Kern opened the campaign in a strong speech at Evansville on October 1st. It was a powerful presentation of the issues involved in the unique campaign in which a Republican senator was appealing for support on the strength of his repudiation of the policies of his party while urging the retention of that party in power. The action of Beveridge in voting for the ship subsidy bill and against the income tax was used with deadly effect, as was the insistence of some of the senator’s friends, such as Charles G. Sefrit, of _The Washington Herald_, that had the vote of the senator been necessary to the passage of the Payne-Aldrich bill he would have supported it. All his references to his opponent were directed by Mr. Kern to an effort to compromise his position as a contender for the progressive vote, and the senator had been too intimately identified with Republican policies to make this difficult. The last half of his speech was consumed in a denunciation of the extravagant expenditures by Republican congresses and the misuse of the taxing power. The speech was considered extraordinarily adroit and forceful. _The Indianapolis News_, a Republican paper, never friendly to the senator, in an editorial analysis of Mr. Kern’s discussion of the senator’s progressive pretentions, managed to insinuate an interrogation of its own and concluded by saying: “What Mr. Kern had to say of governmental extravagance was well said. He argued that extravagance and protection are related to each other, that protection is itself extravagance. On the whole Mr. Kern’s speech is a strong and fair statement of the Democratic position. This is manifestly a campaign in which the speakers on both sides are going to deal with real things and real issues. The truth is that the people are tired of the old buncombe, a fact which the campaigners evidently appreciate. The question in Indiana is whether the people will believe that the insurgents are strong enough to change the course of their party, which they admit to have been wrong, and to free it from influences that have long dominated it, which they confess to be abhorrent. And that is a question which each man must answer for himself, with the help of such information as he may be able to get. It gives us pleasure to commend the speech of Mr. Kern as a straightforward and manly presentation of the Democratic case.” Mr. Bryan telegraphed: “Your speech was a powerful statement and much stronger both in substance and manner to that of your opponent.”