Bush makes second Indiana trip in a month

Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS -- President Bush made his second congressional fundraising trip to Indiana in a month Friday in an effort to shore up support for Republicans in the November election.

Protesters prepared to greet his motorcade outside the Murat Centre downtown, where Bush was to speak at a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Mike Sodrel. The freshman Republican is expected to face a tight re-election battle against former Rep. Baron Hill in southern Indiana's 9th Congressional District.

About 50 anti-war protesters stood across from the Murat, carrying signs that said: "Stop War for Oil," "A terrorist behind every Bush" and "Iraq Bush's Viet Nam."

Jim O'Neill, 77, a retired school counselor from Indianapolis, said the war in Iraq is a quagmire and the U.S. will be bogged down there for years.

"Let's feed the hungry instead of pouring billions of dollars into the war effort," O'Neill said. "We definitely support the troops over there, but we want to bring them home."

Several Indiana University students staged a counter-protest to support Bush.

Bush's popularity has waned in Indiana, where no Democrat has won Indiana's 11 electoral votes since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. An Indianapolis Star telephone poll taken Feb. 28 through March 2 showed only 37 percent of Indiana residents surveyed believed Bush was doing a good job as president, while 56 percent disapproved.

But his visit was still expected to bring in more than $500,000 for Sodrel--a boon in a race expected to be one of the closest in the country.

Sodrel, owner of a Jeffersonville-based trucking company, narrowly lost to Hill in 2002. In 2004, he defeated the two-term Democrat by fewer than 1,500 votes out of about 287,000 cast. Hill announced in November he would seek to regain the seat.

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