Republican Blogger Calls for Resignation of Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi

Gary Welsh of Advance Indiana, a Republican precinct committeemen and party activist, today became the first to publicly call on Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi to resign.

This Republican blogger would not go that far - yet. I though have serious doubts that the apparent income of Prosecutor Brizzi can be explained without his being knee-deep in the Durham mess. Additionally, I have to wonder about whether the Internal Revenue Service may be paying a visit to Brizzi sometime in the near future. In the end, it's almost always the IRS that gets you.

Readers of this blog know I have often complained about the Marion County Prosecutor's Office. My first source of complaints is that the office is poorly-run. There doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into many charging decisions and the Prosecutor's Office often still refuses to dismiss charges even after it is realized that the charges are in error. I have seen numerous occasions where the prosecutor's office desperately will try to get innocent people to plead guilty to something, anything, by taking their cases to the threshold of trial. Sometimes these falsely accused people are biding their time in jail. I just think it is unethical and reprehensible for a prosecutor to leave charges against someone when the prosecutor knows the person is not guilty. Yet this Marion County Prosecutor's Office does exactly that. See my column about a case I handled involving a mentally disabled man accused of robbery.

My second series of complaints concerns Brizzi ignoring white collar crime, and more particularly, political corruption on his watch. Behind the scenes Brizzi has been fed evidence of political corruption and has repeatedly looked the other way. His involvement with Durham who was running an alleged Ponzi scheme might explain why. It's hard to take on political corruption when you could yourself be accused of the same.

Regardless, it has become increasingly clear that, even if Brizzi doesn't resign, he won't be seeking a third term. I have never thought he would. Brizzi beat the Democratic odds in the county in 2006 and there is no reason for him to try to scale an even bigger hill in 2010. Better to go out a winner and look for other opportunities.

The question at some point though has to be asked why the announcement on Brizzi's third term has been delayed so long. I can pretty much guess why. It is because party leaders like Tom John want to shorten the pre-slating time frame for candidates seeking the prosecutor's office so they could better control who the Republican candidate would be. The dilemma is that now the Republican candidate for prosecutor will also have a shortened time frame to raise money and compete with the eventual Democratic nominee.

To understand the mentality of Marion County GOP leadership is to understand that leadership would rather have a candidate they can "control" and lose to the Democrats rather than have an independent-minded candidate Republican candidate who won't do what party leaders want 100% of the time and who could win. That is not a mentality that bodes well for the future of Republican politics in Indianapolis.