Please explain

Kevin Leininger stole my thunder and wrote about something that's been bothering me lately, too:

Like Kelty and many of his supporters, I'm pro-life, conservative, religious and skeptical of big government. But I don't for a moment think he was indicted because of his beliefs or because he dared to challenge Allen County's entrenched power structure. He was indicted because a jury of his peers found sufficient evidence to charge him with lying under oath and violating campaign-finance laws - and his guilt or innocence will be decided in a court of law, not the court of public opinion.

In other words, Kelty is no martyr - and should he try to portray himself as one, otherwise sympathetic people will be more likely to question his character, judgment and ability to lead this city.

Like Kevin, I applaud the message Kelty preaches. I am much more philosophically in tune with his approach to government than Tom Henry's. And he seems to be a decent and honorable man who has the best interests of  Fort Wayne at heart. But there is something I want to know that he does seem to want me to know. Why did he report a substantial personal loan to his mayoral campaign without revealing that the original source of the money was a loan to him from a major campaign supporter?

I'm not talking about whether that lapse is or is not a violation of Indiana campaign-finance law -- the criminal justice system will sort that out. But the purpose of the loan was clearly to enable Kelty to stay in the mayor's race, and that makes it, in any reasonable person's mind, a campaign contribution. I don't care who gives what to whom in elections -- and laws attempting to regulate that are misguided and always full of loopholes -- but I want to know. People who give financial aid to candidates tend to be people elected officials might later feel beholden to, and that is part of the information I want when I make up my mind in the voting booth.

Kelty has had weeks and weeks to explain his apparent attempt to keep voters from knowing where the money came from. Instead, he has just said his campaign filing followed the law and blamed everybody in the world for his legal problems except himself and the decision he made to file the way he did. It's wearing thing.