Vanderburgh prosecutor: Diana Moers upsets incumbent Nick Hermann in GOP primary

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Incumbent Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann conceded defeat to GOP challenger Diana Moers just after 8 p.m. Tuesday after trailing her all evening.

With the clerk's office reporting all precincts in, Moers had 3,591 votes, or almost 57% of the vote, to Hermann's 2,749 in unofficial results. Just over 14,000 total votes have been counted in Vanderburgh County's Republican and Democratic primaries combined.

"These election results are the result of really hard work," Moers said at the Vanderburgh County Republican Party's election night event. "We ran a campaign with a fraction of the money, and I'm very happy with the results."

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She will face Democrat Jon Schaefer, a public defender who had no Democratic opposition.

Moers would be the county's first female prosecutor if she goes on to win November's general election, according to local historians.

The campaign offered Republican voters a striking contrast. Hermann was a familiar figure in local politics as GOP chairman and part of a well-known family for years before he became prosecutor — he is the nephew of prominent businessman and political donor Dan Hermann, a former CEO of AmeriQual Group and Black Beauty Coal Co.

Moers, on the other hand, was a political unknown when her campaign began in October.

Former Vanderburgh County Republican Party Chairman Wayne Park, a Moers supporter, said he's pleased with the early results.

"It's a promising trend (for Moers)," Park said. "But I think it will get closer."

Her victory would constitute a rarity in local politics: the defeat of an incumbent officeholder within his own party in a one-on-one primary election.

She would be the first Republican nominee for prosecutor not named Nick Hermann since 1990.

Vanderburgh County Republican Party Chairman Mike Duckworth said he surveyed voters at polling places and believed Hermann would win substantially.

"I am surprised," Duckworth said. "But you don't always know what to make of the early vote. You have to get down to the end and see what the results tell you."

Hermann, the grandson of former county recorder and councilwoman Betty Hermann, was the GOP's nominee in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018. The most recent Republican candidate for the position before that was Glen Deig in 1990. Democrat Stan Levco was Vanderburgh County's prosecutor from January 1991 until January 2011.

The 39-year-old Moers is an Evansville native and North High School graduate who returned here in November after living elsewhere for at least 15 years. She graduated from Western Michigan University's Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 2007 and worked as an attorney in a Wheeling, Illinois, law firm and an assistant state’s attorney in Joliet, Illinois.

In 2010, Moers returned to Indiana, working as an attorney in the Secretary of State’s Office in Indianapolis, prosecuting violations of the Indiana Securities and Loan Broker Acts. In 2015, she became executive director of the Indiana Board for Depositories in the State Treasurer's Office. Two years later, Moers joined an Indianapolis law firm — leaving after six months, she said, because she missed working in courtrooms.

Since November 2017, Moers has worked as a deputy attorney general and section chief in the Indiana Attorney General's Office.

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In pre-primary campaign finance reports filed just two weeks ago, Hermann reported raising more than four times as much money as Moers. Hermann hauled in $50,610 in the Jan. 1-April 8 reporting period compared to $12,310 posted by Moers.

But the veteran prosecutor also had issues.

The county and state settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against Hermann in August by paying former prosecutor's office employee Samantha Merideth $75,000 without admitting wrongdoing. Merideth alleged that Hermann made unwanted advances when they were in a hotel room alone together at a 2013 conference in Chicago — a claim he denied.

The Courier & Press obtained depositions in the lawsuit and published excerpts from three of them in February. Among the revelations: A top aide to Hermann said under oath last year she believed Merideth's claims about Hermann's behavior in Chicago.

The Courier & Press reported in March that the prosecutor's office used official credit cards in 2020 and 2021 to purchase such items as gourmet strawberries, women's lingerie and more than $10,000 in meals for staff. The newspaper also reported Hermann's office gave at least $25,000 in forfeiture money to a private nonprofit he runs, and he has declined to provide records showing what My Goals did with the money.

Moers criticized Hermann over his office's use of official credit cards and its contributions to his nonprofit.

The challenger frequently called for "integrity and professionalism" in mailings and appearances on the campaign trail but made few direct comments about the sexual harassment charges.

Thomas B. Langhorne can be reached by email at tom.langhorne@courierpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Vanderburgh prosecutor primary: Diana Moers upsets Nick Hermann