Political Fallout and Follow Up
You would think that with a day or two before Christmas the political rumor mill would slow down, but it hasn’t. I have some interesting follow-up information on a couple items I posted about earlier this week.
Disaster Averted
It looks like part of the reason Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels wants Eric Holcomb to be the next chairman of the state Republican Party is to avoid a serious in-fight in GOP circles. Prior to Daniels’ pick of Holcomb there were several candidates vying for the spot and the party support for Chairman was breaking into factions based who the potential Chairman supported for Governor (Becky Skillman, Mike Pence) or for the U.S. Senate (Dick Lugar, Richard Mourdock*) and things were really starting to get testy. The best way to think of this would have been a tag team wrestling match where the teams kept changing during the match. Had the Governor not stepped in I was told by once source at state party “it would have devolved into downtown Mogadishu”.
*Speaking of Mourdock, I hear he is calling around the state asking County Chairman if they would support him if he ran in the primary against Dick Lugar. I’m told he’s gotten a pretty positive response from some of them who feel the senior Senator hasn’t communicated with them as much as he should. However the Lugar folks have been also been aggressive in their outreach as of late.
Murder by Numbers Update
And a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Indianapolis’ homicide rate. IMPD Chief Paul Ciesielski e-mailed me with the latest numbers on the city’s murders. He told me the number of criminal homicides was 98. Although the city investigated 108 homicides, but 10 were eliminated because they were labeled as self-defense, police action shootings, accidental, etc.
