At a recent township GOP meeting, sources report Marion County GOP Chairman Tom John was the guest speaker for the evening giving a report on the “state of the county party”. At a previous township meeting, yours truly asked the Chairman about the status of the County GOP website which was down for a few weeks at the time. Chairman John reported there was a “vendor issue” and the County Central Committee was in the process of moving the county GOP website to the State GOP party web servers, a move to “pool resources”. In other words, host the County site on the State server. Just before the MCRCC website went down, rumors began to circulate among the GOP faithful of financial irregularities within MCRCC. Coincidentally, unrelated to these rumors of financial irregularities, some key staffers of MCRCC left to pursue other interests.

The Democrat blog Indianapolis Times Blog put out a hit piece accusing the MCRCC of financial impropriety. According to my sources, Chairman John finally addressed the rumors of financial irregularities. He explained there were two bank accounts, one for the Greater Indianapolis Republican Finance Committee, or GIRFCO, and another by MCRCC used to pay routine bills, payroll, etc held by the same bank. A routine transfer of funds between GIRFCO and MCRCC was to have taken place, but didn’t due to a banking technical error. As a result, one check drawn on the MCRCC account bounced. The clerk at the bank intended to call the person responsible for the account to let those involved know about the bounced check and the problem with the money transfer. However, instead of contacting Chairman Tom John, or treasurer Lesa Detrick, as per the organization papers on file with said bank, the clerk allegedly contacted former Marion County GOP Chairman and current State Representative and candidate for 5th Congressional District Mike Murphy.

Chairman Tom John, a supporter of former legislator turned lobbyist, lawyer formerly with Ice Miller (coincidentally the same law firm Tom John is currently employed), and current 5th district congressional candidate Luke Messer, publicly claimed Mike Murphy contacted Democrat communications director and Indianapolis Times Blog editor Terry Burns along with political columnist Brian Howey and leaked it to them the MCRCC is broke and bouncing checks. The Chairman then said to the assembled crowd “Go ahead and post this to the blogs”. Tom John has typically not been friendly to blogs, so this statement is interesting and I wondered if something was afoot. When Mike Murphy was asked about his side of the story, he denied receiving any calls from the bank, or tipping off anyone, blogger or otherwise. He stated he received an inquiry from a reporter, but only knew what was being circulated through the rumor mill. Murphy contacted the bank where the MCRCC account is held to find out what was going on after being contacted by the reporter. A bank employee said someone would get back to him, and to date nobody returned that call.

Also, we were informed by reliable sources the Luke Messer campaign set up camp in MCRCC headquarters. So does any of this come as a surprise to anyone? It doesn’t to us.