The two major political parties each plan to drop an Evansville mayoral candidate from the May Primary ballot. WNIN’s John Gibson spoke with the party chairs:
Vanderburgh County Republican Chair Mike Duckworth tells WNIN that he plans to pull Caine Helmer’s name from the May Primary:
"Never been involved in any of our events, not voted in the last two primaries, which by state law enables me to make that decision."
The action will leave two candidates on the GOP ballot: County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave and financial advisor Natalie Rascher.
Duckworth says he appreciates the new state law that requires a candidate to have voted twice in party primaries:
"I don't like denying anyone the right to run but in the same tone you know, two or three of those kinds of candidates that don't have the experience or are just throwing their names out there could skew a primary like we have where two viable candidates are at it."
Meanwhile, Vanderburgh County Democratic Chair Cheryl Schultz plans to drop Brian Alexander from the Democrats’ primary ballot:
"We had a process that we followed from the beginning that anyone interested in running for mayor could participate in, and Brian did not indicate any interest in doing that at the time.
Schultz is also citing Indiana’s two-primary law to trim the ballot to one Democratic mayoral candidate, County Council member Stephanie Terry.
Still, Schultz questioned the timing of changing the eligibility law:
"In 2021, they decided to increase it to two primaries but they did it in a year when there were no elections. So no one had an opportunity to vote that year."
Schultz says the law should have been enacted later:
"I just think that maybe it should been grandfathered in that last election time because there were no opportunities to vote in 2021 to give a person that second opportunity to get that primary in."
Duckworth notes that party chairs can also allow candidates to run who haven’t met the two-primary rule:
"We had someone that filed that I interviewed that seemed very qualified and I filed the paperwork to allow them to run. So, it's not a if you haven't voted in two primaries, it's not one of those things where you're automatically out, that's not the case. You have to take it on a case-by-case basis."
Schultz and Duckworth plan to ask the Election Board to drop Alexander and Helmer at the next board meeting.