Brad Ellsworth represnts Indiana's famous (or is it infamous) "Bloody Eighth" Congressional District. The District covers the southern half of Indiana's western border and includes Evansville, Terre Haute and Vincennes. It's a classic blue collar, white district: 94.2% white, 3.7% black, 0.9% Hispanic and 0.6% Asian. While the percentage of high school grads is slightly above the national norm, college degrees and graduate degrees are somewhat rare (15.6% for college vs. over 21% nationally; 3.7 for grad degrees vs. over 6%). The result is fewer "poor" people but family and per capita incomes some 10 to 15% below the national average.
Ellsworth's father was a crane operator for Alcoa. Ellsworth worked his way through a local college by working in the paint and hardware department of the local Sears. This was not "Grease" territory or anything like it. Ellsworth entered the County Sherriff's office and began working his way up the ladder. This meant getting a masters degree in Criminology at Indiana State (in the district at Terre Haute; best known as Larry Bird's school although John Wooden started his college coaching career there). It also meant, eventually, being elected the local sherrif (1998, re-elected in 2002), in Ellsworth's case as a Democrat.
In 2006, the Sherriff took on the local Republican Congressman, John Hostettler. Hostettler was kind of unusual. He voted against the Iraq War Resolution (AUMF) and refused to take PAC funds, In fact, he generally spent small sums and relied on a network of churches and anti-abortion types to turn out the votes. Ellsworth, in a sense, was the perfect candidate. Where Hostettler was not much of a fundraiser, Brad proved to be good at it. He was Catholic, anti-abortion, anti-drug, and the personification of law and order. Brad Ellsworth not only won, he won the largest victory of any of the 30 Democrats who took over a Republican seat with 61.5% of the vote in a district carried by George W. Bush with 61.02%.
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