It's a fair question: Is Sen. Richard Lugar still a Hoosier?
Greg Wright, an Indianapolis resident and Certified Fraud Examiner, filed a formal election fraud complaint with the Indiana Secretary of State on Wednesday against Senator Richard Lugar and his wife, Charlene Lugar.
Wright alleges that the senator and his wife may have committed multiple felonies for voting in a Marion county precinct, using an address for a home they reportedly do not own.
This may be the first time a formal complaint has been filed, but the issue is not new. Lugar has answered the criticism this way:
Lugar's campaign addressed the allegations in March, saying Indiana law "provides that a person is not considered to have lost his or her residence in a precinct solely by virtue of being absent in service to Indiana or to the nation. Senator Lugar's last place of residence in Indiana prior to leaving to serve in the Senate remains his proper voting precinct according to Indiana law."
Lugar's Senate staff produced a 1982 letter from then-Indiana Attorney General Linley Pearson to Lugar that said, in part, "If such a person was entitled to vote in this state prior to departing for service in Congress, whatever residence that person possessed for voting purposes prior to such departure remains his or her residence. There is no requirement that such a person maintain a house, apartment, or any fixed physical location."
Lugar lives in McLean, Va., a suburb of Washington. He also owns a farm in Marion County.
Not a fair interpretation of the law, says a critic:
In response to my blog postings, some people have pointed to a statute that says you don't lose your residency because of your service in federal government. The purpose of that statute is to ensure that people in federal government service won't have their residency challenged because they're spending most of their time living and working in the nation's capitol instead of at their Indiana home Lugar though did not lose his residence in Indiana because of his service as a U.S. Senator. He lost it because he completely gave up any residence in Indiana. Lugar has no home in Indiana. He lives in hotel rooms when he comes back to Indiana...to visit.
We can leave to those who investigate such things the question of fraud, but it's fair to say Lugar really doesn't really live in Indiana any longer. Even his response to critics as much as admits that. And that's been one of the major complaints about him from the Tea Party and other critics, that he has stayed so long in Washington that he's lost touch with the people who sent him there. There's an entire political class of people just like Lugar, which is why we have so much anti-Washington sentiment right now. Our belief that it's "us vs. them" is truer than it use to be.
