The Lawsuit - Rich Stanley for Commissioner

This true story retells the events that led me to file a federal lawsuit against the Brown County Election Board, how that played out, and how I ultimately decided to run for county commissioner. If you just want to browse the documents that were filed in the federal lawsuit, you can skip to the Supporting Documents list at the bottom, but I am also providing document links in the text below so you can review the most relevant documents as you read this true story. It took more than a year for this entire dispute to unfold and be resolved, and keeping track of the various stages of this situation can be a bit complicated. In order to help you follow the entire story, I have drawn out the basic stages in the flowchart on the right, which is also referenced below with headings for each stage of the story. Enjoy!

Stage 1 - Tim Clark's Campaign

In early 2024, I got to know Tim Clark because he attends my church (St. Agnes) and because he was running for county commissioner in the Republican primary. Like most people, I didn’t have a lot of interest in or knowledge about local politics at the time. Because of this, I would not have called myself a Tim Clark supporter at the time—he was just someone that I knew. It just so happened, however, that a couple of local political issues came up that I had an interest in shortly after I got to know Tim, and Tim helped me understand some of the context of those issues better. One of those issues involved a proposed rezoning of a property on the road that I live on, and my neighbors and I were ultimately successful in beating back that rezoning proposal at the county commission.

Because of the help that Tim had provided me in understanding the local political process, I attended a meet and greet event to support Tim’s candidacy later in the year during the general election after he had won the Republican primary. It was at that meet and greet that several people were discussing the upcoming Lincoln Day Dinner in Brown County, and Tim explained how he had tried to get tickets to the Lincoln Day Dinner but was not allowed to attend the event by the local Republican Party (i.e., Mark Bowman). As Tim describes it (and he’s right) that’s what really triggered me. That is, I felt strongly, and still feel, that there is a basic moral principle that you should offer common decency to even those you disagree with. And, in this particular case, what that meant to me is that, when you are in charge of the Brown County Republican Party like Mark Bowman is, you should allow all Republicans to attend Republican organized events, especially a Republican like Tim Clark who had just won the Republican primary. This failure of the Brown County Republican Party to offer common decency upset me so much that I wrote a letter that was published in the local newspaper and a second response that was published on Tim Clark’s website. (9/17/2024 Rich Stanley Letter; 10/1/2024 Rich Stanley Letter).

In November of 2024, Tim ultimately won the election for county commissioner. However, the election had been contentious because Greg Taggart decided to run as an independent against Tim who was the Republican nominee. After the election, Tim decided to file a complaint against Mark with the Indiana Republican Party because Tim believed that Mark Bowman had improperly supported Greg Taggart’s independent campaign against Tim during the 2024 election. Initially, I was not involved in that at all, but I did hear about the effort through some personal contacts. As I thought about it, I recognized that I have some unique skills that most others don’t have. That is, I am a lawyer who has handled a number of federal lawsuits during my career, and because of that, I am quite capable of arranging and presenting a case like this. And being that I completely agreed with the merits of Tim’s proposed complaint against Mark Bowman, I asked him if he would let me represent him in his complaint, and he agreed to let me take this on.

Stage 2 - District 9 Complaint

The crux of the complaint against Mark Bowman was that he actively supported Greg Taggart’s independent campaign against Tim Clark during the 2024 general election campaign. (Republican Party Complaint). Supporting an independent candidate against a Republican primary winner is undeniably a violation of the Indiana Republican Party rules. Specifically, the Indiana Republican Party has a set of rules that controls the organization and governance of the Indiana Republican Party. The rule that we argued Mark Bowman was guilty of violating is GOP Rule 1-25, which defines a “Republican in Good-Standing . . . as a Republican who supports Republican nominees and who does not actively or openly support another candidate against a Republican nominee.” (Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 12 at pg. 5).

