Controversial law is at heart of threat to Evansville mayoral candidates' eligibility
EVANSVILLE — The state law that threatens to knock out two major party candidates for mayor of Evansville is at the heart of a debate about political elitism, personal responsibility and basic fairness.
The law requires that a candidate's two most recent votes in Indiana primary elections must have been cast in primaries held by the party he or she seeks to represent. Previously, a candidate needed to show only that his or her most recent primary election vote was cast within the party — one vote instead of two. Primary elections, typically held in May in Indiana, are held to nominate candidates to represent parties in November general elections.
In a Vanderburgh County Election Board meeting set for 10 a.m. Feb. 21 in Room 307 of the Civic Center, the local Republican and Democratic parties will try to use the law to boot one each of their candidates for mayor off the May 2 primary ballot.
The statute, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2022, is meant to ensure that people who seek elected office under one party's banner "have at least demonstrated some commitment to the party," said Andy Downs, former director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics in Fort Wayne.
Legislature news:Lawmakers looks for ways to make traffic safer on increasingly deadly Indiana roadways
Expanding the requirement from participation in one primary election to two "would increase the likelihood that the person really is a member of that party," Downs said.
But opponents say the law's aim is to deny the right to run to anyone who isn't already part of the political elite. During a nearly seven-hour hearing of the Indiana Election Commission on Feb. 18 of last year, party chairs used the two-primaries law to remove several candidates across the state from the 2022 primary ballot.
Zach Smith had wanted to mount a primary challenge to Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Pence in Indiana’s 6th District. Smith acknowledged he had no primary voting history in Indiana at all, having moved back to the state recently from Ohio.
The two-primaries law does allow ineligible candidates to run if their local party chairs certify them as members, but Smith said his party chair wouldn't even grant him a meeting to plead his case that he's a Republican.
What's at stake in Evansville
Intent on having County Council member Stephanie Terry represent them in the Nov. 7 Evansville mayoral election, Democratic leaders are moving against Brian Alexander, a 31-year-old advertising planner for Spectrum Reach and Democratic precinct committee chairman. Alexander's transgression? He has voted in just one primary election, according to voter registration data — the 2016 Democratic contest in Warrick County.
GOP leaders already have two candidates for mayor, County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave and Natalie Rascher, senior talent acquisition advisor at Clifton Larson Allen. They seek to disqualify Caine Helmer, a 26-year-old front-end worker at Target who hasn't voted in any party primaries at all.
More:Here's who's running for office in Evansville in 2023
Republican Helmer says he'll run for mayor as an independent if he has to. GOP Chairman Mike Duckworth says the presence of a candidate with zero history of involvement in the party in a contest for the city's highest elected office would "skew the race" between two other candidates who do have experience.
Democrat Alexander says he will support Terry if he loses at the Feb. 21 public hearing — but he thinks Democratic chair Cheryl Schultz should let Democratic voters decide the primary. Schultz counters that Democrats are all-in for Terry, who she calls a "very qualified" candidate. She says Alexander lacks the necessary experience and primary voting history.
More:Local GOP leader says he'll try to remove mayoral candidate from Republican ballot
More:There's a contest among Democrats for mayor of Evansville — for now
'Operation Chaos'
The two-primaries law was threatening the eligibility of candidates for elected office in Indiana when it just was a one-primary law. Stalwart members of one party who voted once in another party's contest to help a friend win or to boost a weaker opposition candidate had explaining to do when they decided to run for office themselves.
Many high-profile Republicans voted in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, a trend encouraged by conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh as part of what Limbaugh called "Operation Chaos."
It almost knocked out the one Republican who could have ended 8th District Congressman Larry Bucshon's career in Congress before it began.
In 2010, Kristi Risk, then a leading candidate in the 8th District GOP primary, found her way blocked at first in the race because she had voted in the 2008 Democratic primary — in an effort, Risk said, to sow chaos in the opposing party. Risk needed the Republican chairman in her home county of Owen to certify her as a member of the party so she could run against Bucshon and the other contenders. The GOP chairman didn't want to do that at first, relenting only after Republicans there protested.
Risk would narrowly lose the primary to Bucshon, helping send him to Washington for the first of his seven terms so far.
