Musgrave may not face another intraparty battle in Vanderburgh
EVANSVILLE — Republicans do not foresee a third attempt to take down controversial Vanderburgh County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave from within her own party when she seeks re-election next year.
GOP Vice Chair Dottie Thomas said she would ask any other Republican considering challenging Musgrave next year to think about it long and hard.
Thomas cited the defeat of 2023 GOP mayoral nominee Natalie Rascher months after Rascher won a bruising party primary election against Musgrave. Many of Musgrave's supporters said they supported Libertarian Michael Daugherty or Democrat Stephanie Terry in the November general election.
Thomas stopped short of saying the hard-fought primary battle cost Republicans the chance to hold onto the mayor's office after three terms of Mayor Lloyd Winnecke.
"Primaries are hard on a party," said Thomas, Vanderburgh County's elected treasurer. "It just tears us apart. I’m trying to hold the party together and hold people together as a team. When primaries come, they get bitter."
More: Here's the backstory behind Cheryl Musgrave's devastating GOP primary loss in Evansville
Thomas and Musgrave herself said they know of no potential challengers from within the party for a primary election that is just more than four months away on May 7.
Musgrave declined to talk about her rationale for re-election to the county commissioners.
"I’ll be spreading that message all next year, and we’ll catch up at that time," she said.
One Republican elected official did seriously consider running for Musgrave's seat next year — until she found out Musgrave was running.
Jill Hahn, who was elected to a seat on the budget-writing County Council in 2020, said she point-blank asked Musgrave in November about her intentions, opting to stand down when the incumbent said she's running.
More: Election gave Vanderburgh County two promising new faces on the political scene
"I did want to solidify that, because a lot of people have been talking to me. you know, 'Will you run? 'Would you run?'" Hahn said. "I would say that I've been asked by many people to run."
Hahn said she's still interested in serving on the Board of Commissioners, county government's three-member executive governing body. One day.
"(Musgrave) is a very knowledgeable, smart lady," Hahn said, adding that she too has heard of no other potential Republican candidates. "Until she decides to not run, I'm very content in my position."
Battle scars? Musgrave's got 'em
Musgrave has long been one of Vanderburgh County's most successful — and battle-scarred — politicians.
In the course of winning all eight countywide election campaigns she has waged, she has ousted three Democratic officeholders — Assessor James Angermeier in 1994 and County Commissioners David Mosby and Steve Melcher in 2004 and 2016, respectively. She defeated a sitting county sheriff, Ray Hamner, in her 1998 re-election campaign as assessor.
In 2016 Musgrave survived a scorched-earth GOP primary election campaign against a candidate who had the all-out organizational and financial support of her longtime intraparty rival, Winnecke.
Before this year's mayoral campaign, there had been a few other ups and downs: When Republican Mitch Daniels was Indiana's governor, he tapped Musgrave to lead the Department of Local Government Finance. National Republican Congressional Committee officials confirmed they asked her to consider running for Congress in 2010, the year she opted instead for a legislative campaign that she ultimately lost.
Pursuing a long-held objective, Musgrave ran for mayor of Evansville — but time and circumstance caught up with her. Someone — Rascher — finally said yes to Winnecke, his wife, Carol McClintock, and others who had been trying to recruit someone to run against Musgrave in a GOP primary.
Rascher won by a 28-point margin, fueled by the money and passion Winnecke and McClintock poured into her campaign, her own energy and hard work, anti-incumbent sentiment in today's GOP — and the cumulative impact of enemies Musgrave had made over 30 years in local politics and government.
Looking ahead
GOP vice chair Thomas said Musgrave, who has served nearly 10 years in two separate stints on the Board of Commissioners, has earned the right not to have to worry about a primary challenger.
"Cheryl does a good job as a commissioner. She knows a lot of what’s going on," Thomas said. "And so to encourage someone to run in that spot, they’d have a lot to learn. I believe that she’s done a good enough job to run and hopefully be elected again."
It's a far rosier prospect than the one Musgrave faced a little more than a year ago, when Rascher held a Saturday afternoon fundraiser/kickoff lunch event for her campaign at Kipplees, with a beaming Winnecke by her side.
More: Mayoral primary: Anti-Musgrave mailer calls her a 'phony conservative'
On the night of her loss to Rascher five months later, Musgrave told supporters they had "had to suffer in silence as we weathered the lies, blatant deceit and character assassination from the opposition."
But if she still harbors frustrations from that campaign, Musgrave is keeping them to herself. She declined to discuss 2023.
"I’m looking forward," she told the Courier & Press. "I always do."
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Musgrave may not face another intraparty battle in Vanderburgh
