The Election Indictments

With local elections just a month away, the next political indictments from the Democratic District Attorney's office will be coming shortly.   Not today.  Today's Friday, and you don't get as good publicity on a Friday.   People go out Friday nights; many are too busy on weekends to watch or read the news.

The federal authorities brought their Robutrad indictments many months ago, in the ordinary course of their investigation.   The feds identified the people who appear to have committed actual wrongdoing:   some county employees who, effectively, stole from taxpayers.

But the ostensibly Robutrad-related indictments from the Monroe County DA's office are election-driven.   That imposes a timetable geared to election day, November 3.

So the next indictments can't wait beyond next week -- about as close to the election as County Democratic headquarters can get and still have time to design and print the brochures and mail pieces, and to prepare the broadcast material, that will repeat headlines about the coming indictments to be provided by the party's partner, the Democrat and Chronicle.

Showing a headline saying "Joe Blow Indicted" is much more effective than just saying "Jow Blow's been indicted," since it shows that somebody else is saying it.   All just in time to hit mailboxes and airwaves in the weeks before the election.

District Attorney Mike Green has additional reason to move quickly.   His farce of an indictment against Republican official Andrew Moore has left Green hanging out there for a month, subject to criticism for abuse of office by Nifonging Mr. Moore.

The Moore indictment makes Green, once respected as a straight-arrow, look more with each passing day like the disgraced and disbarred Duke rape-case prosecutor.   Amazing how lust for a lifetime appointment can disfigure conscience and character.

Green needs to obfuscate his disgrace over the Moore matter by bringing quickly some additional indictments bearing claims of wrongdoing that, this time, are at least superficially plausible.

So we have two dynamics at work here, mutually complementary. Democratic Chairman Joe Morelle wants to indict his way to the County Legislature majority that the political process so far has denied him.   District Attorney Green, hoping for a federal judicial appointment, wanted to curry favor with his party by bagging a scalp from Republican Party headquarters; hence the indictment of GOP Executive Director Andrew Moore.   An indictment described by a professor of criminal law as a joke.  Except, as the prof said, for the person who has to go through it.

The next election indictments are coming next week.