Mourdock challenges Lugar on residency

WISHTV.COM

Jim Shella

Updated: Feb 15, 2012 4:58 PM

Richard Lugar’s GOP primary opponent today challenged the Senator to establish an Indiana residence before the November election.  Richard Mourdock has new take on an issue first raised by Democrats.

Mourdock called reporters to the west side home that Richard Lugar lists as his voting address, a home that Lugar sold shortly after he was first elected to the Senate.  He had charts including one that cites a Constitutional requirement that a Senator be an inhabitant of the state he is elected from.  “When he said he maintains this address where he has not lived since 1977,” said Mourdock, “I think that raises serious questions.”

It’s an issue that’s also the subject of a web video produced by the Mourdock campaign that says, in part, “Now Senator Lugar stays at hotels like the high end JW Marriott when he comes to Indiana because he doesn’t live here anymore.”

At Lugar campaign headquarters there is a belief that it’s a frivolous issue.  “That this is not an issue from a legal standpoint,” says spokesman David Willkie, “and from a political standpoint everybody knows that Dick Lugar is a Hoosier.”

And the 6 term Senator got some help from the governor, who says he won’t listen to a planned Tea Party request for an Election Commission investigation into Lugar’s residency.  “We’re not doing that,” said Mitch Daniels.  “I’ve talked to the lawyers and both the statute and the constitution are clear, he’s qualified as he’s been for all his previous elections.”

That won’t stop Lugar opponents from pointing out that he moved to Virginia decades ago.  They believe it makes the point that he is out of touch.

The Lugar campaign, meantime, released documents today that show the Senator has obtained legal decisions supporting his Virginia residency going as far back as 1978.  Here’s his problem, though:  if Lugar establishes an Indiana residence now it will be viewed as an admission of wrongdoing.

If he doesn’t, opponents can and will remind voters that it has been 35 years since he lived here.

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