AG Race Update: Marion County's Long Knives Come Out, Plunge Deep

Every once in a while, your humble correspondent gets mentioned in the august pages of the Howey report. Sometimes, folks that have extra money to waste on the Howey report will send me the articles where I am mentioned or quoted (since Brian Howey apparently likes to quote me but never informs me when he is doing so).

I usually print them out and line the bottom of my bird cage with them, but I digress. (But don't stop sending them to me; Tweety's cage frequently needs new paperwork.)

This was one of the weeks where I got mentioned (squaring off, by virtue of Howey's copy and pasting, with Mitch campaign communications director Cam Savage):

Meanwhile, the conservative blogs are in full chatter. Hoosier Pundit, for example, had this post: "Unfortunately for Mr. Costas, the AG post is one where experience counts for a lot, and leadership less so. What will Costas lead on? The brave charge to outsource legal work to the Indy law firms (like Barnes & Thornburg, from which he formerly hailed)? The value of experience in such a post is immeasurable. To quote the endorsement, it matters. Greg Zoeller, to be blunt, has that experience. He has it in spades and then some. I’d ask for Costas supporters to please dispense with the whole ‘Zoeller is dividing the party’ talking point. In this entire process, no one has been more divisive or more abrasive or more thuggish than the supporters and advocates of Jon Costas (particularly from the governor’s campaign, Marion County, and state party). The comments of his supporters at Hoosier Access and elsewhere have not exactly broken new ground in winning friends and influencing people."

Cam Savage, communications director for Gov. Daniels, defended the governor’s position. "I would simply say there was a reason that folks weren’t excited about a contested race for attorney general. It’s important that every part of the state be represented."

The usual geography canard, because people go into the voting booth and just won't vote for the Governor unless the attorney general comes from a different area of the map than everyone else.

But it gets better. The Howey article clipped for me includes this delightful bit, upon which I followed up today:

In one of the wildest political conventions, Republican nominee Linley Pearson almost bolted his own ticket in a convention floor row over whether Dave Miller would become the attorney general nominee. The convention, instead, chose Timothy Bookwalter, who campaigned with a campaign cutout of Pam Carter (who is African-American). Pearson lost in a landslide to Gov. Evan Bayh. Earlier this week at the Perry Township Republican Club, that very same Dave Miller complained to attendees... that Republican delegates were being strong-armed into voting for Jon Costas by Tom John and the governor’s campaign.

Hoosierpundit sources tell me that Tom John was so furious with Dave Miller over this indirect "quotation" that Miller (seen here on YouTube endorsing Dan Burton last year) has been sacked as Perry Township Republican Chairman.

The kicker, however, is that word of the firing has already spread far and wide, but Miller himself does not yet even know.

Dave Miller, sources tell me, has not even been in Indianapolis this week. He has been out of the country, in Costa Rica no less. He will return from abroad to learn that he has been fired from a position he has held for years because Brian Howey attributed a quote to him that he was not even in the United States to say.

There was no Perry Township meeting "earlier this week," apparently, and my sources say that Dave Miller was not even in the country to attend if one had been held.

Yet Tom John, furious at the mention of his underhanded "loyalty oath" tactics in the Howey report, has fired him anyway.

How dare anyone be upset that he is requiring loyalty oaths among appointed delegates?

And who cares if the reporting is right, or if it is impossible for it to be true; line him up in front of the wall for the firing squad anyway.

That's the Indianapolis Way.

That's the Marion County Way.

That's the Mitch Way.