'Most politically interested' people in Evansville voted in primaries — again
EVANSVILLE — No matter how hotly contested a primary election race for Evansville's top spot may be, there are only a few thousand residents who are willing to vote in the stand-alone springtime intraparty contests.
Tuesday's primaries proved it again.
The day's marquee race — the Republican mayoral primary that saw Natalie Rascher defeat Cheryl Musgrave — drew 5,649 votes in a city with 82,552 registered voters. Another 1,727 people cast ballots in uncontested Democratic primaries.
Comparisons are tricky. You have to go back to 1995 to find a seriously contested Republican primary for mayor of Evansville. That year, Lori Frary emerged victorious in a five-way race with 1,940 of 3,468 votes cast. But the GOP primary was widely viewed as a quixotic venture bound to ultimately fall short of ousting then-Democratic Mayor Frank McDonald II, and that's exactly what happened. McDonald beat Frary in the fall with just under 68% of the vote.
Musgrave and Rascher were competing for a nomination that would have given either of them a solid chance to win in November's general election.
More: Primary made grudges, division clear in Evansville Republican race for mayor
The more apt and recent comparison is the 2011 Democratic mayoral primary, which was cast as a war for the party's soul. Democrat Rick Davis had infuriated supporters of then-Democratic Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel by making known his willingness to challenge the mayor in a party primary election — much as Musgrave did this year with current Mayor Lloyd Winnecke. Like Weinzapfel, Republican Winnecke later announced that he would not seek re-election.
Slightly more than 6,800 votes were cast in the fractious Davis-Tornatta contest — almost 1,200 more than Tuesday's Musgrave-Rascher tilt.
Until now, the 2011 race was the most recent truly competitive mayoral primary either party had staged in Evansville.
"It's not even a presidential (election) year. If (the mayoral race) happened next year, you would have seen a lot more people vote," said Nick LaRowe, a political scientist at the University of Southern Indiana. "The fact that we hold off-year elections is going to make it a little bit lower than it would be otherwise. We don't even have congressional primaries as a hook."
The people who voted in this year's mayoral primaries intuitively are the most politically engaged, "inside baseball, most politically interested people" in the city, LaRowe said. And that gives them outsized political influence.
In the Republican primary for three at-large seats on the City Council, just two candidates ran — incumbents Jonathan Weaver and Ron Beane. There were no other candidates to vote for in the citywide race. Voting for both was allowed.
And yet Weaver, who has been elected citywide three times now, garnered 425 votes more than Beane. Is that a sign of potential trouble in November's election for Beane? Maybe, LaRowe said. Democrats have a full complement of three at-large nominees who are ready to go.
"When the overall numbers are this small, I think that (425-vote difference) matters," the USI political scientist said.
Some people took the trouble to vote in the primaries but didn't cast ballots in their parties' mayoral races. Thirty-two Republicans declined to choose between Rascher and Musgrave. Democratic nominee Stephanie Terry, who was unopposed, garnered 1,628 votes — meaning 99 Democrats opted not to vote for her even though there was no opponent for whom to vote.
The general election is set for Nov. 7.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 'Most politically interested' people in Evansville voted in primaries — again
