Congressman Luke Messer
Former Indiana Secretary of State now Congressman Todd Rokita
Indy Republican has been asked by many of our readers to cover the ongoing feud between Congressmen Luke Messer and Todd Rokita in their potential battle for the GOP Senate nomination to take on incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly next year. This feud is even more bizarre given that neither Mister's Messer or Rokita have officially filed to run in next years Senate primary.
IR apologizes for our delay in covering this slug fest. But due to the myriad of twists and turns in this case we felt a need to gather more information before proceeding to write about this in depth. So we have decided to do our first two part blog post. The Rokita-Messer dispute stared back in May of this year attacks started to appear in the press on Luke Messer's wife Jennifer over a contract she has to perform legal tasks for the City of Fishers for which Mrs. Messer is paid $20,000 per month.
Brian Slodysko reported for the Associated Press on May 11, 2017 "Fishers pays Rep Luke Messer's wife 20K/month" had this to say:
A burgeoning Indianapolis suburb has paid the wife of an influential congressman $580,000 since 2015 for legal consulting she largely does from the Washington, D.C., area, an unusually large sum even in a state rife with highly paid government contractors, according to a review by the Associated Press.
Jennifer Messer, the wife of Republican Rep. Luke Messer, makes $20,000 a month working as a contract attorney for Fishers, according to the AP's review of public documents. That's drastically more than either of the city's two staff attorneys are paid — or many other government lawyers in Indiana.
In a statement issued late Thursday (May 11th, 2017), Luke Messer defended his wife's job, calling her "the brains of the Messer outfit" and pointing out that her work as a lawyer predated his political career.
Both Jennifer Messer and Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness, a rising Republican star in Indiana, say the arrangement has been beneficial to the city and helped usher in an era of "unprecedented" economic success in the growing suburb of about 85,000 people.
Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness responded by defending his city's contract with Jennifer Messer. John Tuohy reported Mayor Fadness's response in the Indianapolis Star's Hamilton County News section on May 12th, 2017. Mr Tuohy reported the following:
Amid a torrent of criticism on social media, Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness on Friday defended his $240,000 per year hiring of Jennifer Messer, the wife of U.S. Rep. Luke Messer, to handle city legal business from Washington, D.C.
Fadness said the contract with Messer saves the city money, and he has no plans to drop her. Messer said the implication she was being paid gratuitously for little work was "straight-up sexist."
"She has worked with Fishers since 2010, well before her husband was in Congress, and authored every major economic deal we've completed for the past several years," Fadness said in an interview with IndyStar. "I looked around and concluded she was the most qualified and experienced outside lawyer we could hire."
Jennifer Messer also responded to criticism of her legal work for Fishers in an Op-Ed published on May 15th, 2017. Mrs. Messer's wrote:
Last week I (Jennifer Messer) was featured in a news story about the fact that I provide legal services for the city of Fishers. The story was unfair, intellectually dishonest and straight-up sexist. You know the charge — congressman’s wife (by the way I have a name; it’s Jennifer Messer) gets paid too much for not really doing very much — leaving the presumption that me and the local municipality are doing something wrong.
Well, these are the facts:
• I (Jennifer Messer) have worked with Fishers for nearly eight years, and Fishers was my client two years before my husband was elected to Congress.
• I am paid well for my legal services but the city is paying less today for legal services than it was before its contract with my firm.
• I work diligently for Fishers and have never, in eight years, taken my job for granted. My job is a privilege — not just because I love the economic development work that I do, but because I work with a group of rock-stars. These are people who wake up every day and want to make Fishers a better place for its residents, potential residents and businesses.
• There are simply no facts suggesting that Fishers has received anything as a result of my husband being a member of Congress. Put simply, the premise of the entire Associated Press story is false.
Before we proceed to the most recent developments in the Messer-Rokita Smackdown. We all would like to comment on Jennifer Messer's Op-Ed.
Indy Republican does not necessarily believe that the criticism's of the City of Fishers contract with Jennifer Messer are completely unwarranted. We don't know. But as far as we have been able to discern Jennifer Messer is absolutely right in stating that there is no evidence her contract with Fishers has anything to do with her husband being in Congress. The fact that she was hired two years before her husbands having been elected to congress would seem to undercut the allegation that she was hired because of her husband. Legitimate questions could be raised as to whether her contract with Fishers is a wise use of taxpayer money. But that is a matter for the municipal government in Fishers it has nothing to do with Congress. Our suggestion to Todd Rokita's campaign or whatever parties are involved in these pieces designed to damage Luke Messer is: Confine your criticisms to actions that have been performed by Congressman Messer himself. Leave Jennifer Messer out of this. You may regret attacking Jennifer Messer. God knows we would!
In Part II we will continue our coverage by discussing some interesting alterations that have been done on both Luke Messer and Todd Rokita's Wikipedia pages.
To be continued........
