GOP House candidate in Indiana arrested on eve of election
Inset: Jim Schenke (Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Jim Schenke campaigning in Indiana (Jim Schenke/Facebook).
A Republican running for an Indiana House of Representatives seat was arrested early Monday morning on the eve of Election Day for commenting on a Facebook post made by someone who has a protective order against him, according to police.
GOP candidate Jim Schenke, who is running to unseat District 26 House Rep. Chris Campbell, was booked on a preliminary invasion of privacy charge at 6:10 a.m. Monday, according to the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office. Records show he was released after paying a cash bond of $250.
The arrest marks Schenke’s second brush with the law since September, when he was charged with “operating a motor vehicle without financial responsibility” for a motor home crash he allegedly caused — sending his campaign RV into a light post — while the vehicle was uninsured, per local reports and court records. That case was dropped on Oct. 22.
Schenke’s arrest on Monday also marks the second time that the 54-year-old has been accused of violating a no-contact order in Indiana, with him being arrested in 2016 and later convicted, according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier. That conviction, however, wound up being reversed by the Indiana Court of Appeals in 2019 and then sealed from public record in August 2023 as part of an expungement order, the Courier reports.
Schenke has at least two protection orders currently against him from a local Indiana attorney and their staff, per the Courier, and one that he reportedly placed on a West Lafayette man who lives in Schenke’s neighborhood.
Tippecanoe Chief Deputy Terry Ruley told Law&Crime on Monday that the order Schenke violated was against an individual who also has one against him as well, though he couldn’t confirm which person it was specifically.
“It’s a weird situation,” Ruley said. “They each have one against each other.”
According to Ruley, the sheriff’s office received a complaint on Sunday, Nov. 3, at approximately 8:35 p.m. from the alleged victim, who stated that Schenke was violating his order of protection against him by commenting on his Facebook page.
“Our officers looked into it, did a bit of an investigation, and determined there was probable cause to believe there was a violation under an Indiana state statute called invasion of privacy, and that would be a person violating an order of protection,” Ruley said.
While he didn’t know what Schenke wrote on Facebook, Ruley did confirm that it wasn’t a threat or an offensive statement, just a violation of the order’s no-contact clause.
“The victim did not respond back to him, or he’d be in violation too and would go to jail,” the deputy chief noted. “It’s a class A misdemeanor.”
Indiana’s District 26, which includes parts of Benton County and West Lafayette, has seen Campbell — a Democrat — as its incumbent since 2018.
Court records show that Schenke, on top of everything else he’s been dealing with, also has a civil case pending against him that was filed in July by the Tippecanoe County Election Board over his use of political ad disclaimers. He is accused of not disclosing the financing behind his motor home properly, with it being decked out with large campaign ads and just three small handwritten disclaimers that are hard to read.
Schenke has argued that state law requires disclaimers to be written out in at least 7-point type, and his motor home ones are larger than that, he says.
Attempts by Law&Crime to reach him and Campbell for comment were unsuccessful.
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