In today's NWI Times, my mayor, Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. of Hammond, IN, famous(?) for being pictured standing next to Hillary in all the infamous Crown Royal shots pics slammed the process of some neighboring Gary, IN schools busing voting-age kids to the county's early voting center.

"To me it seems like an orchestrated effort on behalf of the Obama campaign to take kids who should be in school learning to read and write, instead giving them a day off and telling them to vote for Obama."

"When you corral kids together and ship them to polling places, it's completely unethical. I think Sen. Obama should distance himself from this type of behavior," McDermott said.

Indiana's primary, as most of you know, is May 6. For the first time ever, new election laws permit early voting in Indiana at several central locations in each county. In the past, voters who could not make it to the polls on election day had to get absentee ballots, and they needed to justify their need on the application.

The problem here is Mayor McDermott's implication that the primarily black kids are being told to vote for Obama. If they aren't being told whom to vote for, then his implication is even more insidious. Comments on the online article overwhelmingly accuse McDermott of racial bias here.

McDermott has been pushing very hard for Hillary in NW Indiana. He's one of a number of local democratic mayors endorsing Sen. Clinton, but he's the guy you see in every photo or video clip when Hill's in the area.

I see no problem with getting the youth involved in early voting, regardless of who they will support. In heavily populated counties, there are hundreds of voting precincts so it is unlikely that any one student's polling place is in or near his or her school. To come out so strongly against getting the young voters involved, voters who lean heavily democratic in this area, is antithetical to the ideals of the democratic party anyway. Not surprising coming from a mayor who switched parties in 2003 to run as a Democrat when he realized he could not win as a Republican.