Luke Messer didn’t disclose DUIs when he replaced lawmaker killed by drunken driver

In U.S. Senate candidate Luke Messer's first successful run for public office, he had to persuade a caucus of local party insiders that he was the right man to replace state Rep. Roland Stine, a beloved schoolteacher who was killed by a drunken driver less than a month earlier.

That position would launch his political career and eventually land him a spot as a top Republican in Congress.

But Messer had a secret: He himself had two drunken driving convictions.

As he sought the state legislative seat in 2003, Messer decided against sharing that history with local Republican precinct leaders charged with selecting Stine's replacement. Nor did he disclose it to county or district party leaders. In fact, many of those officials didn't know about Messer's DUIs until contacted this week by IndyStar.

"Wow, I had no idea whatsoever," said Roger Laird, the party's Sixth Congressional District vice chairman at the time. "That’s something you need to tell somebody."

Disclosing his drunken driving history likely would have disqualified Messer in the eyes of many local party stalwarts, who were still reeling from Stine's death a few weeks earlier. The 62-year-old Republican was hit head-on by an intoxicated driver during his commute from the Indiana Statehouse, on the same day he voted for legislation to strengthen penalties against drunken drivers.

"Yeah, I think that probably wouldn’t have went over too well if that had been known," Rod Meyerholtz, the Shelby County Republican Party chairman at the time, said this week. "I don’t know, if it had been disclosed, if he even would have been a candidate."

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Messer declined repeated interview requests for this story, and his campaign would not comment on his decision to withhold the information in 2003. Instead, the campaign emailed a brief statement, emphasizing that the incidents were in the past.

Both drunken driving incidents occurred when Messer, now 49, was in his 20s.

“Luke has acknowledged and apologized for these mistakes which occurred more than 23 years ago," said Messer campaign manager Chasen Bullock. "Both instances have been public and were used unsuccessfully by Republican and Democrat opponents in past campaigns. Indiana voters will see the latest attack for what it is: more last-minute dirty trick from Rokita's supporters.”

It's possible some precinct committee members knew about Messer's history before they made him a state legislator. IndyStar found one: Shelby County Council Vice President Linda Sanders.

She said she has known Messer for years, didn't remember exactly when he told her about the convictions, but said she was aware at the time of the vote.

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"I just have known Luke for a long time so it probably came up in conversation," she said.

Messer also discussed his history with Stine's family, though his wife and daughter could not recall whether that took place before or after he was selected to fill the seat.

Suzanne Meredith, Stine's daughter, said Messer explained his history in a phone call to her so that the family wouldn't find out second-hand. She said he was "gracious" during the call and has been kind to her family over the years.

"You know, it's disappointing to hear, but ... I think that we make mistakes in our past and it's something that we've moved on," Meredith said. "We've forgiven and moved on."

While Messer is far from the first politician with a DUI in their past — former President George W. Bush is perhaps the most famous — political experts say the context of Messer's ascent makes his failure to disclose his drunken driving history particularly relevant.

"I think this will matter," said Andy Downs, a political scientist at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne. "I think some people will want to look at this issue of integrity and say you should have disclosed this especially knowing the cause of death of the person you’re replacing."

After beating out several other Republicans for Stine's seat, Messer served three years in the General Assembly. He was later elected to Congress in 2012, replacing now-Vice President Mike Pence, who ran for governor that year.

Now, Messer is running for U.S. Senate in a three-way Republican primary that has been described as the nastiest in the country. He faces fellow Congressman Todd Rokita and former state Rep. Mike Braun.

The winner of the May 8 primary will get a shot at incumbent Joe Donnelly, who is widely considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate given that President Donald Trump carried Indiana by a wide margin in 2016. The race is one of a handful likely to determine which party controls the Senate after the November election.

An unrelated drunken driving incident briefly took center stage during the primary race in February, when Colts player Edwin Jackson and his Uber driver were hit and killed by a drunken driver who was in the country illegally.

All three candidates used the tragedy to rail against illegal immigration, but said little about the problem of drunken driving.

"Clearly, the suspect in this case should not have been in the country, and this tragedy is yet another result of our broken immigration system," Messer said in a statement at the time.

The convictions

The first drunken driving charge against Messer was filed in 1990 when Messer was 21 years old and had yet to graduate from Wabash College.

Ball State police found Messer’s car in a 10-foot-deep construction hole in Muncie just after 4 a.m., according to Delaware County court records. He was wet from water in the hole and smelled of alcohol, police said. He told the officer that he had fallen asleep while driving, but failed the on-scene sobriety tests.

