‘HAMMERED DRUNK’: Indiana Dem appears sloppy, slurry in candidate forum with rambling anti-MAGA tirade

The forum began with the moderator asking candidate Jaime West to read her opening statement. “Okay, I didn’t write one, so I’m just gonna not read it, just say it out loud from my heart.” She said she owns a cleaning business “because I am an environmentalist,” and said that she is a gig worker. “So if you trust me, you know, delivering your groceries, should trust me with your vote. You know, you know, I mean, come on.”

She spent the largest portion of her opening statement talking about emergency services, which came out more like “mergency services” when she spoke, getting choked up while saying, “man, it makes me sad what the Republicans in the state House have done to our rural communities.” She said that she had spoken to a fire chief who said that a firehouse would have to close.

The moderator asked if West would support a local income tax increase to cover lost funding from a bill passed in the Senate. West replied, “Didn’t they already do that though? Didn’t they already raise their income taxes? Because a lot of counties did, and I thought Fayette County did. They didn't do, did they, did the full 3 percent, because Union County didn't do, they want the 2.67 percent. They didn't want to go to 3% and that was last September.”

The moderator asked what the county needs to do differently to attract new businesses, and West went on a tirade about data centers. “Definitely not data centers. They're horrible for the environment. They will take, they, they want it because we got—Fayette County is on an aquifer, which means that we have a lake beneath us, miles beneath us, where we have so much water, and the data centers want that water, man, so they can push it into their data, their cooling centers, and cool it off, and then dump it back into the rivers and the lakes that we all cherish.”

The moderator asked what lengths a prospective data center developer would need to go to for West to support such a project. She said they would have to pay all firefighters’ salaries, give scholarships to every child that graduates, pay for new water and sewer infrastructure, and pay every resident $10,000 per year.

The moderator asked, “If elected, what is one decision that you expect to make that may be unpopular with some voters, but you believe ultimately would be in the best interest of Fayette County?”

“Hmm. I wouldn’t raise your taxes. What is the one decision that I would make? Hmm. Repeat that again. What is the one decision that I would make that might not be popular,” West replied.

After getting the question down, West said she her unpopular move would be “firing all Republicans. I wouldn't let them. I mean, I don't even talk to them. I don't like them. I mean, they voted against, our own state representative voted against her own party. I mean, what do you want me to say? I don't like being around them. I mean, y'all did this to us. You all voted for us. You made this happen. This ICE coming into our communities, stealing people's jobs.”

"I mean, uhhhhh, I’ve been threatened so many times to my face by MAGA, we'll call them, because there's Republicans who actually get it, you know, there there are good Republicans out there, but then there's these MAGAs who are just racist and aren't very intelligent at all. They call you names. They, my, the sheriff's nephew threatened to blow my head off, but you know what are you gonna do?”

West was invited to deliver any last words she had before the end of the forum. “We have guns too,” she said.

In the wake of the forum, many wondered whether West had been drunk. “Is it me or does she sound HAMMERED DRUNK in this really odd interview,” one person wrote.

“Jaime West went to the Kamala Harris school of politics... when in doubt, drink an entire box of wine and roll the dice,” wrote Heritage Media Fellow Tim Young.

“Happy hour must start early in Connersville.”

Libs of TikTok questioned, “is she intoxicated?”