A political strategist who helped Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) win election to Congress on a family-values platform spent large sums of money at strip clubs, The Evansville Courier reported Tuesday.
Citing a circuit court judge’s divorce decision in May, the newspaper said Evansville attorney Jeffrey A. Wilhite was “dissipating marital assets by frequent and substantial expenditures” at the clubs.
Court documents also show Wilhite made about $135,000 in 1994, the year he was fired from an Evansville law firm. His income plummeted and he accumulated about $200,000 in debt, partly because of “extravagant” expenditures while establishing his own law office, wrote Circuit Judge Marvin Stratton.
Those expenses included hiring as his personal assistant an exotic dancer who had never completed high school, never worked in a law office or held a secretarial or administrative job.
Although Wilhite had been a key player in Hostettler’s 1994 victory, he had little role in the congressman’s re-election campaign last year, said Jeff Knight, Hostettler’s campaign committee chairman.
