TERRE HAUTE — A little-known figure who likens himself to Don Quixote and the Wizard of Oz has stepped from behind the curtain of local politics.

Joseph Selliken, 62, owner of several downtown buildings, a local printing business and founder of a nationwide medical education institute, has made himself a political force with which to be reckoned.

Supporters say Selliken has given a voice to people tired of dirty politics. Critics accuse him of recklessly spreading lies and personal smears. Others believe he is doing both.

“I don’t want either praise or blame,” Selliken said in a lengthy interview with the Tribune-Star. “I’m just trying to get a job done.”

Selliken sees his job as fighting local political corruption by ousting what he calls “good-old boys” from elected office and replacing them with “straight shooters.” To do this, he will support candidates who are, he said, “civic minded [and] honest … regardless of party.”

The Selliken-financed fliers

Selliken’s primary weapon has been the written word. The owner of PressTime Graphics, he paid for and largely directed the publication of two large-scale newspaper-style political fliers.

The first flier, published in 2006, was sharply critical of the Democratic candidate for prosecutor, Sarah Mullican. The second, in November, targeted former Terre Haute Mayor Kevin Burke during the final days of his campaign for re-election.

Among other allegations, the anti-Mullican flier accused her, an attorney in the Vigo County prosecutor’s office, of political favoritism, hiding donations, leaving a courtroom in tears and walking out of a meeting with a bereaved family.

The anti-Burke flier accused the incumbent mayor of several transgressions, including awarding city contracts to politically well-connected contractors, mocking a Holocaust survivor, wasting tax dollars and personally approving “strip clubs in your front yard.”

Selliken’s fliers were “the most extensive effort I’ve ever seen,” said Indiana State University political science professor James McDowell, who has observed Terre Haute politics since 1967. McDowell does not believe the fliers were well-researched, but said they were “extensively and creatively done.”

The backlash

Apart from their accuracy, Selliken’s two fliers have been criticized for their timing. Both were mailed to voters only a few days prior to Election Day, leaving opponents virtually no time to defend themselves.

“You’ve got to give the other side time to respond,” said local attorney and former Vigo County Democratic Party chairman C. Joseph Anderson, an outspoken opponent of Burke and someone who defends some — but not all — of the content of Selliken’s flier against Burke.

“It’s difficult to defend yourself against untruths and lies at the 11th hour and have no opportunity to address allegations,” Mullican told the Tribune-Star at the time the flier attacking her was published.

But Selliken says the timing of the fliers was unintentional. “It was not planned that way. It was just a scramble to get things done,” he said.

The fliers also have been criticized for their content.

The Burke flier “was a s----y production,” Anderson said. Some of the articles about the children of prominent people in town were “in poor taste” and stories about things such as drunken driving allegations were “chicken s--t,” he said.

Other items, such as city budget data or stories about relationships between politicians and contractors were “better,” Anderson said.

“Maybe there were some mistakes in [the anti-Burke flier],” he said. “I’m not sure I saw anything that was libelous.”

In an interview with the Tribune-Star while he was still mayor, Burke said the inaccuracies in the flier aimed at him were easy to find. Reading from a copy next to his desk in the mayor’s office, Burke cited several instances of what he called “lies” and “misinformation.”

For example, Burke said he did not “personally authorize” public money for a road on private property for the benefit of local businessman Greg Gibson; that was approved by the City Council by an 8 to 1 vote, he said. Nor did he hire a police officer who had been investigated for sexual harassment, as the flier asserts.

“That is probably a point well-taken on his part,” Selliken said when asked about the police officer story. But Burke “created the atmosphere” for the officer to be hired, he said. In any case, Selliken noted, someone else provided that information. “I don’t know a whole lot about it.”

Who wrote them?

Apart from a couple of reprinted letters to the Tribune-Star, none of the articles in the fliers is signed. Requiring authors to sign their work would have kept many stories from being written for fear of retaliation, Selliken said.

Other than a single article, headlined “Battery and child molesting,” based on what he said was his own experience, Selliken said he mostly edited articles written by others. In fact, he said, it was these other people who provided nearly all of the “negative stuff.”

Yet community activist and Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, who was involved in creating the anti-Burke flier, said Selliken dictated the final product.

“It came out the way he wanted,” Kor said. People putting the Burke fliers together were using Selliken’s equipment, paper and money, so “it came out the way he wanted. If the rest of us had prevailed, [the negativity] would have been toned down,” she said.

Terre Haute attorney Mike Ellis, whom Selliken first supported against Mullican for prosecutor in the Democratic Party primary, said he believes the anti-Burke flier harmed many friendships and was overly critical of personal things. The fliers would have been more effective without personal insults, Ellis said. “He should have stuck to the facts.”

