Linda Pence Gets Lefty Love from Daily Kos

Just think, they’re all so smart and interesting…

I guess that makes everyone else so stupid and boring…

Isn’t it funny how people who are smart and interesting invariably turn out to be Democrats? That was the reaction I had when I found out that Linda Pence was the Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Indiana.

Let me say a couple of disclaimers right off. I’m not from Indiana. I don’t know what the issues are in this race. I don’t know anything about what’s going on in this campaign.

But I do know Linda Pence. I’ve known her as a lawyer for many years. She is really smart and tough as nails. She just seems like the kind of lawyer’s lawyer any state would want to have as its Attorney General.

I never really knew anything about her partisan political affiliations until I recently found out she was running as a Democrat for the Indiana AG. Again, all I knew was that she is a great lawyer and a smart, funny, and interesting person. It should have been obvious that she was a Democrat.

She’s no relation to the right-wing nutjob Mike Pence who is a Congressperson in Indiana. And I see that the Wall Street Journal recently took a swipe at her for being a “trial lawyer” who would be tough on corporations. Sounds like a pretty good endorsement to me.

Anybody who is in Indiana should know that they’ve got a great AG candidate in their state.

Only lefty crazies would think that a trial lawyer with a reputation for defending corrupt Democrats would make a good attorney general.

Now, I haven’t posted much about Linda Pence lately (something for which I intend to remedy soon with yet more information on her shadiness), but let’s review her record for a bit.

(Read more after the leap)

In her initial campaign announcement, Pence waffled on whether she would continue one of the biggest corruption cases in Indiana history (Lake County’s infamous “sidewalks for votes” Pastrick case).

She attacked the current attorney general for hiring an outside counsel to work on the case, this despite Pence having made her name as an outside counsel herself.

It got even better when it turned out that Linda Pence had been a litigator for a major defendant in this big corruption case; this was something that the oh-so-smart Pence declined to disclose when reporters asked her about the case. She claimed to know nothing about it, despite litigating it for over a year.

And when she went up against Carter’s deputy, Greg Zoeller (and the Republican candidate for attorney general), in that case she ended up having to settle out of court; so much for the need to prove who was the better lawyer.

Then she decided that it would be a great idea to raise money for her campaign at Greenberg Traurig, which was formerly the law firm of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff; Pence was already doing a great job of hitting all of the corruption hot buttons for her campaign.

When the Indianapolis Star started to ask Pence uncomfortable questions about her involvement in the East Chicago “sidewalks for votes” case, she declined to answer, claiming attorney-client privilege. It turned out that the very settlement she signed for her client included a waiver of that privilege. Either she didn’t read the very settlement she signed, or she was trying to lie to mislead reporters for the biggest newspaper in the state.

Most recently, I blogged a bit more about Pence’s interesting history of defending clients linked to corruption cases, particularly in Lake County.

It turns out that she was the lawyer for a state senator, linked to the abuse of money from the state’s Build Indiana Fund, that later had to take a plea deal on felony charges. His guilty plea blocked him from ever seeking office again. That was a victory for Hoosiers, but another court room defeat for Linda Pence and her clients.

But just remember, she’s “smart and interesting.”

That might be a good qualification for attorney general in the eyes of the folks at Daily Kos.

But in lieu of the mountain of real facts about Linda Pence, I don’t think it will fly for most Hoosiers.