For the third time in the last week, Senator Joe Donnelly visited east central Indiana.
After announcing his campaign for re-election last week, Donnelly spoke to the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce Monday morning. Yet, in his nearly half hour speech, Donnelly did not mention his campaign at all. Instead, he focused on the issues facing the country as a whole.
"We look at our brothers and sisters in Texas. It's an extraordinarily difficult situation they face right now. The rain is continuing. The rain is getting worse, and we are working to rescue everybody who is in a tough situation," Donnelly said.
The Democrat, who just announced his campaign for re-election, talked to Muncie business leaders about the efforts to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey. He also talked about rising tensions with North Korea.
"We've worked real hard to send the message that we want peace. We want stability. We want to work with you, and hopefully that will be understood. We've seen when he threatened to go after Guam. We saw that, in fact, he backed off," Donnelly said.
He also fielded a handful of questions after his speech, but had little to say about the upcoming election.
"I only have one strategy which is to do my job to the best of my ability everyday, and I think that's the best politics," he said when asked directly about his preparations.
Jay Julian, the president of the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce, works to get elected officials to speak to the chamber regularly.
"It's just important for the business community to have the ear of our local, state and federally elected officials so that we can shape some of the regulatory reform that you heard about this morning," Julian said. He hopes to have elected officials speak to the Chamber of Commerce on a monthly basis, including Governor Eric Holcomb and Senator Todd Young.
The breakfast event concluded with Donnelly being recognized by the US Chamber of Commerce for his bipartisan work in Congress.
Donnelly faces a crowded Republican field in the Senatorial race, right now. Among those GOP candidates are US Representatives Luke Messer and Todd Rokita.