This GOP rule was recently litigated in federal court and appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Hero v. Lake County Election Board, 42 F.4th 768 (7th Cir. 2022). That case was decided in 2022, and it involved a disgruntled Republican (Mr. Hero) who decided to actively support independent candidates against Republican candidates. Because of his conduct in supporting independent candidates, the Indiana Republican Party issued a ruling against Mr. Hero determining that he was not a Republican in good-standing, and the Indiana Republican Party banned him from running as a Republican for 10 years. Mr. Hero then sued the local Election Board since the Election Board was the governmental body that would ultimately put the Indiana Republican Party’s decision into effect by removing his name from the Republican primary ballot. On appeal, Mr. Hero was essentially arguing that the Indiana Republican Party should have no role whatsoever in determining who can be placed on the Republican primary ballot. But the Seventh Circuit disagreed with Mr. Hero and decided that the freedom of association right which is incorporated into the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows political parties to determine their own membership as long as the restrictions placed on membership are nondiscriminatory. Thus, Mr. Hero ultimately lost his case and the ban against him by the Indiana Republican Party was upheld.

In our view, Mark Bowman was guilty of doing exactly what Mr. Hero did when Mark supported Greg Taggart’s independent campaign against Tim Clark. Personally, I believe that what Mark did was more egregious than what Mr. Hero did because Mark was (and still is) the Chairman of the Brown County Republican Party, and therefore, he had a greater responsibility to follow the rules of the Indiana Republican Party. Additionally, in my view, Mark’s active support of Greg Taggart’s independent campaign went beyond what Mr. Hero did in supporting independent candidates. And yet, in the complaint that we filed with the Indiana Republican Party, we chose to seek a ban against Mark of only 5 years instead of the 10 years that was imposed against Mr. Hero. There were also a number of other Brown County Republicans who actively supported Greg Taggart’s independent campaign, but we chose to pursue a complaint only against Mark Bowman since we felt that he was the most responsible and we were only interested in fixing the problem, not in retribution. Ultimately, the complaint that we filed against Mark focused on nine different allegations of how he supported Greg Taggart’s campaign, which are:

Mr. Bowman Had Improper Motives In Challenging Mr. Clark’s Candidacy With The Election Board;
Mr. Bowman Offered Absolutely No Support Whatsoever To Mr. Clark’s Campaign;
Mr. Bowman Tried To Exclude Mr. Clark From The Brown County Republican Women’s Club Meet & Greet for Republican Candidates;
Mr. Bowman Refused To Allow Mr. Clark To Post His Campaign Sign At The Republican Party Booth At The Brown County Fair;
Mr. Bowman Allowed Pictures Of Prominent Brown County Republicans Wearing Campaign T-shirts Promoting Mr. Clark’s Opponent (Mr. Taggart) To Be Published On The Brown County Republican Facebook Page;
Mr. Bowman Openly Announced His Opposition To Mr. Clark’s Campaign At An Official Brown County Republican Party Meeting During The General Election;
Mr. Bowman Appointed A Republican Who Was Openly Supporting Mr. Clark’s Opponent (Mr. Taggart) To An Official Republican Position;
Mr. Bowman Excluded Mr. Clark And An Elected Republican Precinct Committeeman From An Official Republican Campaign Event (The Lincoln Day Dinner) And Allowed Mr. Clark’s Opponent (Mr. Taggart) To Attend The Event; and
Mr. Bowman’s Wife And Son Arranged A Campaign Photo Op Of A Favored Republican Candidate Associating With Mr. Clark’s Opponent.

