Lynn Coleman’s campaign to unseat U.S. Representative Jackie Walorski has him venturing into some new territory.
During a visit Tuesday to the Therapeutic Community program at the Starke County Justice Center in Knox, Coleman said he’d never been there before his campaign began. But now he says his goal is to meet as many people as possible throughout the 2nd Congressional District. “We’ve been to every county in the district,” he said. “Most of the counties, we’ve been to multiple times. We’ve met a lot of good people. We’ve met people in the Democratic Party at Democratic events. We’ve been to businesses and companies, and just downtown communities.”
Coleman is a former South Bend police officer who’s never held elected office before. While he conceded that he knows more people in South Bend, he said he’s now also getting recognized in other parts of the district. That was true during his visit to the Starke County Justice Center Tuesday. “When I walked in the door, he said, ‘Don’t I know you?’ He said, ‘I saw you on TV.’ I didn’t know him, and so we stood in there and had a five-minute conversation,” Coleman said.
He added that his campaign aims to improve residents’ quality of life, regardless of where they live in the district. But he feels he needs to get to know them first. “How can you be willing to represent a group of people, how can you say that you want to advocate for people that you don’t know, that you don’t talk to, that you’re not willing to engage with? And so from day one, we said that we would be willing to go anywhere in the district to talk to any of our constituents about anything.”
But Coleman adds he’s not an expert on everything. “I’ve never ran for political office before,” he said. “This whole process is new for me. But I have been involved with people and worked with people and talked with people before, and so I don’t have a problem with doing that. And so it’s been a learning experience for me, to have an opportunity to travel throughout the district and meet as many people as we can meet.”
He said that no matter where people live, their basic needs – like food, jobs, and a place to live – remain the same.
