There were some fighting words during the Indiana Gubernatorial debate held in Zionsville Wednesday.
The event turned into a bit of a verbal slug-fest between Democrat John Gregg and Republican Mike Pence, with Libertarian Candidate Rupert Boneham in the middle.
Gregg went on the attack. "12 years in Congress, nothing passed, poor attendance record and nothing but the lead warrior in the attack on women," Gregg said about Pence. "That's all he's about."
Pence quickly responded. "You know I have a 95-percent attendance record in the Congress," Pence said to Gregg. "You know I've been named as one of the hardest working members of Congress. Maybe the reason you didn't answer the question about fiscal responsibility is that for five of the six years you were Speaker of the House, Indiana ran deficits."
Boneham stood between the two candidates. "Fiscal responsibility. I want to create that in our government in that TRI-partisan way, with Libertarians, Democrats and Republicans, showing how we can all work together," he said.
The debate featured themes that have been prevalent during the past few months including the economy and the state of education in Indiana.
"The best ideas don't come out of Washington, DC and they don't come out of Indianapolis," Gregg said. "They come from the supper tables in Zionsville and Elkhart to Evansville. We need to be more inclusive. We need to listen to teachers, but we also need to expect results."
"So much emphasis on the standardized testing, teaching our children to pick the best of four answers instead of teaching them how to write the essay. Life is not a multiple choice. Life is an essay, and we need to teach children how to thing and learn," Boneham said.
"We specifically set goals to improve math and reading skills of our elementary students and increase our graduation rates. We do that by placing greater emphasis on math and reading, considering the possibility of a gateway expectation at some point in Elementary school for math," Pence said.
The next debate between the three candidates will be on Wednesday, October 17th at the University of Notre Dame!
