Ex-Wife Blamed Marriage Break-Up On Cheri Daniels Helping To Torpedo Mitch's Presidential Bid

Real Clear Politics' Erin McPike reveals that the ex-wife of the California doctor who Cheri Daniels hooked up with after leaving Mitch Daniels the first time approached reporters and blamed her for the break-up of her marriage, describing her as uncaring and vengeful. She further speculated that Daniels and Cheri only reunited years later to bolster his planned gubernatorial bid. Fears of damaging disclosures from their marital past may have played the key role in Daniels' decision not to run for president at the urging of Cheri:

She [Cheri] had reason to be nervous. RealClearPolitics was approached by the ex-wife of the doctor with whom Mrs. Daniels fled to California. The other couple was married at the time, and the woman said in a phone interview that the move "blindsided" her.

While she said she's over the breakup of her marriage, in an email she characterized Cheri Daniels as "vengeful."

The doctor's ex-wife continued: "What I will say is they remarried for political reasons. She didn't care what she did to her children or mine in 1994. And she doesn't care about what she does now. Look up 'narcissist.' I really question her character, and her motives."

The woman, who asked that her name not be used in order to protect her privacy, said she is a conservative and thought Daniels would make an excellent president. She even said she would vote for him. At the same time, she made it clear that she blames Cheri Daniels for breaking up her own family, and she speculated that the Danielses got back together at Mitch Daniels' urging because of his political ambitions -- such as his gubernatorial run.

An unlikely source--Daniels' divorce lawyer--apparently was telling Washington insiders that the particulars of the divorce were "messy" enough to prove problematic for a presidential bid:

She's not the only person who warned that details of the split are not the kind of biographical background a presidential candidate likes to deal with during a campaign roll-out. Daniels' own divorce lawyer has privately hinted to some Washington insiders that the particulars of the break-up were so messy that it would indeed be a problem if the two-term governor ran for president.

(The governor came to his wife's defense in a statement he released late Saturday to the Indianapolis Star. He said “the notion that Cheri ever did or would ‘abandon’ her girls or parental duty is the reverse of the truth and absurd to anyone who knows her, as I do, to be the best mother any daughter ever had.”

(He further explained that when he and Cheri parted, “the court agreed with my view that our daughters’ best interests would be served by their staying in Indiana. Cheri and I were granted joint custody. Within a short time, she purchased a residence just a few minutes from our house. Until we remarried, we shared custody fully, the girls dividing their time between the two houses.”)

I don't know who Daniels' divorce lawyer was, but I would be infuriated to learn that he was discussing the details of their divorce with others, which would seem to be a violation of the attorney-client privilege, particularly since those matters have been closely guarded and certainly not recounted by local news media outlets in Indianapolis, which could have gained access to the records at the time of their divorce. The old court files have likely been highly sanitized, if they even exist anymore.