Even Selliken says some of the fliers’ content was not what he would have liked. For instance, Selliken noted, in the anti-Mullican mailer, there was an article critical of Vigo County Coroner Dr. Roland Kohr.

“I wound up feeling somewhat badly about that,” Selliken said. Someone else wrote the article and it was “unnecessarily critical” of Kohr, he said. “I would have changed that.”

Oregon before Oz

Selliken was born in Portland, Ore. Because his father was in the Air Force, he spent his childhood in several different states. Selliken said he graduated from high school in California, attended UCLA and graduated from Stanford before heading to the University of Wisconsin for medical school.

After completing his medical residency, Selliken moved to Terre Haute to take a job as a pathologist at Terre Haute Regional Hospital in 1981.

During his three years at Regional Hospital, Selliken began helping other doctors pass board review exams. He eventually went to work full-time offering board review courses to other physicians through what would become known as the Osler Institute, a nonprofit entity Selliken founded 22 years ago and still runs today.

Around 5,000 doctors from all over the country in 20 different medical specialties take board review courses annually through the Osler Institute, Selliken said.

Running the institute kept Selliken on the road several months of the year, had him working 80-hour weeks, he said, and eventually made him a wealthy man. In 1992, during a run for U.S. Senate as an independent, Selliken told The Associated Press he had a net worth of around $1 million. Today, he says he could quit working, if he wanted, and live off the interest of his savings.

Selliken attributes part of his wealth to being personally frugal. A heartfelt conversation with his father when he was a child had a profound effect on him, he said. “I became very non-materialistic,” an assertion his aging car and rumpled clothing supports.

Don Quixote

Selliken is not afraid to spend time and money on causes he finds important.

In the 2007 mayor’s race alone, Selliken contributed more than $40,000 to Republican Duke Bennett’s campaign to unseat Burke.

The size of Selliken’s contribution to Bennett, and the expense of the anti-Mullican flier (which was mailed to thousands of Vigo County homes at 63 cents in postage per copy) left many people wondering, what does Selliken want?

Selliken says he wants nothing for himself.

“I’m not looking for anything personal from this,” he said. “From time to time I get a notion that I’ve got an insight that could be useful and try to do something about it.”

By his own admission, Selliken has spent tens of thousands of dollars and months of his time on projects he calls “Quixotic adventures” that ultimately got him nothing.

For example, in 1992, Selliken ran for Senate as an independent candidate in Wisconsin, an effort that netted him fewer than 3,000 votes out of the more than 2.5 million cast. What’s more, Selliken wasn’t even a resident of Wisconsin at the time. He owned property there, and still does, but his home was in Terre Haute.

Selliken told The Associated Press in 1992 he planned to spend $20,000 on his Senate campaign. This was after spending $30,000 in a failed effort to get his name on the ballot in Indiana.

Other Selliken projects costing thousands included repeated flights to Washington and Oregon to give unsolicited advice to officials cleaning up the Mount St. Helens volcano eruption in 1980. He made a similar, unsought offer to help the Pentagon extinguish oil fires in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. He also launched an outsider’s campaign to offer a mathematical solution to the Florida election recount in 2000.

On a less-costly scale, in 2005 Selliken offered his insights to Los Angeles airport officials when a passenger jet was circling overhead with damaged landing gear. Selliken wanted to tell airport officials that the plane should divert to a nearby landing strip for the space shuttle.

“It was an interesting exercise to try and get a phone call through to the decision-makers that were controlling the flight of this aircraft,” Selliken said. He admits he never reached anyone with any real decision-making authority. “It’s hard to get through to people.”

Although none of these efforts was successful, Selliken has no regrets, he said. He met interesting people and learned new things.

“Life for me is a great adventure of challenging and interesting experiences to do something that I feel is worthwhile. It doesn’t always have to be a success.”

When asked how he could go into these situations as a complete outsider offering solutions for which no one had asked, Selliken chuckled. “That’s what Don Quixote did,” he said.

Opening shots in Vigo County

The first political involvement in Vigo County came in 1994. That year, Selliken supported Vigo County Sheriff candidate Bill Harris in his successful primary campaign against then-Police Chief Ray Watts.

Selliken describes his efforts on behalf of Harris as “pretty minimal” and said they included use of his equipment at PressTime Graphics.

Because the election was close, “any help [Selliken] provided at the time was appreciated,” Harris, who served two terms as sheriff, said recently to the Tribune-Star.

