Indiana House candidate arrested on eve of Election Day for allegedly violating protection order via Facebook

Chris Perez
Nov 4th, 2024, 5:23 pm

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.

[..]