Comments on Advance Indiana™: Lugar Going To Court To Maintain The Right To Vote At Elizabeth Hughes' Home

The appeal should be filed with the circuit court ...

2012-03-16T17:27:27.805-05:00

The appeal should be filed with the circuit court clerk, which means Judge Louis Rosenberg would hear the case.

How will the appeal work? Who will the appeal to? ...

2012-03-16T16:57:24.428-05:00

How will the appeal work? Who will the appeal to? Your thoughts on that?

I agree, Paul, that he faces two bad choices of hi...

2012-03-16T12:24:36.938-05:00

I agree, Paul, that he faces two bad choices of his own making. But if I could choose between I relied mistakenly on opinions of the state's Attorney General and my personal lawyer vs. I've been absent from the state for 35 years, I would choose the former.

I respect your analysis Paul, but I can't say ...

2012-03-16T11:29:31.897-05:00

I respect your analysis Paul, but I can't say I agree. Lugar purchasing a home would be the practical option, but for political purposes, it would be interpreted as an indication of guilt. At least, that is what I would argue if I were Mourdock or a Democrat.

This is a case in which I would imagine Lugar'...

2012-03-16T09:16:54.801-05:00

This is a case in which I would imagine Lugar's legal advisers and political advisers are imparting the same advice...get a residence in the state and end this nonsense. The longer he drags things out, the worse it is for him.

Appealing the case to try to continue voting at someone else's home looks really, really bad.

Profoundest respect for what you and Greg Wright a...

2012-03-16T08:51:27.465-05:00

Profoundest respect for what you and Greg Wright accomplished. To take down a peg a senior sitting U.S. senator is remarkable. He now looks like a common everyday lawbreaker whose more interested in doubling down instead of getting a residence. Does this sound like a Hoosier. He gave up that Hoosier status when he vacated Indiana 35 yrs.ago. If somehow he wins the primary & another 6 years, that would put him at 86 yrs.old. Does anyone seriously think he would return to an Indiana residence when there is none and he doesn't want any!

I assume that Lugar is above pursuing a simple sol...

2012-03-16T08:31:31.440-05:00

I assume that Lugar is above pursuing a simple solution to his problem; dropping a "double-wide" on the property he owns outside of Indy and calling that his Indiana residence.

Mr. Lugar learned from L. Keith Bulen to never let...

2012-03-16T08:16:33.351-05:00

Mr. Lugar learned from L. Keith Bulen to never let a democratic body upset his personal goals.

Bulen--who had been tied to decades of underworld crime in Indianapolis in Dick Cady's Deadline: Indianapolis (Riverside Press, 2010)--had previously bragged to the Wall Street Journal that his "greatest achievement" was delivering 85,000 Republican voters to Indianapolis election via Unigov, that effort to combine Marion County and Indianapolis offices int he late 1960s.

Never were Lugar and Bulen more panicked than after the 1974 election, when Bulen was under investigation from the FBI--when the Republican firewall against corruption charges, Marion County Prosecutor Noble Pearcy, was defeated by 75,000 votes (2-1) by a Democrat; that's a net loss of 160,000 votes, when one recalls Bulen's 85,000.

The Democratic candidate for Marion County Prosecutor, James F. Kelley, had, in the final weeks of his campaign for the Prosecutor's office widened corruption charges against Lugar & Co: he'd found evidence that the City's purchasing department required fundraising tickets be bought by those seeking business with the city. What else might Prosecutor Kelley find out about corruption in Lugar's second-term administration, an office he won with the explicit help of the then-corrupt Indianapolis Teamsters?

In his 1974 election night victory speech, James F. Kelley vowed to fight corruption in Indianapolis wherever he found it, from the Indianapolis Police Department to "city hall." Indeed, a cynical observer of events 35 years ago might conclude that Mr. Lugar could not have won a 3rd term for Mayor, in Indianapolis, had he wanted one (it went to Hudnut, instead). And with corruption charges against Lugar being investigated by Prosecutor Kelley, the safest bet Mr. Lugar might have made was to get out of town.

Voters in 1976 of course, gave him that opportunity, by electing him a United States Senator. One wonders what charges Mr. Lugar might have faced had his residency not been erased into a fiction. How could Mr. Kelley have charged a non-resident with crimes? Far from opponents of Mr. Lugar using residency as a distraction, it points back to a crucial period in Mr. Lugar's rise to power when he likely, barely escaped being pinned to widespread Indianapolis corruption which was a hallmark of his Mayor tenure.