Indy Councilman Switching from GOP to Libertarian

Ed Coleman makes the switch...

Excellent! I'm sure he'll be sleeping better at night now!

Nice coverage, already, in the blogosphere, including Advance Indiana and Hoosiers for Fair Taxation. I'll just reproduce a few highlights here...

From Circle City Pundit...

[Coleman] has increasingly been frustrated with what he believed to be a party system that tried to hush dissent and create followers instead of leaders. He recently came under fire for questioning whether greater transparency or oversight was needed in the relationship between the city’s Capital Improvement Board (CIB) and local law firm of Barnes and Thornburg...

From Coleman's prepared statement:

This is not a decision I take lightly, nor did I come to it without deep reflection. I have found that the direction of the Republican Party has changed, and it is not the same party I joined many years ago. Nor do I believe its current leaders truly represent the ideals that the party markets and advertises to voters.

Both of the old two parties have forgotten their ties to the common man, and instead focus on power and control as elitists. I am a common man, I campaigned for the common people, and I still represent the common people; the voters and taxpayers.

I have come to find that my politics are actually more aligned with the Libertarian Party than any other; a party that still allows free thought, a party where dissent is not necessarily a dirty word....

CCP concludes:

Increasingly, voters are starting to open up to abandoning the destructive politics and policies that continue to undermine our cities and our country and, perhaps, it takes courageous decisions like Councilman Coleman’s to suggest that the time has come for party tribalism to give way to once again having real representative government.


And from Josh Gillespie at Hoosier Access...

According to a source at tonight’s Decatur Township GOP meeting, Republican Council President Bob Cockrum announced that Ed Coleman has left the GOP, his committee assignments have been stripped and that this is the first time a Third Party has had a seat at the Council....

Coleman, who was first elected as an At-Large candidate in the Republican take over of the Council and Mayor’s office in 2007, has come under fire from the fellow Republican Councilmen and the County party for bucking party line on votes as well as voting against the Mayor on issues he deemed too intrusive for government…even local government. Coleman, who apparently has been mulling a switch for quite some time, was originally targeted by Democrats as a potential new party member, but conservative political convictions kept him from such a switch....

Gillespie's analysis and important closing question:

Now I’m sure the howling from GOP faithful will begin fairly soon. But keep one thing in mind here. The Republicans will still control the Council. Coleman will still likely vote more with them than with Democrats. But he will surely be castigated for his move. The question is, should he be?