INDIANAPOLIS – Congressman Rokita’s campaign has used excuses to try to backtrack from a campaign memo linking Congressman Rokita and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore after reports emerged last week of Moore’s pedophilia.

WXIN’s Dan Spehler reported during an IN Focus panel yesterday focused on the firestorm in Alabama’s Senate race that he had reached out to Congressman Rokita’s campaign about a controversial campaign memo where Congressman Rokita sought to take the mantle of Moore’s campaign for himself. Several Indiana Republicans have publicly condemned Moore, including Senator Todd Young, but Congressman Rokita has not taken such a stand. Instead, he left it to his campaign to backtrack with flimsy excuses that the memo, entitled “What Roy Moore’s victory in Alabama means for… IN Senate primary,” was not about Roy Moore specifically.

Congressman Rokita’s campaign’s memo, published the day after Moore’s win in the Alabama Senate primary, claimed he would follow Moore’s lead in the Indiana race and that Moore “tapped into the same… dynamic [that] is going to be alive and well among Indiana’s Republican primary electorate.”

The memo looks utterly wrong-headed in the wake of a Washington Post reportlast week that Moore repeatedly sought to date and have sexual relations with young girls in Alabama, including one as young as 14. It was still controversial the day it was published for Congressman Rokita’s campaign to claim that he wanted to follow in Moore’s footsteps, however, considering Moore’s bigoted and hateful record. Moore thinks that “homosexual conduct” should be illegal and has hinted that he may believe it should be punishable by death. He also wrote an op-ed claiming that Muslim politicians like Indiana’s own André Carson should not be seated in Congress expressly because of their faith.

“Only a fool would believe Congressman Rokita’s campaign’s excuses for its memo. It should be obvious that a candidate only would publish something like that that if he was comfortable linking himself with Roy Moore—a man known at the time to be a discriminatory bigot, and one who has since been reported to be a pedophile,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “In the wake of these reports about Moore, our elected officials must show where their moral compass points, and Congressman Rokita’s failure to take responsibility for his campaign is a disappointment to voters. Congressman Rokita must disavow Roy Moore and apologize to Hoosiers for his memo.”

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