We filed Tim Clark’s complaint against Mark Bowman in December of 2024, and the officers of Republican District 9 (which covers Brown County) held a hearing on Tim’s complaint in January of 2025. And this is where things really went awry. It was the closest thing that I have ever experienced as a lawyer that could be called a kangaroo court. Both sides presented their cases at the hearing, but I was completely unable to understand what Mark’s defense was. As far as I could tell, he never really tried to rebut any of the allegations that were made against him with regard to his support of Greg Taggart’s independent campaign against Tim. The only thing that I can really point to that resembled any sort of defense is that he surprisingly brought Greg Taggart himself to the hearing. Greg’s only contribution was to get up and hypocritically read a Bible verse and then claim that Mark never “endorsed” his campaign. My assumption is that Greg wasn’t intentionally lying because what I think he meant by that is that Mark didn’t officially and publicly “endorse” his campaign. But that was never an allegation that we made, and the GOP rule at issue only requires active support of a non-Republican’s campaign, not an official, public endorsement.

After both sides presented their cases, the District 9 Officers asked each side a number of questions that were mostly irrelevant. Some of the questions were directed to Tim and myself and seemed somewhat antagonistic. For example, the chairman took particular interest in the letter I had posted on Tim Clark’s website and seemed particularly irritated by it. (10/1/2024 Rich Stanley Letter). But these sort of questions were mostly irrelevant because the only purpose of the hearing was to consider the complaint that we had filed against Mark Bowman. It is important to emphasize a critical point here—no complaint was ever filed against Tim Clark or myself with the Indiana Republican Party. Because of this, neither Tim nor I had any reason to believe that we should be defending ourselves at the hearing. Instead, we just tried to be as cordial as we could be in the face of a few antagonistic, but irrelevant questions.

When the District 9 Officers had finished asking questions, they asked us to step out of the room while they deliberated. While waiting outside the hearing room, I was mentally assessing the chances that the District 9 Officers would agree with us and ban Mark for the 5 years that we had requested. It seemed to me that the chairman was inclined to rule against our complaint due to some of the emotional reactions we had heard. But our case was solid; Mark didn’t present any real defense; and the other three District 9 Officers had been more quiet during the hearing. Thus, I believed we still had a reasonable chance of winning.

But, what actually happened was shocking. After about 15 minutes, they asked us to come back into the hearing room, and after we all sat back down, the District 9 Officers read their decision to us. (District 9 Decision). It was short and pointed. According to the District 9 Officers, our complaint against Mark was meritless, even though they didn’t explain why any of the allegations we had presented aren’t violations of GOP Rule 1-25. Thus, they completely dismissed our complaint, and Mark walked away scot-free. But, that wasn’t the end of it. Apparently, our complaint so pissed off the District 9 Officers that they didn’t feel like it was enough to pardon Mark. What we had done in bringing attention to Mark’s misdeeds was apparently so awful that the District 9 Officers decided that we should be punished instead. And so, in addition to dismissing our complaint, the District 9 Officers decided that Tim and myself should be punished with 5 year bans ourselves from the Republican Party. And the decision was unanimous! There is really no way that an objective observer could have possibly predicted that outcome. But if you’re conspiracy minded, or if you had prior internal experience with the Indiana Republican Party, you may have known ahead of me that this is exactly how it was going to turn out.

As I was walking out of the building with Tim Clark, Charlie Shaw and Ben Phillips, I was of course disappointed. But, I also knew at that moment that there was no way that this decision ultimately could hold up. That is, as a lawyer who has done my fair share of litigation, I knew before we even got in the car that, if I needed to, I could file a lawsuit over this, and I had no doubt that I would win such a lawsuit. But, on the other hand, as I was considering this, I really didn’t believe for a second that it would actually come to that.

Stage 3 - State GOP Appeal

Despite the kangaroo nature of the District 9 hearing, I was confident that all we needed to do was get this matter before a more competent body. And that body was the State GOP. The GOP rules include a formal process for appealing adverse decisions, and so I started immediately working on an appeal to the State GOP. The appeal was 17 pages long and was filed in February of 2025. (State GOP Appeal). In the appeal, I specifically explained to the State GOP why the District 9 decision violated the U.S. Constitutional principles of due process, equal protection and freedom of speech. I also explained to the State GOP that the decision against me was based on false evidence and that the decision against Tim Clark was too vague to know what he was actually guilty of.

