Tully Touts Ed DeLaney Candidacy For Mayor

Acting again on cue, Indianapolis Star political columnist Matt Tully churns out a press release promoting a potential mayoral candidacy for Ann DeLaney's husband. The 70-year old Ed DeLaney, a certified Republicrat, tells Tully that he is absolutely "flattered" by the "many people urging him to run in 2015" for Indianapolis mayor, comprised primarily of the people sitting around his dining room table.  “I’m kicking the idea around,” he told Tully as if he expects us to believe this wasn't an orchestrated puff piece to promote his campaign. Tully says that he already has "a campaign message crafted, arguing that Ballard has been missing in action on several crucial issues and that the time for a more proactive mayor has come." He claims to be motivated "by his interest in pre-school, education in general and mass transit, and by what he calls the mayor’s negligence on those issues."

State Rep. Ed Delaney (D)

What Tully doesn't tell you is that DeLaney would be a political clone of Ballard on almost every issue. Shortly after Ballard's stunning upset election in 2007, he handed the keys to the city over to Barnes & Thornburg, the same law firm of which DeLaney is a product; consequently, Ballard's Tea Party message morphed into the law firm's self-serving agenda.

Tully won't talk about DeLaney being a former naval intelligence officer (just like Dick Lugar) who performed some peculiar work in the former Russian states following the downfall of the former Soviet Union for an organization known as the International Republican Institute, a group funded by the CIA cut out organization AID and loosely connected to the Republican Party. Its board is made up of the usual suspects like Brent Scowcroft, a Henry Kissinger protégé who served as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and helped select the national security advisers who serve President Barack Obama, and Sen. John McCain, the stand-in fake Republican candidate for President in 2008.

Tully also won't give you the straight poop on DeLaney's bizarre encounter in a park up in Carmel where with a clown wig-wearing Gus Mendenhall to discuss the purchase of real estate for a man posing as a person looking to make a real estate purchase for the Russian mob. DeLaney claimed Mendenhall attempted to kill him over bad blood between him and the Mendenhall family as a result of his legal efforts on behalf of mall owner Edward DeBartolo, Sr. against property owned by Mendenhall's father and, based on his testimony, Mendenhall is now serving an unusually long prison sentence for a dubious attempted murder charge. He's serving a 30-year prison sentence in a state prison for bruising up DeLaney during a scuffle, while Shamus Patton, the notorious Black Expo shooter who was convicted of shooting 9 teens, served less than two years in prison for his crimes.

Tully has been promoting a potential candidacy by U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett, who he says has "attracted significant attention for tackling political corruption and street crime, and he has expressed deep interest in the most daunting challenges the city faces, from education and illegally possessed guns to drugs and gang violence." The notion that Hogsett has tackled political corruption is laughable. He inherited the Lincoln Plowman bribery case, and he had to recuse himself from the Tim Durham Ponzi case because his former law firm helped defend him at one point (although he jumped in to take credit when convictions were returned against him). His office had to be force fed the corruption case involving former City-County Councilor Paul Bateman and then botched the prosecution of a key co-conspirator in the case. But his office's greatest failure was its colossal failure to hold those most responsible for the corruption in the office of former Marion Co. Prosecutor Carl Brizzi liable for their actions.

Hogsett is reportedly eying a bid for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Dan Coats, the Republicrat who stepped down from the Senate in 1998 to give Republicrat Evan Bayh a free run for the office. Hogsett lost a Senate race to Coats in 1992. Like DeLaney,  Hogsett is tied at the hip to Bayh. Not surprisingly, DeLaney says he would likely change his mind about running for mayor if Hogsett decided to jump in the race. “If he said he was in, I would sit down with him to talk about his ideas and vision for the city and, depending on how that conversation goes, I would be inclined to support him,” DeLaney said. It would be nice if we actually had choices in Indiana elections instead of candidates working for the same team.