In short, he shut his mouth.
"I'm not a politician; I'm just a businessman trying to bring some common sense back to government," Boneham, an Indianapolis businessman best known for being a contestant on the popular reality television show "Survivor," said at one point late in the debate.
Boneham then stopped to pause, a move moderator John Ketzenberger, president of the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, interpreted as a signal to move on.
Only Boneham wasn't finished.
Joked Ketzenberger later, "You're unlike many politicians in that you pause to take a breath. I apologize."
The nickname game
Back in August, Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock invented a nickname for U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, his Democratic opponent in this year's race for one of the state's U.S. Senate seats.
Mourdock, a Republican, ran a televised advertisement that highlighted Donnelly's vote for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is better known as Obamacare. "No wonder they call Donnelly 'Obama Joe,'" the ad's narrator says of the Granger congressman.
Well, apparently, Obama Joe didn't stick. Another GOP organization has already given Donnelly a new nickname.
Senate Conservatives Action, a political action committee affiliated with Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., released an ad earlier this month that criticizes Donnelly for supporting plans to rescue the automotive industry and the financial sector. "That's why they call me 'Bailout Joe,'" an animated version of Donnelly says in the spot.
Donnelly's campaign responded to the first nickname in August by asking, "And who calls him Obama Joe, anyway?"
His campaign challenged the Bailout Joe label by noting, "Didn't Richard Mourdock try to give Joe a nickname already?"
Every vote counts
Either Indiana's 8th House District includes parts of Utah now or the state Democratic Party made a mistake. After all, there are only so many ways to explain a campaign ad for District 8 state Rep. Ryan Dvorak, D-South Bend, ending up in a mailbox in Utah.
As Scot Squires, a former New Carlisle resident who now lives in Nibley, Utah, about 80 miles north of Salt Lake City, wrote on his Facebook page recently:
"Because this is an election year, it wasn't really surprising that we received a political ad in the mail today from Ryan Dvorak, who is running for state representative. What is odd, however, is that we live in Utah and he's running in Indiana.
"I don't think a Dem from Indiana could get many voters here in the red state of Utah," he quipped.
Of course the state's 8th House District doesn't include parts of Utah. The Democratic Party obviously made a mistake.
But how? (And no, gerrymandering is not the answer.)
A spokesman for the party suggested Squires might have changed his mailing address but not his voting address, resulting in the party targeting him as an absentee voter.
A plausible explanation. Except that Squires did, in fact, change his voting address. He is registered to vote in Utah, he said.
More red meat for conspiracy theorists.
Compiled by Tribune staff writers Erin Blasko and Kevin Allen.
