Waterman needs signatures; web stats up; fair on the horizon

With the deadline approaching it appears that the third party bid to become governor of the state of Indiana by Republican State Sen. John Waterman is facing a long, uphill battle.

Waterman, who is running under the banner of the newly formed Taxpayers Party which was established specifically for this race, needs 33,000 petition signatures to get on the ballot and the deadline to get those petitions to county clerks was last Monday.

So far, a little more than 1,800 signatures are certified, meaning Waterman fell short by about 31,000.

Waterman is from Sullivan County and his running mate, Glenna Jehl, is from Allen County and that's where they had the most success.

Sullivan County reports 545 petition signatures certified and in Allen County there are 290.

But, they needed to average 350 signatures per county and 14 counties have 10 or fewer, according to a report from WISH-TV in Indianapolis.

Actually, the final statewide tally of the signatures won't be done until July 15, when counties turn them over to the State Election Commission.

However, it looks like an uphill battle at best to get on the ballot for Waterman, who represents Senate District 39 -- which includes parts of Greene, all of Sullivan and a portion of Vigo and Knox counties.

Waterman, 56, who has served in the state senate since 1994, told me weeks ago that he decided to launch his gubernatorial effort after the May primary showed many Hoosiers do not support either the Democratic or Republican candidates for governor.

They were upset for the most part by high property taxes, he said.

Waterman, the two-term former Sullivan County sheriff, says he'll be back in the Senate trying to do his part to fix the property tax mess if his bid for governor comes up short.

However, there will likely be a Greene County connection in the governor's race on the November ballot.

Eastern Greene County organic farmer Steve Bonney, who hails from Lafayette, looks to have raised enough signatures to get his name on the ballot as an independent candidate.

He'll face incumbent Republican Mitch Daniels, who holds a 14 percentage point lead in the latest polling, Democrat Jill Long-Thompson, who is making a bid to become the Hoosier State's first female governor and Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning.

Web site stats

The numbers are in for traffic to our Web site -- www.gcdailyworld.com and frankly they are pretty staggering.

During the month of June, our Web site registered 6,392,635 hits. More impressive, the site attracted 1,180,424 page views and had 125,106 unique visitors -- all records for a single month.

That translates into daily hits averaging 213,088, daily page views of 39,347 and daily unique visitors -- the number of different people who come to the Web site -- of 4,170.

It should be pointed out that during the month of June the county did experience two tornados and a major flood -- which no doubt drove the numbers higher as people clicked on our Web site to get breaking news information in a timely fashion.

For the year 2008, the site has recorded 28,674,282 hits, 5,682,146 page views and 677,254 unique visitors -- which have averaged right at 4,000 per day.

With the county's largest circulation newspaper, this is proof that the Greene County Daily World and its Web site www.gcdailyworld.com is Greene County's No. 1 source for news in print and on the web.

We are proud to serve you.

We thank you -- our readers -- and our advertising partners for the support that has made our Web site and print edition such a success.

We pledge to you that we'll continue to do our job in a fair, accurate and timely manner.

Fair starts Friday

Don't forget the Greene County 4-H Fair kicks off this weekend. Go over to the fairgrounds and check out the talent that your 4-H kids have and support their efforts.

The 4-H program is the largest youth program in the county.

The fair begins Friday and runs through July 19.

A special edition detailing the many events featured at this year's fair will be included in your Friday edition of the Greene County Daily World.

Nick is the assistant editor for the Greene County Daily World. He can be reached by telephone at 847-4487 or 1-800-947-4487 or by e-mail at schneider.nick@gmail.com or nschneider@gcdailyworld.com