Although Selliken believed Harris was well-qualified to be sheriff — he can still recite Harris’ resume in detail — Selliken was clearly more interested in defeating Watts, whom Selliken called “the good-old boys’ good-old boy.”

Selliken accuses Watts of protecting an old high school buddy who had “helped himself” to printing materials at PressTime Graphics in the early 1990s.

“I don’t even have a clue what he’s talking about,” Watts said, clearly surprised by the 13-year-old charge. “I don’t even know [Selliken]. I’ve never met him.”

Watts said Selliken never approached him about the matter and, as for the allegation that he protected an old friend, Watts said, “it didn’t happen.”

Fast forward to 2006

Apart from registering to vote in 1997, Selliken apparently stayed out of Vigo County politics until 2006. In fact, according to county records, 2006 was the first year Selliken ever voted in Vigo County despite calling it home for around 25 years.

“It’s an interesting paradox,” Selliken said of his nonvoting. He traveled so much, he often was out of town on Election Day, he said.

Selliken re-entered Vigo County politics in 2006 when a friend asked him to support Mike Ellis, a Democrat, in the Vigo County prosecutor’s race.

Selliken answered the call at least in part because he wanted to help defeat Mullican, whom he saw as part of a continuation of an “old-boy network” headed by former Democratic Party chairman and outgoing prosecutor Bob Wright.

Selliken said Wright “handpicked Mullican” and only decided not to seek re-election because of the case of Alexis Williams, a child who died at a Terre Haute daycare facility in 2002.

The Alexis Williams case sparked two years of public outrage and ended with a guilty plea to reckless homicide by Williams’ daycare provider, Courtenay Scott, who a judge sentenced to two years of probation and six months of in-home detention. Scott’s family also settled a lawsuit out of court with the Williams family for $785,000.

Then-prosecutor Wright came under public criticism stemming from the Williams case and Selliken sees the incident as an example of corruption.

“I must compliment Bob Wright on his choice of successor [as county prosecutor],” Selliken said. It was going to be “difficult to be harshly critical of a very attractive lady,” he said, referring to Mullican.

But Wright denies Selliken’s assertion that Mullican was his “hand-picked successor.” Wright supported Mullican, he said, because he believed her commitment to being a full-time prosecutor made her the best candidate. He also denies he chose not to seek re-election because of the Williams case.

“I’ve never talked with Mr. Selliken,” Wright said. “I just think the guy is willing to do or say anything to justify his actions. If he was so offended by me, I would think that he would make those feelings known. He’s certainly told everybody else.”

Wright is the only person prominently featured in both the anti-Mullican and anti-Burke fliers and, as with Mullican and Watts, he has never met Joe Selliken.

“I don’t have a high opinion of people who pass judgment on people they have never met,” Wright said.

Gibson and Burke

Another person targeted in Selliken’s fliers is local businessman Greg Gibson, whom Selliken believes has benefited from political connections.

Gibson, too, has never met Selliken, despite being ridiculed and criticized heavily in Selliken’s political fliers.

“I certainly don’t understand his idea of making Terre Haute a better place,” Gibson said. “That’s my goal … [but] I don’t really understand what he means by that.”

Selliken believes Gibson unfairly benefited from public spending under the Burke administration. For example, Selliken asserts that the plan to widen Margaret Avenue is designed to provide better access to the new Wal-Mart shopping area on Indiana 46, which Selliken calls “Gibson’s big shopping center.”

Selliken’s objections to former Mayor Burke center on city finances. Selliken said the former mayor greatly increased the city’s debt and wasted vast sums of money.

Selliken also believes Burke used his power as mayor to retaliate against his political foes.

“Property owners fell victim to, shall we say, selective code enforcement,” Selliken said. As an example, Selliken said someone opposed to Burke might get a ticket for having long grass while someone else, with longer grass, might get a pass.

Burke disputed those allegations. “There are people who will go to their graves believing the lies he wrote,” Burke said. “There is a great deal of harm in that.”

Unlike others targeted by Selliken, Burke has met the man. The two spoke briefly when Selliken asked Burke to autograph a “Burke Buck,” a one-page, small-scale anti-Burke flier that appeared months before the election, Burke said. The mayor refused. Other than that, the two never spoke, Burke said.

Recklessness?

Many of the allegations Selliken makes against local politicians come secondhand from people he has promised not to identify. And much of what he says are the sort of allegations more seasoned political players would tell a reporter only “off the record.”

Yet in nearly nine hours of interviews, Selliken did not make a single statement to the Tribune-Star that was not for print.

For example, Selliken said he heard from numerous sources that Burke may never have graduated from high school. “Do you know the answer to that little mystery?” Selliken asked with a smile.