He had a blood alcohol content of 0.12 percent when tested at the Delaware County Jail.

He avoided jail time by agreeing to alcohol counseling and his license was suspended for 30 days, after which he was only allowed to drive to and from school, work and counseling for the next six months.

Five years later, in 1995, Messer was charged again for drunken driving, this time in Marion County. At the time, he was 26 and working for an Indianapolis law firm.

Details of the arrest are unclear because the case files have been destroyed due to their age, as is standard under state law. Neither Messer nor his campaign would answer questions about the circumstances.

But a case summary obtained from the Marion County Clerk's office shows he pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.15 percent, had a 60-day jail sentence suspended, paid $300 in court fees and fines and had his license restricted for 180 days.

Messer didn’t disclose either incident publicly until 2009 when an anonymous person mailed court documents pertaining to the most recent DUI conviction to Indianapolis-area media outlets.

“He did get a DUI 14 years ago. He made a mistake,” his spokeswoman at the time, Jennifer Hallowell, told the Shelbyville News in 2009. “I think people will see this for what it is — a dirty trick that likely came from a desperate campaign.”

The earlier conviction was not made public until 2012, when Messer's Democratic opponent in the 6th district congressional race sent out a mailer and press release attacking Messer.

'Surprising' and 'shocking'

Despite those brief mentions, many current and former party leaders in Shelby County say they were completely unaware of the DUIs until now. They described the revelation as “surprising” and “shocking.”

John Hartnett, Stine’s former campaign manager who considered competing against Messer for the job in 2003, said he didn’t know about Messer’s DUIs.

“Your mention of it is the first I've heard,” he told IndyStar.

He and several others said they weren’t sure that the information would have changed the outcome of the race.

“But obviously it's not something you want to have on your record,” Hartnett said.

Messer beat out two other contenders for the seat, winning over a majority of the 46 precinct committee officials from state House District 57, which included most of Shelby County and a smaller portion of Bartholomew County.

Shelby County Republican Party Chairman Rob Nolley, who is a former student of Stine's, was one of the precinct committeemen who voted for Messer during that caucus meeting in 2003.

Messer called Nolley to introduce himself before the vote, but didn't disclose his convictions during the private phone call, Nolley said.

"Of course I was pretty surprised to hear that. I had no idea," he said. "I think that's something that should have been disclosed."

Such a disclosure before the vote by precinct committeemen would have carried significant political risk for Messer. Another GOP candidate in the area had seen his ambitions scuttled by a drunken driving arrest just a few years earlier — and that was before Stine's death.

In 2000, Laird, the one-time Sixth District GOP chairmen, had launched a bid for the same state House seat Messer would later win. But on the way home from his first fundraiser, Laird was pulled over for drunken driving.

He dropped out of the race the next day.

Laird, whose aunt was one of Messer's competitors during the 2003 bid to replace Stine, was shocked when he learned this week that Messer had two DUI convictions.

"How could you do that?" Laird asked. "(How could you) run when the guy you’re replacing was basically slaughtered by a drunken driver? I don't know."

Jeff Linder, who held the same House seat several years earlier, supported Messer's bid in 2003, making phone calls on his behalf and using his clout as the former officeholder to set up meetings with precinct officials. He was also a vice precinct committeeman and his wife was a precinct committeewoman.

Linder said he remembers Messer telling him about the DUIs but doubts it was before the vote by precinct committeemen.

"I don’t ever recall it being an issue," he said. "I went to the meeting where we had the vote, I am just almost certain it did not come up. I think I would have remembered, and I think it would have been a big issue."

Tina Beck, another precinct committeewoman at the time, said precinct officials were unaware of the DUIs.

"We didn’t know," she said. "Especially since Roland had been killed by a drunken driver, that’s almost unreal."

She recalled Stine as a "teacher we had known and admired for a long time. ... He was a fine person. We were just all devastated by his death."

"You know, that’s a pretty serious thing — a DUI," said Beck, who acknowledged she is supporting Rokita for U.S. Senate. "Roland lost his life."

Political scientists are unsure if voters will see the situation the same way.

But in a contentious race, where all three Republican candidates have almost identical political ideologies, character could matter, said Robert Dion, a political scientist at the University of Evansville.

"Republican voters are trying to size up three conservative candidates right now whose issue positions are very, very similar," Dion said, "and as a result questions of character and personality are likely to loom large in voter decisions."

Call IndyStar reporter Kaitlin Lange at (317) 432-9270. Follow her on Twitter: @kaitlin_lange.