http://nwigazette.com/2016/06/cantrell-court-docs-shed-light-racial-politics-commissioners-race/Cantrell Court Docs Shed Light on Racial Politics in Commissioner’s Race
Using race as a tool to divide and conquer
villpondtestimonyp2
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June 7, 2016-On the day of the primary election, the Gazette reported exclusively that Lake County Commissioner Candidate Mike Repay was having lunch with Robert Cantrell and members of his “team.†Federal Court documents, which are publicly available, may shed some light on why a candidate running for re-election would be spending the day with a recently released federal convict.
In 2008, Robert Cantrell was convicted after a jury trial of 11 counts including depriving the public of honest services. Essentially, the Government showed that Cantrell arranged to receive a kickback on government contracts granted to Addiction and Family Care, a counseling agency owned by a long-time political ally of Cantrell. Most relevant, however, was how the scheme was carried out. In order to obtain clients for the counseling service, Cantrell used his political power to “persuade†judges in Lake County to refer clients to Addiction and Family Care. The testimony above, from Judge Jesse Villalpondo of the Lake Superior Court, provides insight into how this persuasion worked:
“I can put Ed Fonatanez against you as a candidate for judge. Now he’s not going to beat you, Judge Villalpondo. He’s not. But every vote that he gets is a vote that I should have gotten based on the fact that we share a common ethnic identity. And if a third person – -this is Bob talking – -if I put a third person is (sic) in the race against you, that third person may benefit from the division of the Hispanic community that Mr. Fontanez would creat with my constituency in a 2006 democratic primary.â€
In short, the Cantrell plan was to run a sham candidate with a hispanic name to divide the vote in a judge’s race. Integral to the plan is that Cantrell wanted something from the judge. He was not involved in politics for better government.
The meeting was not about who is the best candidate but solely about how can Robert Cantrell profit from his political connections.Similary, in the 2016 race for Lake County Commissioner, the Cantrell/Repay connection depicts a divide and conquer plan. As you can see from the graphic below, hispanic candidates Christine Cid and David Gonzalez divided up 48% of the vote. Cantrell lunchmate Mike Repay received the party nomination with 42% of the vote:
2016_Primary_Election_Results-page-001
This is exactly the threat that was made against Judge Villalpondo in 2006. It is classic East Chicago politics-the type of divide and conquer politics that kept Robert Pastrick in office for years after the community over which he presided became racially diverse. The only questions remaining are, what promises were made by Commissioner Repay to extract the support of Robert Cantrell-and how much will it cost the taxpayers.
If you would like to read the full testimony of Judge Villalpondo in the Robert Cantrell trial, you may click here:
http://nwigazette.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cantrell-villalpondo.pdf Might be nice to see a Republican Candidate step up to the plate against Repay. Think
a lot of people are really upset with him, especially those who write a five figure check to the Indiana IRS.