the blaze, which started between the ceiling and roof, according to the Terre Haute Fire Department report.

The former president bypassed his scheduled breakfast gig to survey the site. Surrounded by reporters, fire officials and surprised locals, the president quipped, “This is a heck of a way to get publicity for Hillary’s campaign.” When asked if the fire was a bad omen, he laughed and said, “No, I think this is a good omen. We’ll rise from the ashes like the Phoenix,” referring to the bird in Greek mythology.

Clinton won the Indiana primary, but, of course, lost the nomination to Obama.

• Competition between states frequently sounds like a college football rivalry. Recent Indiana governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence built a reputation for skewering debt-troubled neighbor Illinois. Lean corporate taxes and a fiscal frugality don’t completely shield the Hoosier State from its share of barbs, though.

Consider Kasich’s in-depth 2012 interview with the New York Times. Reporter Matt Bai’s story, “Did Barack Obama Save Ohio?”, studied whether the president’s economic recovery policies, or those by the state itself, or both, deserve credit for Ohio’s revival. The story describes Kasich’s passion for negotiating with businesses considering relocation to Ohio. Coincidentally, Indiana’s governors — Daniels and his successor, Pence — both considered that their forte, too.

At one point in the Times interview, Kasich — who was elected in 2010 — talked up his state’s virtues in comparison to others and said, “We have a lot of great cities. I mean, if you think of Indiana, you’ve got Indianapolis, and then what?” Kasich threw up his hands. “Terre Haute?”

Hauteans shouldn’t feel singled out, though.

A year later, Kasich spoke to a group of Republicans in Cincinnati, lauded the Queen City, and then jabbed the state on the west side of the Ohio River. Kasich said, “This is not Indiana, where you go to Indianapolis and then say, ‘Where else are we going to go? Gary?’” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Maybe Kasich, who’s become the most pragmatic Republican presidential possibility, should visit Terre Haute, just as Steve Martin once did in 1979. After the city treated the comedian to a bizarre and elaborate return tour, Martin famously changed his view of Terre Haute, which he’d declared the most “nowhere” town in America following his concert here months earlier. “Terre Haute really has its [stuff] together,” Martin decided.

&bill; In 1981, the thought of Bernie Sanders running for president would’ve been outlandish. He was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a city half the size of Terre Haute. And he was a socialist in the Reagan era.

Yet, in Terre Haute, or at least a sector of it, Sanders’ resume had appeal. He was invited to serve as the presenter of the 1981 Eugene V. Debs Award to renowned author, Kurt Vonnegut, on Saturday, Nov. 8. The Debs Foundation, based in Debs’ hometown of Terre Haute, gives out the award annually to social, political and labor activists who carry on the namesake’s progressive spirit.

Sanders decided to extend his stay in Terre Haute to speak at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Terre Haute on South Sixth Street the following Sunday morning. His topic? “Social Ethics in the Political Arena.”

It would be interesting to hear that same speech right about now.