I remained optimistic that once this matter was taken out of the hands of the District 9 Officers that the State GOP would see this matter for what it really was. That is, it seemed crystal clear to me that the District 9 Officers didn’t even try to decide this matter in an impartial way. Instead, they apparently thought it was their job to protect Mark Bowman no matter what it took. And in this particular case, what that apparently meant to them is that they should ignore any and all complaints against Mark and that they should vindictively punish the complainers to send a message. Certainly, the State GOP wouldn’t condone this level of injustice, right?

Unfortunately, I was wrong! We received the decision about three months later in May of 2025, and the decision completely affirmed the District 9 decision. (State GOP Decision). Admittedly, I sometimes have a hard time predicting results like this, because unless I have past experiences to indicate otherwise, I naturally assume that people will act in a fair and logical way. I always find it to be very disappointing when that assumption is proven not to be true. Indeed, I did almost shed a tear over this one when my deacon prayed for me when I told him about it.

In retrospect, I have some idea now why the State GOP decision probably turned out the way it did. When I filed the appeal, I was under the impression (and hope) that the appeal would be handled by one or more attorneys, whom I believed would be more likely to understand the serious legal problems that the District 9 decision suffered from. However, our appeal was not actually decided like that. Instead, the Rules Committee (which I believe does include attorneys) did an initial review of the appeal only for the narrow purpose of deciding whether the appeal is proper under the rules. But, the Rules Committee did not actually decide the appeal. Instead, if the Rules Committee decides that an appeal is proper (which it did in this case), the appeal is then put up for a vote by the State Committee which is made up of 18 elected party members. I have no idea how that vote was taken by the State Committee and whether there was any debate over our appeal. However, it seems likely that what happened was that the District 9 Officers (some of whom are on the State Committee) probably lobbied all of the other elected party members to support their protection of Mark Bowman and also to support their vindictive punishment of the complainers. Nevertheless, because of the secretive nature of this process, it will probably never be truly known why the State GOP ultimately ruled the way that they did.

Stage 4 - Brown County Election Board Pre-suit Offer

At this point, there was nothing more that could be done to convince the Indiana Republican Party to change its decision. The decision of the State GOP against Tim and myself was final and unappealable. What a shame! Was there any recourse left, or were Tim and I stuck with this decision? Keep in mind that as long as this decision stood against us that neither Tim nor I could run for elected office as a Republican. Although the decision against Tim didn’t mean that he would be removed from his current office of county commissioner, it did mean that he would be unable to run again in 2028 for the same office that he currently holds as a Republican. Although I never originally had any plans to run for elected office in Brown County, the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against me foreclosed that possibility, at least for the next five years. And besides the political consequences of this decision for Tim and myself, I really could not stomach letting this injustice stand unchallenged.

As I noted above, I always knew that this situation could potentially lead to a lawsuit—I just never expected that to actually happen. And yet, we were getting extremely close to that point now. So, I spent a couple of months doing legal research, discussing strategy with various people, and generally preparing for the real possibility of a lawsuit.

It’s important to understand the legal theory that I was following in preparing this case for court litigation. My complaint was that the Indiana Republican Party had denied us the Constitutional protections of due process, equal protection and free speech. But, keep in mind that the U.S. Constitution is not directed to private action for the most part. For example, within the confines of your private home, you have no real obligation to abide by the Constitution. What the U.S. Constitution is really directed at is government action. That is, the U.S. Constitution restrains what the government is allowed to do in order to protect individual private rights from being infringed upon by the government. Now perhaps you can see that, although the Indiana Republican Party’s decision violated Constitutional principles, it did not actually violate the Constitution itself because the Indiana Republican Party is a private organization, not a governmental body. The decision of the Indiana Republican Party against Tim and myself may have been wrong-headed, but there was no Constitutional lawsuit that could have been filed against the Indiana Republican Party as far as I know.

