Porter County Commissioner Bob Harper, D-Center, never, in the months’ long run-up to passage of the healthcare reform bill, publicly voiced or voted his endorsement of that legislation.

He wouldn’t have, for the simple reason that he personally opposed it, not caring much for the sweetheart deals cut in back rooms to grease the bill’s skids.

So why is a group calling itself “Valparaiso Republicans” trying to yolk him, implausibly, to healthcare reform, a national issue of no conceivable relevance to local politics?

A curious election-year strategy, it would seem, until you remember that it is in fact an election year.

Call it the Silly Season, when up is down, black is white, and truth runs neck-and-neck with mendacity.

Harper interprets the smear in this way: it’s a distraction, he told the Chesterton Tribune, a diversion, smoke-screening many Valpo Republicans’ own support of the RDA and of the income tax paid by folks to fund it.

Now Bob Harper’s a big boy and he can certainly take care of himself. Yet some of the mud flung at him has stuck to this newspaper, because in making the risible claim that “Harper supports President Obama’s government takeover of healthcare,” this “Valparaiso Republicans” outfit recklessly—and altogether deceptively—cites as evidence the Oct. 23, 2009, edition of the Chesterton Tribune.

If it was in the Trib, it must be true, right?

Except that it wasn’t in the Trib.

The story cited by “Valparaiso Republicans,” whoever they are—in a mailing recently posted to residents—is based on a press statement released last fall by Porter County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Chidester, announcing the Democratic Precinct Organization’s unanimous adoption of a resolution urging Northwest Indiana’s Congressional delegation to “vote for only such healthcare reform proposals as contain a robust public option.”

Count the ways in which this mailing plays fast and loose.

(1) Chidester’s statement doesn’t specifically refer to Harper, it doesn’t impute support of the resolution to Harper, and it doesn’t impute support of the resolution to any other local Democrat either.

(2) Harper didn’t attend the meeting at which that resolution was adopted and, had he attended, he wouldn’t have voted in favor of the motion anyway, Harper told the Chesterton Tribune.

(3) The Democratic Precinct Organization no more speaks for every Democrat in Porter County than the “Valparaiso Republicans” gang speaks for every Republican in Valparaiso. Harper is like a lot of other Democrats—locally and nationally—who were unhappy with the healthcare reform bill. “I was fed up with the whole way it happened, with how Congress was cutting so many deals,” he said. “At that point I would not have supported it.”

So to the mailing’s assertion that “Higher Taxes and Bigger Government are the Bob Harper way,” Harper would say this in response: he opposes the RDA while many Valpo Republicans support it. “They’re the high-tax, big-government people and they’re going to come back for tax after tax,” Harper said. “Before we know it, we’re going to have a county income tax of 2 percent, if they keep it up.”

For the record:

•The mailing in question was “Paid for and authorized by Valporaiso (sic) Republicans.”

•The Chesterton Tribune has taken no official position on the RDA.

•The Chesterton Tribune has not endorsed any candidates in any race.

Meanwhile, from elsewhere on the campaign trail, here’s a cautionary story for candidates, with the moral of the tale a Silly Season cliché: you are being observed microscopically, the walls have eyes and ears, and everyone can spare a dime to drop to the press.

Ten minutes after a Porter couple spoke to their local PD on Oct. 8 about Ralph Levi—charging the Republican candidate for Porter County Sheriff with being “verbally abusive” to them—Levi got a phone call from a Times reporter.

That’s pretty fast, Levi told the Chesterton Tribune this week.

And that’s how it works in the Silly Season.

According to the standard call-for-service report taken by the Porter PD, a couple living in town advised that at 11:04 p.m. Oct. 7, Levi “came to their house very upset because they had two different Sheriff election signs in the front yard,” one for Levi and one for his opponent, Democrat incumbent David Lain.

Levi “was verbally abusive towards them for representing both parties,” the couple further advised, and when Levi returned to their home around 30 minutes later to remove his sign, the woman observed Levi—and videotaped him—“kicking at the sign trying to get (it) out of the ground” and “damag(ing) the sign.”

“Levi was very upset and very verbally abusive and (the couple) just wanted the incident documented for fear of retaliation,” the call-for-service report concludes.

Levi, for his part, denies being upset or abusive in his dealings with the couple. He does admit to being puzzled by the presence of his sign and Lain’s in the same yard and said as much to the man. “Well, I’m supporting both of you,” Levi quoted the man as saying.

“How are you going to determine who to vote for in November?” Levi said he asked him.

The man’s response, according to Levi: “That’s none of your business.”

In any case, Levi said that he did have some trouble removing his sign on Oct. 7—one of the posts was stuck—and he was forced to return the next morning with a post remover. But the sign wasn’t damaged at all—it was his 4’ x 4’ sign anyway—and he promptly moved it to another location.

Levi recalled that, at one point, while he was struggling with the sign, the man stood on the porch and accused him of assault. But the man didn’t make that accusation to Porter PD.

Levi does want to know why, if the couple truly were fearful of “retaliation,” they waited 14 hours to make their report.

And Levi wants to know how the Times learned of that report, only 10 minutes after the couple “left the station.” The Times reporter’s first question to him, Levi said: “Why did you damage the sign?”

Levi, however, does not believe that his opponent had any involvement in the incident, while Lain himself has declined to comment on it.

Posted 10/15/2010