INDIANAPOLIS - The Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama television commercials are off the air in Indiana and mailboxes are no longer filled with their literature. Their storefront offices have been cleaned out after the weekslong rush that ended with Tuesday's primary.

But while the national campaigns have moved on, Democrats across Indiana hope they can still capture some advantage from the attention, activism and record voter turnout the presidential candidates generated.

Nearly 1.3 million votes were cast in the Democratic primary -- three times the number of Republican votes statewide. More remarkable was that more voters took Democratic rather than GOP ballots in nearly all 92 counties in a state that usually is the first to go for the Republican presidential candidate in general elections.

That makes Democrat Rhonda Roush Bell more optimistic as she prepares to campaign for a state representative seat from a district in the Republican strongholds of Bartholomew and Johnson counties in central Indiana.

She says she doesn't know how many of those voters might be willing to support local Democrats come November, but they are a top target.

"Right now, I think they are wonderful and I'm certainly glad they're on my side instead of the opposite," Bell said. "It gives me hope that there's a much greater chance of actually getting elected."

From gubernatorial nominee Jill Long Thompson to local candidates, Democrats see the potential for more volunteers and donors -- and new supportive voters -- coming from the weeks of presidential hoopla.

"It provides a real opportunity for Hoosiers to be very independent once again," Long Thompson said. "Those numbers are very encouraging for me."

Republican leaders, though, don't believe there is much of an overall shift in the state's typical GOP leanings. They attribute the large voter numbers to the intense interest in the Clinton-Obama race.

After all, they say, it had been 40 years since Indiana had been a major factor in the presidential primaries and a tight Republican presidential race would have drawn similar interest.

"It would be fool's gold for them to read much into this election as some kind of groundswell for the Democrat Party," state GOP Chairman Murray Clark said.

About one in five voters in Tuesday's Democratic primary said they were independents and one in 10 identified themselves as Republicans, according to exit polls for The Associated Press and television networks.

Clark believes the up-close campaigning Obama did in the state hurt the Illinois senator's overall appeal if he becomes the Democratic nominee. And Clark said he expected John McCain and Gov. Mitch Daniels to win over Republican voters who cast ballots on the Democratic side in the primary.

"I think those people come back to us in a heartbeat," Clark said.

Shari Mellin knows she still faces an uphill battle as the Democratic chairwoman in northern Indiana's Elkhart County, where Republicans are so dominant countywide that few Democrats even bother to get on the ballot.

President Bush won 70 percent of Elkhart County's vote over John Kerry in 2004, but some 10,000 more people voted in the Clinton-Obama race on Tuesday than in the Republican race.

Mellin thinks the primary excitement will help the party find good candidates to fill ballot openings for county offices such as commissioner and council. She's not as optimistic about seeing many new volunteers from the ranks of those who knocked on doors or made phone calls for Clinton or Obama.

"I think a lot of the people working for those two campaigns are working for those two campaigns," Mellin said. "I don't know that they are that interested in seeing county-level people get elected and state-level people get elected. Although they should be."

State Democratic Chairman Dan Parker said he was eager to start distributing the list all of those who voted in the Democratic primary to congressional campaigns, Statehouse candidates and county party leaders.

He expects the lists of those who volunteered for Clinton or Obama to become an important resource to tap, along with the addition of nearly 140,000 new voters across the state -- many signed up by the presidential campaigns.

He also sees inroads for Democrats in even the most Republican of territories, such as Hamilton County, the northern Indianapolis suburban area that is the state's fastest-growing and most-affluent county. More than 41,000 Democratic votes were cast there on Tuesday, compared with about 28,500 Republican votes.

"We've got 41,000 people there now that we can go identify and say 'You know, these guys are receptive to a Democratic message,"' Parker said. "Our job from here on out is to try to persuade a lot of these new voters to continue to vote for Democratic candidates."

One thing Kathy Stolz hopes to do this summer is revive the Young Democrats organization in Johnson County, a longtime Republican stronghold just south of Indianapolis. Stolz, the county's Democratic chairwoman, sees that as a way to get some of the young voters who were interested in the presidential race involved in the party for years to come.

Her bigger wish is that those who crossed party lines on Tuesday don't just revert to old voting habits.

"I do hope that people who have voted Republican time after time after time will realize that just because they voted Democrat once doesn't mean they can never do it again," Stolz said. "That they did not burn, or turn into a pillar of salt, or become a frozen fossil, all at that moment they asked for the Democratic ballot."




By TOM DAVIES, Associated Press, May 12, 2008