Mourdock more confident than Lugar heading into debate

Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) sounded a lot more confident than Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-Ind.) staff about how he'll do at Wednesday night's Senate debate between the two.

Neither is known as a great public speaker — and neither has had to do much public debating in the past.

After downplaying the importance of the debate, Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher admitted the senator was not great at giving concise responses.

"It's not Lugar's strongest suit to have a short answer response to a dozen or so questions," he told The Hill earlier this week.

But while Lugar's campaign sought to downplay how strong he'd be, Mourdock sounded a confident note.

"I'm really looking forward to it — the high point of politics is when you can stand up at a microphone and inflict your opinions on on someone else," he told The Hill earlier this week. "The last 30 days [of the primary] will be about demonstrating to the voters you're capable of doing the job, and I feel that after the debate they’ll say Mourdock stood toe-to-toe and defined himself against Senator Lugar... This is giving us a chance of letting people know who the heck we are."

Mourdock admitted public speaking isn't his forte, but argued that he's improved as the campaign has gone along.

"When you get in the business of politics, you've got to do things you're not necessarily comfortable in doing," he said. "Hopefully I am better every time I go to the microphone, and I do that two to three times a day."

Mourdock is running to Lugar's right and has shown some signs of momentum — a recent nonpartisan poll had Lugar leading him by a narrow 42 percent to 35 percent. While the debate won't be watched by many voters, how it is covered could affect the race, and if either candidate makes a mistake it is likely to resurface in attack ads.