Kat with a K

Race Car Drivers for Senate!

(Warning: complete silliness ahead.)

Before all this Bayh stuff exploded in the last few days, I will readily admit that most of my associations with Indiana had to do with the Indy Racing League rather than politics. So I thought - hey! A bunch of racing type people live there. Maybe one of them could end up in the Senate. I asked my friend John Andrews, who writes the Techie column for the Hippo and is the one who got me into racing in the first place. Here's what he said:

Well, a number of 2009 drivers claim at least partial residence in Indianapolis.
Ed Carpenter is Tony George's stepson and grew up there.
Sarah Fisher was born in Ohio.

From there we get increasingly foreign people. I assume one must be a citizen to be a Senator, but there's none of that "natural-born" nonsense, right?*
Darren Manning
Scott Dixon
Tomas Scheckter
Hideki Mutoh
Will Power

And by "increasingly foreign," of course, I mean England (parent) -> New Zealand -> (fellow colony) -> South Africa (they speak English, right?) -> Japan (don't even write with letters). Will Power is last because he only claims partial residence, and his hometown of Toowoomba is far too silly-sounding for him to have a chance.
Ed Carpenter definitely has the cred of being local, and he's never going to be a real star in racing.

I think South Africa should maybe be before New Zealand. Looks like they gained full independence in 1931, and New Zealand didn't bother to ratify the same document until 1947. Or maybe that means they're farther away, barely? South Africa is like the oldest cousin and New Zealand is a younger one?

* Correct: "No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen." Therefore, I believe Sarah Fisher would be the only one of the above who would actually be eligible.