Mourdock Could at Least Vote Present

Brian Howey writes a political newsletter on Indiana politics. It was an intern in his organization who discovered the voter registration fraud that allowed Barack Obama's name to be placed on the Indiana ballot. In a recent post at Jconline he notes that Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock has spent an inordinate amount of time preparing for the Chicago marathon and campaigning to unseat Senator Dick Lugar to the point that the state's "chief financial officer," has only attended 34 percent of the meetings of committees that he serves on or chairs since January of 2010. When doing the publics business, Mourdock is something less than the personification of the Protestant Ethic. Howey writes;

• Lugar missed only four of 235 votes in the Senate in 2011 and has a 98 percent lifetime voting record.


• U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, the presumed Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, did not miss a vote out of 814 taken from Jan. 5 through Oct. 27, 2011.


• Of the 122 board meetings that have occurred through November, Mourdock has attended just 42, according to a study of meeting minutes, representing a 34 percent attendance.

Mourdock gained national attention when he fought for the bondholder's rights in the Chrysler bankruptcy case. The bonds were held by Indiana State Police Pension and Benefit Fund. As Treasurer Mourdock was a member of the fund's Advisory Board yet he has not attended a single meeting since January of 2010. He did attend two meetings while the case was in deliberation. Between 2007 and 2009 Mourdock attended four of 53 meetings and just two of 19 meetings in 2009.

Mourdock has capitalized on his position as Treasurer and the fame his fight for the Chrysler bondholders brought him to launch his so called Tea Party career. One would think he would at least have enough ambition to show up on the job and if nothing more vote "present".