Indiana

WAS THERE SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF ?DEM?MARK?

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

It looks like City-County Council Minority Leader Joanne Sanders is going to keep her title, for now.  As I told you a few weeks ago, some of her fellow Councilors were not happy with her support of David Orenlichter in the May primary so a move was a foot to get rid of her and replace her with Mary Moriarty Adams.  However as the saying goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Apparently the co-conspirators did not count on the media to get wind of this.  Between the news posted here and over at Bilerico - Indiana, the plot to take out Sanders was exposed to the light of day.  It’s still unclear who was exactly the mastermind behind all this.  Some evidence points to Vernon Brown and Monroe Gray (revenge) and some points to the Maherns, Brian and Dane (blatant power grab).  It’s not enough to condemn, but it certainly is enough to make you go “hmmm”.

What’s has been the saddest note in this entire fiasco is that the pretext for all this was that Sanders did not back the slate.  My Democrat friends picked a heck of a time to find religion.  So many other Democrats had strayed and gone against the party line (Mahern’s  vote against former Mayor Peterson’s 65-percent county income tax increase, for example) and there were no consequences for their actions, so it seemed odd that Sanders would finally be standing on the block when it was time for the axe to fall.

The even bigger irony in all this is that had the story not been written, the plot would have gone forward, Sanders would have been out of job, Democrats would have their fifth Council leader in four years, divisions would have continue to grow, and the local party would have continued to spiraled into disarray engaged in internal bickering instead of offering an alternate vision to Mayor Greg Ballard and the Republicans.

Oh well, there’s always next month.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on May 29, 2008 (boomark / email).