EVANSVILLE, Ind. — It’s a simple rule, according to the leader of Vanderburgh County’s largest political organization: If a Republican precinct committeeman publicly supports a Democrat for public office, he’s got to go.

But days after GOP Chairman Wayne Parke tried to enforce the rule against Steve Schaefer — Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke’s right-hand man — a formal complaint seeking Parke’s removal circulated among his critics.

More: Controversy and Vanderburgh GOP chief are old friends; other times Parke found controversy

It wasn’t just any complaint. Sources showed the Courier & Press communications in which attorney Josh Claybourn, who has close ties to Winnecke and 8th District Congressman Larry Bucshon, solicited signatures and said the two Republican heavyweights would support the pre-election effort to remove Parke. Claybourn has called himself an informal adviser to Bucshon and Winnecke’s early campaigns.

Bucshon denied last week that he ever backed the campaign to oust Parke, which ultimately fizzled out. Winnecke’s office said Monday and Tuesday that he was out sick.

Parke was attempting to remove the deputy mayor from the precinct committee because Schaefer publicly supported Josh Claybourn’s wife, Allyson Claybourn, a Democrat then running for Newburgh Town Council. The Claybourns are friends of Schaefer, who was working for Bucshon when Winnecke tapped him to be his chief of staff in 2011.

“Wayne (Parke) just messed with the wrong person,” said a source with direct knowledge of the complaint against Parke. “Josh (Claybourn) and Steve (Schaefer) were pissed off. That’s why this happened.”

But Schaefer said if others used his conflict with Parke as a launching pad for an insurrection against the party boss, that wasn’t his doing. He wasn’t involved.

“Of course I was irritated by (Parke’s complaint), but it’s small potatoes in the grand scheme,” said Schaefer, citing his years of involvement in the GOP. “If others saw his attempt to remove me as an opportunity — another reason to try to remove him — then that’s their business.”

Why the plan fizzled out

The effort to oust Parke ultimately lost steam as its proponents lost heart for a potentially ugly and protracted public fight with him over party rules. Likewise, Parke’s attempt to remove Schaefer from his elected position on the roughly 130-member precinct committee fizzled when he discovered Schaefer was ineligible to serve anyway. The deputy mayor no longer lived in the precinct he represented.

Schaefer’s support for Allyson Claybourn came in a Facebook post, which he removed at Parke’s insistence. Schaefer offered a screenshot of the post featuring photos of billboards touting Claybourn and her Republican opponent, Leanna Hughes. Claybourn won the race.

“We have different national political views, but those tags rarely matter in local politics,” Schaefer wrote. “Good luck to both candidates, but hoping Newburgh elects Allyson Claybourn in November!”

It would have been acceptable for almost any other Republican, Parke said. But it was a violation of an Indiana Republican Party rule that Schaefer had vowed to uphold: A Republican in good standing “supports Republican nominees and who does not actively or openly support another candidate against a Republican nominee.”

‘The Steve thing’

For at least two weeks after Schaefer learned Parke was trying to remove him from the Republican precinct committee, plotters organized to oust the party chairman. Sources said they took pains to keep it from becoming public.

Mike Myers, Daviess County-based secretary of the 8th District GOP organization, said he mailed a letter to Schaefer on Oct. 24 stating that Parke was seeking his removal and that a hearing on the matter would be held Nov. 8.

Josh Claybourn’s communications providing the five-page complaint against Parke, soliciting signatures and claiming the support of elected officials were dated about a week after Schaefer would have received the notice. Communications about the anti-Parke campaign by Claybourn were shared with the Courier & Press on condition that they not be shown to him or Schaefer lest the sources be identified.

Speaking from Washington, D.C., Bucshon said multiple people talked to him about Parke’s move against his former aide, Schaefer. Bucshon acknowledged he didn’t approve of it, but he said he never agreed to support a plan to remove Parke as GOP chairman, “no matter what anybody says.”

The 8th District congressman said people told him they were thinking about ways to remove Parke, “if they couldn’t resolve the Steve (Schaefer) thing.”

Who told him that? Bucshon said he couldn’t recall.

“One of the 10 people who talked to me about this,” he said.

Parke’s attempt to oust Schaefer apparently sent shock waves through Republican circles. Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, a former Vanderburgh County GOP chairwoman herself, said she heard about it from another former chairwoman, Connie Carrier. Carrier said she can’t remember who told her.

Phyllip Davis, a veteran local Republican activist, said as many as a dozen Republicans talked to him about it.

“I’m sure Gov. Holcomb knew about it,” Davis said, noting that Schaefer and Holcomb are friendly.

Davis said he was asked to sign the complaint against Parke but did not, reasoning that the dispute would become public, it would be ugly and the party would look foolish.

Parke removed Davis from his appointed precinct committee position this year because Davis expressed support for Democratic Knight Township Trustee Kathryn Martin’s re-election. Davis said Parke overreacted to his endorsement in “one of the lowest races on the ballot” – but Parke shot back that Martin’s unsuccessful Republican opponent, Johnny Kincaid, probably didn’t think it was insignificant.

Nevertheless, Davis said, he and Parke remain friends. But moving against Steve Schaefer? Not smart.

“It’s really freaking stupid of Wayne. Like I told Wayne, you need to pick your battles better. It didn’t freaking matter,” Davis said.

‘A smartass email’

There is one key player — Josh Claybourn — who adamantly denies any link between the campaign to remove Parke and Parke’s action against Schaefer for supporting Allyson Claybourn.

Josh Claybourn cast himself as a detached observer who simply offered legal advice about GOP rules to Republicans who requested it, adding that he would do the same for Parke if the party chairman asked. The complaint against Parke was a spontaneous welling up of long-held resentments against the party boss, he said.

Claybourn, a former GOP officer himself and now legal counsel to the City Council, said he and Schaefer weren’t angry at Parke.

“I remember when Steve told me after (he learned of Parke’s move to oust him), it wasn’t a big deal to him. Like it wasn’t a big deal to me,” Claybourn said.

Claybourn neither confirmed nor denied the communications in which he stated that Republican heavy hitters including Bucshon had agreed to support a campaign to oust Parke.

“You’re asking me to comment that whatever I may have said about Larry’s (Bucshon’s) particular point of view at any given time, and I just want to defer to him,” he said.

If Parke and Claybourn are on good terms with each other, it’s news to Parke.

The party boss said his relationship with Claybourn soured over the business with Schaefer and Allyson Claybourn. Parke confirmed a report that he went to the Warrick County Clerk’s Office to check Allyson Claybourn’s campaign finance report for contributions by Schaefer. He found none — but word of his visit to Boonville somehow got back to Josh Claybourn.

“He sent me an email saying, ‘If you want to make a contribution, make your check out to so-and-so,'” Parke said. “A smartass email.”

Claybourn called it “a brief and insignificant exchange via text” and confirmed that he offered to send his wife’s finance report to Parke “to save him a trip to the Clerk’s office, as well as provide the best way to donate to her campaign.”

Parke turned wistful over the deterioration of the relationship.

“When I first got on the (local GOP) Central Committee, Josh was on there, and he actually was who I learned from,” he said. “So it’s too bad that that has turned, but he and Schaefer are close friends, so I know where I rate on the totem pole.”