Editor's note:

Today, May 5, we're profiling the four candidates for Indiana's Second District U.S. House seat, Republicans Jackie Walorski and Greg Andrews and Democrats Brendan Mullen and Dan Morrison.

The two winners in Tuesday's primary — Walorski and Mullen have the clear edge gauging by organization, funding and party support — advance to next November's general election.

Scroll to the end of the story for more info on the geography of the Second District.



ELKHART — For Greg Andrews, Republican hopeful for the Second District U.S. House seat, health care issues sit at the top of his list of concerns.

That shouldn't be a surprise — he's a South Bend physician and his campaign slogan is “We need a doctor in the House.” Before launching his bid for Congress, he worked at the Indiana Health Center in South Bend and as a family medicine doctor in LaPorte before that.

“I'm running on both the economy and health care,” he says.

He's for repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's 2010 health care reform initiative, and offers up a strong criticism of it.

“It's too costly. It could cost up to two-and-a-half trillion dollars,” he says. It would create 150 bureaucracies and it also prompts worries about Washington bureaucrats meddling in patients' relationships with their physicans.

Rather than a new health care law, he first favors reform of Medicaid and Medicare, public health programs for the needy and the elderly, respectively.

He's also got plenty of opinions on other health care issues:

• Health care clinics, not emergency rooms, should be the safety net for care.

• An acute doctor and nursing shortage is in the offing — the nation could lack 150,000 doctors by 2025 and a million nurses by 2020.

• A spike in cases of Alzheimer's disease is looming as the U.S. population ages and could bankrupt the nation in the next 30 years, he fears.

Of course, he doesn't discuss only health care issues:

• He's for lowering the corporate tax rate and thinks government regulations are hampering economic growth.

• The importance of post-secondary education needs to be emphasized among students to bolster their job opportunities.

• The United States needs to redouble efforts to search out domestic energy resources, like oil, because creating reliable renewable resources will take years.

Andrews, 53 and married to a physician assistant, is making his first bid for public office. He's thought about running for office before “but it just wasn't the right time,” he says. “We didn't have crisis after crisis like we have now.”

Philosophically, he describes himself as conservative “but trying to be practical also.”

His campaign resources are limited. He had just generated $8,654 in receipts as of April 23 and he only had $493 on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission.

“I try to overcome that with the message and the views,” he says.

He hasn't gotten through to Dale Stickel, chairman of the Elkhart County Republican Central Committee, someone who would presumably have his finger on GOP candidates in Elkhart County. Apparently, Andrews hasn't even tried to contact him, underscoring the limited scope of his campaign.

GOP hopeful Jackie Walorski — Stickel knows who she is. “The other candidate, I don't even know his name,” Stickel said. “He has never made an effort to contact me as county chairman.”

Andrews, nevertheless, offers an optimistic front.

“If more people understood my message and read my website, they'd have a greater appreciation of who I am, where I want to go,” he says.



Indiana's Second District

The Second District, located in north central Indiana, has been redrawn per the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau population count and the new boundaries take effect next year. Elkhart County, which has been divvied between the Second and Third districts, will now be entirely within the Second District.

The revamped district will also include St. Joseph, Starke, Marshall, Pulaski, Fulton, Miami and Wabash counties and parts of LaPorte and Kosciusko counties.

Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, currently represents the district, but he's running for the U.S. Senate this cycle.