Burke wearily shook his head when asked to comment. He graduated from Danville High School 83rd out of a class of just under 600, Burke said. A Danville High School official confirmed Burke was listed in school records as an alumni of the graduating class of 1974.

At another time, Selliken told the Tribune-Star he heard from other people that Greg Gibson “hates me so much that if he could figure out a way to get away with burning down Pino’s restaurant [which Selliken owns] he would do it.”

“That’s just absolutely ridiculous,” Gibson said, adding he was offended that Selliken would say something like that. “But I’m not surprised.”

Clearly, Selliken is not shy about making serious allegations, either in person or in his fliers. And, he said, he doesn’t care what people think about him. “My back is like a duck’s; it rolls right off.”

Battle for the Democratic Party

“The fight for the heart and soul and conscience of the Democratic Party is still going on,” former party leader Anderson said. “Joseph Selliken seems to be a part of that [fight].”

As party insiders tell it, Anderson and Wright represent opposing factions within the Democratic Party in Vigo County, and Selliken seems to have fallen, by accident or design, in with Anderson’s camp.

“I think [Selliken] has taken up with [Democratic Party Secretary] Mike Ellis, [former judge] Bill McClain and other disgruntled Democrats,” Wright said.

McClain could not be reached for comment, but Ellis, who faces possible expulsion from the Democratic Party leadership later this week for allegedly publicly supporting Republicans, said he had nothing to do with Selliken’s fliers and stresses that he does not agree with much of what Selliken has done.

“There are some things he’s said I agree with. There are some things I don’t agree with,” Ellis said. Nor does Ellis believe Selliken is working for any faction within the Democratic Party. “I think Selliken is a faction all to himself,” Ellis said.

Anderson, whose sister-in-law was defeated by Burke in 2003, congratulated Selliken on the “Burke Buck,” Selliken said. Anderson agreed he may have congratulated Selliken, calling the Burke Buck “very entertaining.”

Selliken, however, had nothing to do with the original Burke Buck, he said, although he reprinted an edited version of it in his anti-Burke flier.

Factional fighting within the Vigo County Democratic Party is nothing new, ISU’s McDowell said. “There have been factions in Terre Haute politics as long as I can remember.”

McDowell has even known rival Democratic factions to support Republicans in general elections in order to keep a rival group from winning, he said. “I’m not particularly amazed at anything that happens here.”

Good-old boys (and girls) beware

Selliken calls what has happened in Vigo County politics in the past two years “quite remarkable.” But it’s just a “good start,” he said.

County elections are coming up this year and “there are [still] a fair number of good-old boys and girls that are not necessarily the best choices,” Selliken said.

“I’m not looking for a fight, but if good candidates come forward … I’d likely do what I can to help the good guy,” he said.

Eventually, Selliken said he hopes he can leave Vigo County politics to others and get back to different interests. He still wants to do a post-cleanup study on the Mount St. Helens disaster, he has an idea to slow down hurricanes (based on basic physics and chemistry, he said) and has another idea for protecting ships on the high seas from piracy.

“I hope to inspire others to pick it up and straighten things out [in Vigo County],” Selliken said. “I’ve got lots of things to do besides muddle around in Terre Haute politics.”

A complex person

“He is a complex person,” former Democrats for Duke colleague Eva Kor said. “He is a very well-educated person, a very intelligent person.”

Kor said she and Selliken see the problems facing Terre Haute the same way, but they express themselves differently.

“He’s a good friend,” she said. He has a fondness for underdogs and “he cares deeply about poor people.”

Kor praises Selliken for acts of personal charity and for donating space in property he owns on Wabash Avenue to the Hyte Center. She also tells of an African-American festival he helped fund last summer in Terre Haute. “He stayed the whole time. It really touched my heart.”

Selliken is not a man of few words. The question, “Where are you from?” elicits an answer that goes on for several minutes and includes a poem he says he wrote for his high school yearbook.

Nor does Selliken lack confidence.

“If I had nothing to do for six months, I could pass the bar exam,” he said, sitting in Pino’s restaurant. Law, mathematics and engineering are just some of the topics he has studied in addition to medicine.

But, for now, Selliken has a keen interest in Vigo County politics. He was a spectator for almost all of the court case involving Burke’s initial Hatch Act challenge to Duke Bennett’s election victory, and stayed up most of the night before the decision was announced writing his own informal “friend of the court brief” for the case.

In the end, Judge David Bolk ruled for Bennett and Selliken called Bolk’s decision “brilliant.”

“It was even better than mine.”

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.