Bloomington boycott ruffles feathers

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) - Bloomington's new boycott of the state of Arizona is creating a backlash.

Our story about the city of Bloomington's boycott of Arizona and Arizona products produced 11 pages of comments at wishtv.com. Most of them are from people who say they will now boycott Bloomington.

Greg Faulconer of Shelbyville says he used to ride his motorcycle to Bloomington. No more. "They're gonna boycott Arizona, I'm gonna boycott Bloomington," says Faulconer. "From what I read on the Internet there's a lot of other people doing the same thing."

It's hard to know what effect those actions may have on Bloomington or for that matter what effect boycotts by cities may have on Arizona. On Indiana Week in Review there was disagreement. Jon Schwantes the host of Indiana Lawmakers said, "There must be some legitimacy to the fears of a significant impact because the Mayor of Phoenix is somebody who has been basically begging his political counterparts and colleagues in the state of Arizona to not move forward with this law."

Republican Mike McDaniel responded by saying, "It has to be done at the federal level and Bloomington doing this is not going to have any impact on the situtation."

Nevertheless, the political statement being made in Bloomington is being countered around the state. "It's none of the Mayor of Bloomington's business what the governor of Arizona does," says Greg Faulconer. "The mayor of Bloomington's not in Arizona. I've lived there and it's getting kind of rough, the crime, the joblessness."

And now Indiana University is speaking up, too. It wants people to know that it is not connected to the Bloomington boycott.