A fight
The candidates who were removed from the primary ballot in last year's Indiana Election Commission hearing may have lost, but they didn't go down without a fight. The hearing lasted until just after 8:15 p.m., giving a full airing to the candidates' arguments and the parties' counterarguments.
"This is creating democracy where only professional politicians can get on the ballot," said Charles Bookwalter, who wanted to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Baird in Indiana’s 4th District. "Who is to say that, by 2024, the Legislature won't go back and write (the two-primaries law) into a three-primary rule."
Speaking to the election commission just more than two months before 2022 primary elections were held, Bookwalter acknowledged that he couldn't point to two Republican primaries in which he had voted. He didn't vote in the 2020 GOP primary, saying he opted not to because his Republican congressman and then-President Donald Trump, also a Republican, were unopposed. He did vote in the party's 2016 primary.
The two-primaries law was passed in 2021 and effective in 2022, Bookwalter said — so he had, had "no opportunity to vote in a primary since the two-primaries rule was passed and signed into law."
"If you interpret (the two-primaries law) strictly so as to bar my candidacy, you are implementing a four-plus-year waiting period for candidates that aren't primary voters," he said. "You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to know that's a substantial burden on ballot access and voting rights."
Finally, Bookwalter pleaded that he is a "lifelong" Republican and an active member of the party since 2002, offering an affidavit attesting to his activism.
But election commission member Karen Celestino-Horseman, an Indianapolis attorney, told Bookwalter he was asking the body to disregard state law.
"We have to follow the law, and the law says you had to vote in two primaries or get a letter (of certification from the party chairman), and you had opportunities to vote in those primaries in 2016, 2018, 2020," Celestino-Horseman said.
Opponents of the two-primaries law argued that while people are eligible under the Indiana Constitution to run for the Indiana House when they are 21, at that age they would not be old enough to have voted in two primaries. A candidate for the Indiana General Assembly only has to live in the state for two years, they said, but with the two-primaries law candidates have to have lived in the state for at least four years before seeking office.
In 2021, when the law was being debated, then-Rep. Curt Nisly called it "blatantly unconstitutional."
Celestino-Horseman, who practices constitutional law, told ineligible candidates their remedy would be found in a court of law.
Role of party officials is debated
The law's provision for ineligible candidates to appeal to their party chairmen for the required waiver is useful in some instances, Downs said.
It's a good option for candidates who are too new to Indiana or too young to have built a voting history in the state, he said — and for members of other parties to convince a party chair they have had a genuine "conversion experience."
But it's not unreasonable for party leaders to use some discretion when deciding whether they want to grant the waivers, Downs said.
"When somebody says, ‘I’m running for the Republican nomination' — and they’ve never spoken with a Republican chair, never gone to a Lincoln Day dinner or to a breakfast club thing — why should they get to say they are a Republican?" he said.
Primaries aren't the same as wide-open general elections pitting opposing parties against each other, Downs said — they are intraparty elections for party loyalists to choose nominees to do battle against nominees of other parties.
"The system we have in Indiana is that in May, Democrats get together, Republicans get together, and they nominate their candidates. Libertarians get together through a caucus to nominate their candidate. You’re supposed to be a member of that party," he said.
But Bookwalter told the Indiana Election Commission that his local GOP chair refused him a waiver to run for office because she supported Baird, the incumbent he wanted to challenge.
"The GOP chair acknowledged my conservative bona fides, encouraged me to seek a different office, and suggested that I wait until 2024," he said. "She said she would not provide the certifications because I have not voted in two primaries. She also stated her support for the incumbent and questioned why I would want to primary him."
Alexander, the Democratic Evansville mayoral candidate who voted in just one party primary, said in a recent Reddit post that the two-primaries law gives party officials too much discretion to use at their personal whim.
"It is my feeling that the people of Evansville should decide who should be on the ticket and not the Democratic Party chair," Alexander wrote.
Alexander said he understands the impulse to keep people who aren't party supporters from representing a party in elections, but that's not the case with him. He named several local Democratic politicians in whose campaigns he has volunteered. He's still a member of the party's precinct committee, he said.
"I also happen to have always worked two jobs and didn't have the free time to go to a bunch of meetings or the capital to pay to get into a bunch of fundraising events," he wrote. "I feel like there should be a space for someone like me on the ticket."
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Controversial law is at heart of threat to Evansville candidates' eligibility
