After BoBo returned home, he pitched in Terre Haute for company teams run by Chesty Potato Chips and Ethyl-Visqueen. Bennett regrets never seeing his father pitch when he was in his prime. His dad retired when he was 3.

By the time Bennett was a Terre Haute North High School senior in 1978, he faced up to adulthood: “I decided I’d better do something to get plugged in,” he recalled.  “My parents didn’t have money to send me to college, so I knew I’d have to pay my way. I decided to go to Ivy Tech.”

Little did he know, his choice of a college major would become an important factor enabling him to develop a successful professional career that one day would put him in a position to run for mayor of Terre Haute.

Bennett graduated from Ivy Tech in 1980 around the time he was beginning his career as a sports referee. His degree was in electronic communications (information technology). He had the good fortune to take an entry level job with a fast-growing local business created by Rose-Hulman graduates, Applied Computing Devices. ACD did hardware and software tech service for large telephone companies such as GTE, Sprint and MCI. The job built Bennett’s confidence in his ability to solve challenging problems by himself, and for the first time in his life, he had the opportunity to travel. His work took him around the United States installing and servicing computer hardware and software.

“I landed in 120 different airports during my 15 years with ACD,” Bennett said.

In Bennett’s opinion, San Francisco was the most beautiful city he visited, but he also was impressed with some of America’s biggest metro areas. He passed many days working around the country in out-of-the-way rural locations where phone companies had remote data collection centers. His most distant job took him to Palmer, Alaska.

One of Bennett’s most memorable ACD experiences was a trip to Detroit at the time his company had a contract with EDS, which was owned by billionaire and former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, who happened to be speaking at a function Bennett attended.  “I got a chance to say ‘Hi’ and reached my hand out to him, but I was in a crowd of people with outstretched hands. He didn’t take mine,” said Bennett.

While with ACD, Bennett began doing independent telecommunications consulting with local firms such as Terre Haute First National Bank (now First Financial) and Hamilton Center. When ACD went bankrupt in 1995, these contacts enabled him to land on his feet the same year as Hamilton’s data processing manager.

Bennett began his career at Hamilton Center at an opportune time. Hamilton still had a rudimentary computer system servicing facilities in its 10-county coverage area, but management was ready to embark on a transition from old-style computing to shared networking. Bennett’s knowledge of information technology was instrumental in bringing about changes so Hamilton’s employees could use technology more effectively.

Eventually, he became director of operations for Hamilton Center’s 35-location network. His duties included being a building superintendent as well as overseeing information management systems, building security and purchasing.

Bennett became deeply involved in public service while at Hamilton.

“My first interest in public service was piqued by Pete Chalos,” he recalled.  “He had been my history teacher at Terre Haute North. I thought it was neat he had stepped up and had become mayor. To me, what he did was more about service than political point of view.”

For a while, Bennett served on board of directors for community services such as Red Cross and Lifeline. The more he served, the more he liked it, and he wanted to do more.

“I finally decided I wanted to run for mayor as a Republican even though naysayers said I should start off on the city council or something like that,” Bennett said, “but my passion was making things happen. I also felt the city needed a genuine two-party system.”

Bennett does not believe Terre Haute has benefited by having only one political party in power for 40 years (Lee Larrison was the last Republican mayor from 1968 through 1971). The consequence, in Bennett’s opinion, is that Indiana’s Democratic leaders are slow to offer assistance for economic projects because they think the city is in the bag; on the other hand, state level Republicans often take the position that it is not worth trying to gain favor with Vigo County. One-party rule also keeps promising Republican candidates from making what they often feel are hopeless runs for office.

After first running for mayor in 2003, Bennett decided he had gotten a good return on investment — he had lost by only 3,000 votes after spending but $10,000 as compared to what he says was his opponent, Kevin Burke’s, $200,000 campaign war chest.

“I laid back and decided to observe what the new administration was doing after I lost in ‘03,” said Bennett. “Then I decided to run again.”

He believed that if he ran it would give people an alternative and all he had to do was change 1,600 votes. He factored into his thinking that his wife, Pam, was undergoing surgeries for breast cancer during his ‘03 campaign, so he had lost opportunities to get out his message. When he began organizing in ‘07, he found more Democrats than ever willing to help his campaign.

Though Bennett does not project a flamboyant or charismatic personality, he is obviously intelligent, likeable and adept at answering questions. Vicki Curts, who was a Democrat for Duke, said. “He’s not a Washington Republican. He seems to care about people — citizens are his main concern. He’s incorruptible, which is one of the reasons Dems for Duke formed.”

“I’ve never been caught up with national politics,” the mayor said. “As far as I’m concerned, in local politics you don’t have to be involved with national political issues. They have no bearing on the fire department, parks, or police. The most important thing is for the mayor to get the best usage of the tax dollar. … Midwestern common sense is the key to my way of working out local problems. I am conservative by nature, like most people around here, Republican or Democrat.”

Bennett said that by October 2007, he knew he was doing well in the mayoral campaign, and after his opponent pulled out of a debate, he believed that he had the momentum. A shot! On the other hand, people still told him, “You can’t win — you’re a Republican.”

After his 107-vote victory, Bennett said that he knew he had to get to work immediately, notwithstanding a recount of the election tally and a subsequent legal challenge to the legitimacy of his candidacy by his opponent, who charged some of his work duties at Hamilton Center had been related to the federal government’s Head Start program, forbidden under the federal government’s Little Hatch Act. (In June of this year, the Indiana Supreme Court settled the lawsuit in Bennett’s favor).

“Being mayor means the buck stops with me,” said Bennett. “All kinds of things come my way: personnel issues, contracts, customer service — we’re really dealing with the people’s needs. The way it’s handled all reflects on the mayor.”

Since his election, one of Bennett’s top priorities has been changing the perception of local citizens that government is out of reach. He has instructed his staff to diligently follow up on all phone calls, e-mails, letters and visits by citizens to the mayor’s office.

On the day he was elected, Bennett could not have foreseen the magnitude of the problems that would overcome America. In November 2007, the Dow Jones was still close to its all-time high of nearly 14,000. But the U.S. economy was headed into its most severe recession since the Great Depression, increasing national unemployment from around 4 percent to nearly 10 percent.

Terre Haute’s city finances have since been hit by double trouble. The taxes the state takes in during a recession drop, and much of Terre Haute’s economic development money comes from getting a percentage of now-collapsing state tax revenues. Also crippling is Indiana House Bill 1001, which was recently passed into law and limits the amount of property tax money Terre Haute can raise. The two economic bombshells will eventually give Bennett roughly 20 percent less revenue to work with than his predecessor — and the effects of HB 1001 will become annually more severe through 2011.

Pages: 1 2 3