Aubrey Woods, the senior reported for The Tribune, will interview Democrat Jill Long Thompson, for the former congresswoman from northern Indiana who’s running for governor, as she passes through Jackson County on Thursday.

Long Thompson faces Jim Schellinger in the Democratic primary election May 6 for the right to challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels in his re-election bid.

She’s passing through the area en route to a rally in Jeffersonville.

Woods and Long Thompson will likely discuss her economic development plans.

He’ll tell you what he learns with a posting on TribTown.com and in The Tribune on Friday.

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Illinos Sen. Barack Obama will stop in Columbus on Friday morning, part of his town hall-style series of meetings planned across Indiana as the May 6 primary election nears.

He’ll appear at at 11:30 a.m. at Columbus East High School, 230 S. Marr Road.

 Or that’s what time he’s supposed to talk.

We’ll see if he’s on time or running on what some people joked last week was Clinton Standard Time when former President Bill Clinton was about an hour late arriving at Seymour High School.

There were some folks complaining across southern Indiana that Clinton had been rude by being more than an hour late to stops in Columbus and Seymour, and likely even later in Bedford and Bloomington that afternoon

 But that’s the way political events work. People should expect the doors to open about an hour or so before the candidate or featured speaker is expected to appear, and then count on the speaker being late.

Early or late, I think it’s pretty cool having presidential candidates and their minions visiting the Hoosier state for a primary election.

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Seymour Fire Chief Fred Hines dodged a rash of complaints Wednesday.

He managed to get about 50 people inside the Seymour High School auxilliary gymnasium for formere President Bill Clinton’s campaign stop for his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That’s about how many people were first held out of the gym because it had reached capacity with about 1,300 people, Hines said. They were told they’d have to wait in the nearby commons area, where school officials planned to pipe in at least the audio from Clinton’s speech.

Knowing those folks wanted in, Hines kept an eye on the situation and saw there was some more room. So he squeezed them in.

 It also helped that some folks had to leave as the wait for Clinton’s arrival continued about an hour past his anticipated arrival time. Candidates — or in this case a candidate’s supporter — running late isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Generally you expect them to be running late. That’s just the nature of campaigning.

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The crowd of more than 1,300 that filled Seymour High School’s auxiliary gymnasium this morning for former President Bill Clinton’s campagin stop was mixed.

The Democratic Party faithful — such as Joanne Gorbett and county Chairwoman Jeanette Hackman — were raucous and enthusiastic. They whooped and waived their arms. They encouraged others to be excited, too.

But there was also a number of folks who appeared to be there more for the historic moment of seeing a former president rather than to lend their support for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. And that’s understandable.

And it may also be part of our nature as stoic Hoosiers not to be overly excited in public, unless of course we’re at Assembly Hall, Mackey Arena or Notre Dame Stadium.

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Wow.

Not only does former President Bill Clinton’s visit to southern Indiana today have to deal with Indiana University announcing it’s hired Tom Crean as the new basketball coach of the Hoosiers, now he also competes with former Indiana 9th District Rep. Lee Hamilton endorsing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Hamilton announced his endorsement this morning, according to a new release from the Obama’08 campaign.

Hamilton, a vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission and a man with incredible foreign policy credentials, cited Obama’s “ability to unite the county and his visionary approach to foreign policy,” according to a campaign press release.

“Barack Obama has the best opportunity to create a new sense of national unity and to transcend divisions within this country, not by ignoring them or smoothing them over, but by working together with candor and civility to meet our challenges,” Hamilton said in the news release.

“Obama has brought hundreds of thousands of new voters into the political process, making the Democratic Party more representative of the people of this nation and giving it new energy,” he added. “I am impressed by his wide reach and appeal across the electorate. He is redesigning the contours of American politics, expanding Democrats’ electoral reach, and inspiring a whole new generation of voters. If elected, he will lead the country in a manner consistent with the values, hopes, and dreams of the American people, bridging many of the gaps that separate us.

“His foreign policy is pragmatic, visionary, and tough,” Hamilton said. “Barack Obama understands the urgent need for American leadership in confronting many of the challenges ahead, first and foremost defending the safety and security of the American people.”

Timing is everything in politics.

You can bet Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign can’t be too excited about today’s planned announcement that Indiana University has hired a new men’s basketball coach.

