Hinkle Was Attending Wedding Reception For Powerful Lobbyist's Daughter At JW Marriott

In a post this morning I questioned why the normally tight-fisted State Rep. Phil Hinkle, who represents a westside Indianapolis district, would be renting a room at the pricey downtown JW Marriott last weekend to rendezvous with a young male hustler he had just met on Craigslist. An observant blog reader has provided an answer to that question. According to the reader, Hinkle was an invited guest for a wedding reception taking place at the JW Marriott for Shannon Kiely, the daughter of Pat Kieley, the powerful head of the Indiana Manufacturers Association and former Republican state representative who chaired the House Ways & Means Committee. Many prominent Republicans were in attendance at the wedding reception, including Gov. Mitch Daniels. This is the account shared by the observant reader:

All Hinkle's activity occurred during the wedding reception at the JW of lobbyist Shannon Kiely, daughter of Pat Kiely, head IMA lobbyist and former State Rep Ways and Means chair.  The reception was 300-400 people in a room full of all Indiana's prominent Republicans (and a few D's too), including Governor Daniels who I think was at a table next to Hinkle.  The fact that he was doing this during the reception just adds another creepiness factor, but I think part of the reason the party leaders seemed to accept the facts as stated about the incident is because they all saw Hinkle at the wedding that afternoon then at the reception and he was doing a lot of wandering around the reception hall and in and out on the phone to the point it was noticeable to some.  Before any of this came out some people actually mentioned it after the reception. 

The reader observed that former Indiana GOP Chairman Mike McDaniel attended the Kiely wedding reception at the JW Marriott. McDaniel, who is the Republican panelist on Indiana Week In Review, made no effort to defend Hinkle during this week's airing of the political round table show that airs on WFYI-TV every Friday evening at 8:00 p.m. The show's number one topic this week was the Hinkle gay hustler scandal. According to the reader, McDaniel, who is a lobbyist at Krieg KeVault where Kiely's daughter also works as a lobbyist, was sitting at the very same table as Hinkle at the wedding reception and was able to observe first hand his activities last Saturday evening. McDaniel made no mention of being at the hotel the same evening as Hinkle, and WISH-TV's Jim Shella, who moderates Indiana Week In Review, made no mention of it in his reporting of the scandal. Gov. Daniels also did not tell reporters he saw Hinkle at the wedding reception last Saturday when he was questioned yesterday about the scandal. The Kiely wedding reception was reportedly the first wedding reception originally booked last year at the new swanky hotel financed in large part with taxpayer dollars.