Of campaign RVs, Jan. 6 and election steal conspiracies
Indiana House candidate Jim Schenke spreads info about 2020 ballots county officials say aren’t close being true. Says that’s just one reason Election Board, local ‘kingmakers’ want him out of the way
Today’s edition is sponsored by Tippecanoe County CASA. A Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) is a trained community volunteer who speaks up for the best interests of abused and neglected children in the Tippecanoe County court system. If you wish to become a CASA volunteer, please visit our website at tippecanoe.in.gov/CASA to apply, and see our fall schedule starting Oct. 3.
First up today, a programming note:
OF LOCAL CAMPAIGN RVs, JAN. 6 AND ELECTION STEAL CONSPIRACIES
A week after a Tippecanoe County judge ruled West Lafayette Republican Jim Schenke was, in fact, on the hook to appear before the county election board and answer questions about a campaign RV he uses as a rolling billboard, the candidate for Indiana House District 26 said that – summons or no court summons – he was still up in the air about whether he’d show up Thursday morning.
This week, Schenke, in his 32-foot, 2012 Holiday Rambler Aluma-Lite RV, said he wasn’t convinced that a county election board had a say in the campaign materials – including the one he was sitting in, plugged into an outlet and spread out over a half-dozen parking spaces at West Lafayette’s Cumberland Park – for a candidate for a state office.
Beyond that, Schenke, a former local reporter and media relations guy, says he believes the hearing about whether he has adequate paid-for disclaimers on the RV his dad helped him buy specifically for this campaign is a way to derail his campaign against state Rep. Chris Campbell, a West Lafayette Democrat.
Whether that’s by what he calls “self-proclaimed king makers” in the local Republican Party trying to sideline him. Whether that’s what he considers payback by local election officials he says he’s challenged or tried to expose in his side hustle as an “election integrity warrior” that started before he wound up on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“A body that’s willing to pursue an investigation or prosecution of something they know they don’t have jurisdiction … and they’re willing to violate the law to have a hearing for which there is no evidence, you are up to no good,” Schenke said. “They want me distracted. They want me sidelined. And, frankly, they want me out of the race.”
There are a lot of moving parts to Schenke’s backstory and his current campaign – including a stint on Purdue’s persona non grata list and a recent move to expunge settled court filings that included ones tied to a red flag protection order case that had police take his firearms for a few years. (With court records sealed, Schenke said those situations were manufactured by employers and others trying to get him. He said those matters were behind him.)
For Thursday’s hearing, it’s worth noting the ballot conspiracy theories Schenke spread in recent years about the 2020 presidential election and his demands to get voter registration information from some Purdue students who were among those who voted in the May 2024 primary at a campus polling site.
First some background:
Schenke was one of two local candidates – the other a Democrat running for Tippecanoe County Council – called to a June 27 hearing to address what the Tippecanoe County Election Board considered a lack of the proper paid-for disclaimers on campaign material. Board members at the time called it a matter of fairness for all candidates when they take up such questions.
“Our goal is to just get compliance,” Mike Smith, a county election office staff member, said recently. “Voters deserve a conspicuous, clear disclaimer. … The other candidates also deserve a level playing field where all are held to the same standards.”
In Schenke’s case, the county election board said the West Lafayette Republican needs to have disclaimers on the RV, just as he’d have to have them on fliers, yard signs and other campaign materials. Schenke didn’t show for the June meeting. He told Based in Lafayette that day he was out of town on a personal matter. But he pointed to handwritten notes on three sides of the RV that it was “Paid for by Jim4Indiana” he contends were there as soon as he had the vehicle marked like a campaign billboard ahead of the May 2024 primary.
Schenke contends that, either way, the matter should be up to the Indiana Election Division, not the county election board. State election officials did not immediately respond in the past week to questions about whether Schenke was correct. But after Schenke went to court to try to quash a summons for him to appear before the county election board, Tippecanoe Circuit Judge Sean Persin ruled Schenke had a constitutional right to stay silent during the hearing but that Schenke’s contention that the county election board had no authority to raise questions about campaign materials for a state representative was not true.