Again, the U.S. Constitution applies to the government, not to private parties. But consider this. The only way to actually enforce the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against us is for the Brown County Election Board to remove Tim and myself from the Republican primary ballot at the behest of the Indiana Republican Party. That is, the Indiana Republican Party cannot remove us from the Republican primary ballot by themselves because the primary is actually controlled by the government of Brown County, i.e., the Brown County Election Board. And, this is where the real legal problem arises because, as noted, government bodies (like the Brown County Election Board) are not allowed to participate in conduct that would violate the U.S. Constitution. So, now you can see why the ultimate legal dispute over this matter ended up being with the Brown County Election Board instead of the Indiana Republican Party.

As a general rule, you are not required to notify an adverse party prior to filing a lawsuit against them, but it is common practice to provide the other side with a pre-suit notice of a potential lawsuit in order to try to settle a dispute without court intervention. In this particular case, it made sense to me that the best practice would be to contact the Brown County Election Board prior to filing suit against the Board to see if they actually intended to enforce the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against us. Keep in mind that the Brown County Election Board didn’t have any involvement in the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against us, so perhaps if the Brown County Election Board was given all of the underlying information about the Indiana Republican Party’s decision, the Board might have decided that this matter wasn’t worth fighting about and would agree that they wouldn’t enforce the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against us. Another factor was that I was going to be seeking attorney fees from the Election Board if I was forced to file a lawsuit, and it seemed to me that the Election Board should be given the opportunity to avoid this prior to filing a lawsuit.

And so, in early July of 2025 I sent an email to the Brown County Election Board with a copy of all of the documents that had been previously filed with the Indiana Republican Party. (7/2/2025 Stanley Email). Thus, the Brown County Election Board had all of the information about this dispute three weeks prior to the eventual lawsuit so that they could evaluate whether this was worth a lawsuit or not. In my email to the Election Board, I simply asked them to issue a written statement stating that they would not enforce the Indiana Republican Party’s decision against us and if they did not issue such a statement I would file a lawsuit against the Election Board.

At the time, the Brown County Election Board was made up of three individuals—Mark Williams, Rick Kelley and Pearletta Banks. Mark Williams filled a seat that is appointed by the local Republican Chairman (Mark Bowman); Rick Kelley filled a seat that is appointed by the local Democrat Chairman; and Pearletta Banks fills a seat as the elected Circuit Court Clerk. For some reason, Mark Williams and Rick Kelley ended up resigning from the Election Board after I filed my lawsuit. In my opinion, the Brown County Election Board completely screwed this up. On the same day that I sent my email to the Election Board with all of the relevant documents, Mark Williams responded to me and asserted that he had no obligation to consider my request. Two weeks later I sent a follow-up email to the Election Board reminding them that I was prepared to file a lawsuit against them, but by then they had decided that they didn’t even need to respond to me. Did the Brown County Election Board even review the documents I gave them during those three weeks? They certainly had no interest in discussing the matter with me to learn about the situation. What did the Election Board do during those three weeks that made them decide that it was in the best interest of Brown County to fight me in court over this? I doubt that we will ever know.

As I’ve said above, I never really expected that this would actually end up becoming a lawsuit, but now it was unavoidable.

Stage 5 - Federal Lawsuit

Three weeks after notifying the Brown County Election Board that I planned to file a lawsuit over this if a settlement could not be reached, I did just that and filed a lawsuit against the Brown County Election Board in late July of 2025. We later learned that the Election Board voted unanimously to defend against my lawsuit prior to actually receiving the lawsuit. (8/12/25 Election Board Meeting at 17:50-19:50). We also learned that the Council decided to put $100,000 into the Election Board’s 2026 budget to defend against my lawsuit. (8/12/25 Council Budget Work Session at 1:19:45-1:20:50). Did anyone on the Election Board or the Council actually study this matter before deciding to spend taxpayer dollars defending this lawsuit?

