Dan Carden

MERRILLVILLE — Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith puts on a good show.

Armed only with a microphone, the novice Republican officeholder held the attention of an occasionally combative audience of more than 100 people for nearly two hours Tuesday night inside a packed veterans hall and bar tucked into the northwest corner of Merrillville.

The performance was as simple as the surroundings — Beckwith answered questions.

There was no preamble, no biographical introduction, no Pledge of Allegiance. Just an elected official listening to his constituents and responding with his honest opinion, even, or maybe especially, when he knew it wasn't what they wanted to hear.

Afterward, Beckwith acknowledged that he's an outlier at a time when a lot of federal and state Republican politicians opt on

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