This week on WMUN, Muncie Mayor Dan Ridenour was asked by radio host Steve Lindell for his own input on the public comment restrictions by city council. Lindell deciding to bring up the topic on air likely wasn’t only because of the social media reaction or the coverage by Indiana Public Radio and The Star Press, but an op-ed by Jeff Robinson calling out the decision. The set of changes proposed back in early January were the following: 1. Members of the public can only speak for two minutes instead of three. 2. Ordinances up for introduction will not have their own comment portions. 3. No members of the public can sign up to speak after the meeting starts. 4. Public comments will take place at the start of the meetings instead of the end. 5. Council will “not put up with language nor attitudes that are incorrect and would cause dissension.” And 6. (now changed at the February meeting) speakers will have to state their home address when at the podium.

Ridenour when asked by Lindell only gave a defense for one of the changes, timing of public comment from the end of each meeting to beginning, and received no follow up questions from Lindell asking how he felt about the other limits. It’s a big enough problem already that Ridenour won’t confess that these are free speech restrictions, but his nervous retreating on the topic just adds to that same attitude by GOP County Chair Tim Overton, whose only vocal defense to the restrictions was in a phone call he had with Kristopher Bilbrey, local conservative podcaster and critic of the rule changes. In the phone call, Overton neurotically accused Bilbrey of wanting “the status quo of disorder,” which plausibly sounds like something repeated in Turning Point-adjacent podcasts or from other right-wing culture war rhetoric. Overton also at no point mentions what kind of “disorderly” conduct has come from the audience before, so I brought that kind of hell at last week’s meeting.

Ironically, Jeff Green didn’t even enforce most of his own rules, and besides cutting out the comment portion from introductions for ordinances, he might not enforce the rest. Case and point, yours truly spoke at the podium and threw in a use of “bullshit” during my two minutes. This even prompted Douglas Walker from The Star Press to finally chime in, who only allowed his timid keyboard typing fingers to post that myself along with Jackson Franklin “used a profane reference referring to cattle feces.” That aside, several of us in the meeting heckled throughout and never got the gavel even once. I even called out Tim Overton by daring him to talk at the podium, at which point he gave an uncomfortable laugh from the far corner of the room.

Then just this week Ordinance 3-26, a transparency item that they intentionally killed, got refiled by Nora Powell and yet is likely to meet the same fate again thanks to their party leadership refusing to drop their egos for even a second. It’s a small procedural change that was proposed after a copied signature was wrongfully put onto a resolution, and yet even such a small win for transparency can’t slide. For the members of council who drastically amended the ordinance before voting it down, there was nothing in good faith about the way they voted and the Muncie community saw through that.

There are many things to address from that meeting, believe me, but this is a weak point for the DelCo GOP. On top of this, the Republican primary for the Indiana House District 34 race is an early and clear disaster. Three candidates filed before last week (Randall McCallister, Richard Ivy, and Chris Walker) and just a day before the deadline it was Tim Overton that joined in. Chris Walker, not a party insider but a popular individual, would not only be challenged on legal grounds (because he voted in the Democratic primary in 2020 of all reasons) but he ostensibly had his chances weakened in the most gawky way ever. Overton’s only plausible reason to jump in was to dilute the vote for Walker and get Ivy the nomination, and all of this would’ve been entertaining to watch if Walker and Overton hadn’t withdrawn from the race just yesterday. And pretty much everyone in town who wanted to see Walker on the November ballot will soon be aware of the insider party politics that pushed him out.

And on top of all of this, even when party leaders cave to culture war issues, they can never please their own right-wing base of candidates like Don Chambers or Ryan Webb. It continues to be so fragmented and so sensitive that an obviously AI-generated tabloid piece can tear them up for weeks if not months. The girls are fighting, the calls are coming from inside the glass house, and I’m hiding apparently.