I'm afraid I agree with this criticism:
Republican mayoral candidate Paula Hughes is trying to mislead voters by resurrecting concerns that Mayor Tom Henry wants to bring a casino to the city, according to Henry campaign officials.
The Henry “administration put forth a proposal for a casino to be located downtown,” Hughes told reporters Thursday, speaking of ideas on how to spend $75 million from the lease and sale of the old City Light utility to Indiana Michigan Power Co.
But the mayor's administration made no such proposal, said Henry's campaign manager, Justin Schall.
Granted, campaign rhetoric is almost always a little fast and loose, so we have to have different standards of evaluation than those we use to judge the honesty of nonpolitical speech. But this seems pretty clearly over the line. A committee appointed by the mayor to come up with suggerstions for spending our light-lease found money suggested a casino as one idea among many. That is a far, far cry from the mayor proposing a casino or even wanting one.
The thing is, though she was wrong in the proof she offered, Hughes was right on the substance. Henry lobbied the legislature hard (and spent good money doing it) to get a referendum on gambling for Fort Wayne, and it was the administration's worst-kept secret that he wanted the referendum because, well, he wanted a casino here. Even now, according to our story, "Henry campaign officials declined to say whether the mayor still supports the idea of a Fort Wayne casino."
So Hughes may have crossed the line of acceptable camapign speech, all things considered, it seems a little harsh for a Henry campaign staffer to say that she "lied to try to score cheap political points."
