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The Indianapolis City-County Council and Marion County voters have little recourse if Mayor Joe Hogsett won’t resign.
The mayor is facing calls to step down over his handling of sexual harassment allegations against his former chief of staff and his own after-hours texts to subordinates. He told IBJ last week he has no plans to resign and plans to serve out his term, which ends in 2028.
The Indianapolis City-County Council, meanwhile, has no power to expel a sitting mayor from office. Instead, only the Indiana General Assembly can impeach a mayor—and that’s incredibly rare.
“I don’t recall it ever happening,” said Paul Helmke, director of the Civic Leaders Center at Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public Affairs. Helmke served three terms as Fort Wayne mayor and is a past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Indiana lawmakers work only part-time for a session that begins in January and lasts a few months. Helmke says that this provides a limited window for such actions. Outside of that, Gov. Mike Braun would be required to call a special session for the Legislature to consider an impeachment.
State law also limits the power voters have. Most other states can hold recall elections. Those elections, in which voters are given the opportunity to remove officeholders from their posts before the end of their terms, don’t exist in Indiana. The state Constitution also prevents the state from holding referenda on policy, he said.
Mike Wolf, chair of Purdue University Fort Wayne’s department of political science, characterized the restrictions as an “uncommon … culture of limited access for the public to hold elected officials responsible.”
How are Indiana mayors impeached?
Under Indiana Code, elected officials are removed from office “by operation of law” when they’re convicted of a felony. Neither Hogsett nor anyone in his administration has been charged with a crime.
When an officeholder has not been convicted of a felony, the only way to remove that individual form office is through impeachment.
To impeach a sitting mayor, Indiana Code states that the Indiana House of Representatives must deliver articles of impeachment to the president of the Senate. Those articles must detail “a misdemeanor in office,” which does not necessarily have to be a crime. Instead, Wolf said, lawmakers decide whether the alleged infraction merits removal from office.
What follows is a court-like process in which the Indiana Senate invites the defendant to plead his or her case. The officeholder may object to the articles and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.
Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to impeach the individual. If not, the person is acquitted.
How is an Indianapolis mayoral vacancy filled?
If Hogsett were to resign, party insiders would hold a caucus to choose a Democrat to serve out the remainder of his term. Until that new leader is selected, the city’s chief deputy mayor holds the role.
Examples of mayoral vacancies include when a mayor dies, resigns, or is removed from office, as well as if the sitting mayor moves out of the county or is incapacitated and unable to perform duties for six months.
When that happens, Indiana Code requires that party leaders hold a caucus within 30 days of a resignation or other removal from office. In Indianapolis, that would be held by the Marion County Democratic Party.
The voters in the caucus are called precinct committee people. Candidates for the office must have been residents in the city for at least a year before the caucus. The local party’s central committee may reject candidates who did not vote in the party’s primary in the last two elections in which they cast a ballot.
In larger cities, like Indianapolis, Wolf said, there are often complicated relationships between members of the same party during this process.
“There’s most likely a ton of up-and-coming politicians and existing politicians, including people on the city council, who have been critical openly [of the former mayor],” Wolf said.
The person selected by the caucus will serve out the remainder of the former officeholder’s term.
A similar process was used last April to replace Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry after his death. The Marion County Democratic Party held a similar, countywide vote after the party chair resigned in 2022.
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Looks thirsty, can someone get him a drink.
Talk of an impeachment is ludicrous. Save that for high crimes and misdemeanors. However stupid after-hours drunk poetry flirting with young female subordinates be – and it was highly stupid – it’s not a crime and not an impeachable offense. I trust he’s apologized to them and am fairly certain he won’t make that mistake again. So everyone should move on.
Plus, if he can stop focusing on this tempest in a teapot, perhaps he will have time to think about fixing the roads in this city.
You may not feel the same if you were a monority, or if your wife, daughter, close friend or sibling were offended aganced on more than a one time infrequent occasion.