That will be the big news out of Assembly Hall today, not former President Bill Clinton’s visit there, set for 2 p.m. after earlier stops in Columbus, Seymour (doors open to the Seymour High School auxiliary gym at 10:45 a.m.) and Bedford.

A former president visiting the area is a big deal, but we’re talking about a new coach for the Hoosiers.

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National Weather Service observer Ruth Everhart normally calls me with reports on whether the East Fork of the White River is flooding.

When we talked this morning, the river was making its way back within its banks after being past the 12-foot flood stage much of the last two weeks,  so I was surprised to just now hear her voice on the phone.

“I’m going to show my age,” she said with a laugh. “But I saw FDR and Harry Truman pass through town on the train.”

Everhart said she saw President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the back of an eastbound B&O as it stopped in Seymour sometime during World War II. She couldn’t recall a year.

Later she saw President Harry S Truman in a similar fashion.

Neither president got off the train when they stopped, she recalled.

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Former President Clinton remains about 20 hours away from visiting Seymour High School, but already some in the community are questioning why his campaign appearance for wife Hillary Rodham Clinton is being jammed into the auxiliary gymnaisum rather than the much more spacious Lloyd Scott Gymnasium.

My guess is “spacious” is the key word.

Seymour Community Schools Superintendent Robert Schmielau said Monday that Clinton’s people called school officials Saturday and visited at SHS that night, choosing the auxiliary gym, which can hold about 250, over the fieldhouse, which can seat about 8,100.

The smaller venue was preferred, Schmielau said.

I’m told by friends at The Palladium-Item in Richmond that similar complaints were voice when the former president visited there this winter. That trip, they chose the firehouse (Fire Station 1 is where he’ll appear Wednesday in Columbus).

My guess is they don’t want to show the former president campaigning for his wife to what could look like a bunch of empty seats. Can you imagine the crew on “Fox & Friends” having fun with that?

So if you’re one of the folks left in the commons area outside the auxiliary gym, don’t give Schmielau and Principal Greg Prange a hard time. They didn’t pick the venue, but they were happy to accomodate the request to serve as host of a presidential event.

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News that former President Bill Clinton is coming to Seymour as part of a four-city campaign tour for his wife that includes Columbus, Bedford and Bloomington has many area residents buzzing with excitement. Others aren’t so thrilled.

Online reader comments quickly hit below the belt, so to speak, making points about Clinton’s past daliances.

But let’s face it, it’s not that often that a president, current or former, loved or hated, visits Jackson County.

 In fact, all we could determine for sure is that John F. Kennedy campaigned here in spring 1960 before being elected president that fall, Dwight D. Eisenhower stopped briefly on a train in Brownstown and that maybe Harry S (no period) Truman may have waved from the rear of a rail car passing through town while he was president.

 Richard Nixon was close by in neighboring Jennings County, but he was not in Jackson County. Carol Waite, retired from The Tribune newsroom, covered Nixon’s visit to Vernon in 1971. She recalled him flying on Air Force One into Indianapolis and taking a helicopter to Vernon.

Gov. Ed Whitcomb, a native of Hayden, was among the dignitaries to greet Nixon that day.

So again, regardless of what you think of Bill Clinton, or Hillary, for that matter, it is a big deal for a president — current or former — to visit our community.

There’s a tradition in our family — and others, of course — of eating corned beef and cabbage on New Year’s Day. Something about bringing good luck for the new year.

I’m sure if we were from the South, our tradition would include black-eyed peas. That’s what they ate when I lived in Arkansas for 10 years one year, anyway.

I don’t know about you, but I found corned beef briskets in as ready supply in Seymour and Columbus as presidential candidates in the Hoosier state during the primary election season. There were none. Eight grocery stores in two cities yielded a pound of sliced corned beef from the deli of the eighth store.

While Iowans likely spent part of New Year’s Day listening to, running into or dodging presidential hopefuls as their caucus nears Thursday, we Hoosiers — including the lowercase libertarians among us — could only wonder what it’s like to have a candidate visit before the primary election.

Our primary falls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May. This year that’s May 6.

In all likelihood, that means Republican Ron Paul, the most litertarian of candidates in this year’s horserace won’t even be on our ballot let alone make a visit to the state.

It will be interesting to see how Paul, the 10-term representative from Texas, does Thursday in Iowa and whether his libertarian leanings will make an impact in New Hampshire when voters go to the polls Jan. 8.

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