About his ballot and election claims: In April, Schenke posted a series of notes on Facebook that claimed Tippecanoe County received 3,000 “supposedly mail in ballots” that showed up late on election night 2020, unfolded and nearly identical with straight-party votes for Joe Biden for president. Schenke’s posts claimed county election officials counted the ballots because they “didn’t know what to do.”
Schenke insists he got that account during a Republican caucus in 2022, when the GOP slated Fred Duttlinger to run against Campbell. Schenke had added his name to that caucus in House District 26, too, but lost the precinct committee member vote that night at Tippecanoe County Public Library’s Klondike branch. Schenke said he knew he was bound to lose that party vote, so “I didn’t pull any punches, and I gave them 3½ minutes of MAGA.”
Schenke said he believed Trump won in 2020. He went to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, when Congress was set to certify the election, to listen to and show support for Trump. (A picture preserved on social media from that day shows a selfie of Schenke, in a Make America Great Again hat, camo jacket and a red-white-and-blue neck gaiter, up a set of steps and outside the Capitol. He says he never went in the building, suspicious that it might be a trap to arrest people.)
Schenke contends that at that 2022 caucus Tippecanoe County Clerk Julie Roush told him – “Unsolicited by me,” he said – about 3,000 unfolded, overseas, all-Biden ballots that “appeared to come from China” during the 2020 election. He claims Roush sought him out “because she knew I was an election integrity advocate.”
“I was gob smacked,” Schenke said. “Julie's striking back now, because I've been pushing her since I declared not to let repeat what she told me happened in 2020.”
Roush says that account didn’t happen.
In a June 4, 2024, letter, obtained through a public records request, Roush told Schenke that she never said anything about 3,000 ballots. She wrote that his “sentiments,” shared on social media and at community meetings, “unfortunately do not align with the reality of the facts, despite my efforts to provide accurate information.”
“You have stated several inaccurate ‘election facts’ for over two years and have attributed to me” about the 3,000 ballot claims, Roush wrote. “These claims are incorrect and have contributed to spreading misinformation about the election process.”
In the letter, Roush said the county didn’t count late ballots received. She wrote that in 2020, Tippecanoe County counted 633 ballots sent by military and overseas voters. Roush wrote that “about 300 of those” were nonmilitary ballots sent by email from overseas voters. She pushed back on Schenke’s claim that because ballots were unfolded that held some conspiratorial significance. (“The presence or absence of creases on a ballot does not determine authenticity,” Roush wrote. “This assertion is misleading and diverts attention from the actual processes involved in ensuring the integrity of our elections.”)
Schenke has persisted, despite evidence that he’s spreading theories that aren’t true.
He also has filed several public records requests since the May primary to learn about the 68 voters who cast ballots at a polling place at the Purdue Black Cultural Center, some of whom he believes through social media searches were international students ineligible to register to vote. He also pushed the county election office to investigate what he contends were cases of electioneering at the campus polling place.
“I get it,” Schenke said. “They want me out of the way.”
The Tippecanoe County Election Board hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 15, at the County Office Building, 20 N. Third St. in Lafayette.
OTHER READS …
Indiana Capital Chronicle reporter Casey Smith opened coverage about controversial changes to Indiana’s high school diplomas this way: “The Indiana Department of Education made significant changes to a proposed high school diploma overhaul on Wednesday, including offering just one baseline diploma for all graduates. The announcement follows waves of criticism from Hoosier teachers, parents and students over earlier diploma proposals that would broadly exclude certain course requirements, like those in history, foreign language and fine arts.” For more, here’s a way into the rest of Smith’s story: “Indiana officials make major updates to new high school diploma plan — earning higher ed support.”
Thanks, again, to today’s sponsor, Tippecanoe County CASA. For more information about CASA and how to become a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate, go to: tippecanoe.in.gov/CASA .
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
I’m ashamed to call myself a Republican when people like Jim Schencke are trying to hijack the party.
It warms my heart to see people across the political spectrum be able look at Jim Schenke and say: "That guy is really weird...".