The lawsuit is currently still pending, and I am expecting to receive a final decision in the lawsuit before the deadline to file candidacy papers for the 2026 election. When the court issues its final decision, I will supplement this post to provide more detail about how the lawsuit played out. Nevertheless, I am optimistic at this point that I will prevail in the lawsuit, and if I do win like I expect to, I will be able to run for elected office in the 2026 election.

Stage 6 - Rich Stanley's Campaign

The last stage in this whole ordeal is my campaign for Brown County Commissioner. So, why did I decide to turn this federal lawsuit into a political campaign for elected office? To be honest, my plans to run for elected office have slowly evolved over this process, and none of it was very intentional in nature. Let me be totally clear about this. When I got involved in this affair, I had no intentions whatsoever in running for elected office. That’s not why I got involved in this at all. The simple and only reason why I got involved in this in the first place is because I saw a wrong that I thought I could help rectify. It was nothing more than that.

And then I got sucked into this big time! Here’s an example. If the District 9 Officers had handled our complaint against Mark Bowman in a fair and objective way at Stage 2, I’m pretty confident that that would have been the end of it for me. At that point, I was only focused on correcting a wrong, and if we had been successful and not been vindictively punished ourselves, I would have just gone home feeling like the job was done. But, of course, that’s not what happened. I got personally drug into this myself when the District 9 Officers chose to rely upon the fake claim that I had supported independent Greg Taggart with a financial donation to vindictively punish me.

Filing the State GOP appeal at Stage 3 was unavoidable at that point, and I really did believe that that would be the end of it because certainly the State GOP wouldn’t support such an egregious decision if they were fully informed about it. When we received the adverse decision of the State GOP, I had still not put any serious thought into running for elected office, but I was deeply dismayed by the utter thoughtlessness of the Indiana Republican Party. And these are the sort of experiences that really get a person thinking.

My interaction with the Brown County Election Board in Stages 4 and 5 did absolutely nothing to alleviate my developing concerns about how we are governed. Instead, it escalated my concerns even more. Now, we had a government body that was given full access to all of the documents that had been previously submitted to the Indiana Republican Party. I gave all of this information to the Election Board three weeks before filing my lawsuit, and you would expect them to diligently look into the situation and try to avoid a lawsuit, right? I still can’t really explain what the Brown County Election Board was thinking in allowing this case to go to court. That just never needed to happen. It looks to me like the Election Board just got in over their heads and didn’t understand what they were doing. I didn’t take advantage of them; I gave them an open door to avoid this and they inexplicably refused. It doesn’t make any sense.

And that’s how I’ve ended up here. I didn’t engineer this, it just happened. I stumbled into the situation. I was just trying to do the right thing all along. But what I came to realize in this process through direct experience is that we have an awful lot of people in our political system that are just not very good at what they are doing. You could use all kinds of words to describe that—incompetence, arrogance, sloppiness, corruption—pick your own word.

I also came to realize that I have capabilities that are somewhat rare which would be valuable in making a better government. I’m certainly not the only lawyer out there who has experience litigating lawsuits, but finding a law firm lawyer who’s willing to put that skill to work for his county as an elected office holder is rather unusual. But here’s the thing. I spent a significant part of my life wandering around this country of ours trying to figure out where to make my home. That question was answered for me and my family when we moved to Brown County. This is my home, and I will never have any other home.

It turns out that I also retired from my career as a law firm lawyer in early 2025. I would have never considered something like running for elected office when I was working full-time, but that’s not an obstacle anymore. So, now perhaps you can see how I’ve changed in this last 1-2 year timeframe, from someone who had limited interest in local politics to someone who is committed to fixing our local government.

This lawsuit and all the stages that led up to it represent everything that I dislike about local politics and government. This shouldn’t be repeated. My main platform in this campaign is “good governance.” That is what I aim to achieve for the voters of Brown County. And with me, it’s not just talk—I will actually do it.

Supporting Documents