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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMarion County Republicans are busily setting the foundation for what remains a rare task in an otherwise reliably red state: clawing back seats in 2023 on the city-county council, where they’re outnumbered 1:4, and taking back other elected positions.
November 2019 was a low point. That year, Marion County Democrats flipped six City-County Council seats, locking in four years of a 20-5 supermajority. Democrat Mayor Joe Hogsett also easily beat out Republican former state Sen. Jim Merritt, who was Marion County Republican Party chair until December 2018.
The organization, also known as IndyGOP, was left to pick up the pieces. There’s no word yet on whether Hogsett will seek a third term, but Republicans want to be ready no matter who the mayoral opposition is.
Joe Elsener became IndyGOP’s latest chair in March 2021, taking over from former state Rep. Cindy Kirchhofer. He’s also been heavily involved with Gov. Eric Holcomb’s campaign and the state party.
Under his leadership, the local party has worked to build a sturdier foundation: rolling out a new website with a centralized events calendar, maintaining a consistent presence on social media, launching a new weekly newsletter and starting a young Republicans Club.
IndyGOP has brought on Executive Director Joel Bragg. The nine township clubs are back and active. Members are out at events from a Wayne Township parade to a booth at the Historic Irvington Halloween Festival, according to Elsener.
“We’ve been working across the board this year, and it definitely has not felt like an off-election year, as they say,” Elsener said this week. “It has been one of the busier non-election years of my life, but it’s been really exciting to kind of see people energized and looking forward to the future.”
“We all realize that we’re not going to take back the county overnight,” said City-County Council Minority Leader Brian Mowery. “This is going to be a process. We’re going to need people committed to building this organization and being competitive again. So I think that’s how we’re going to do it, is these weekly newsletters, social media, community events.”
He also said the Republican caucus and IndyGOP leaders are on better terms now than in the past, when a disagreement would turn “into a whole match.”
“We’ve gotten rid of a lot of that,” Mowery said. “He’s done a really fantastic job with keeping an open line of communications, working with councilors. … I talk to Joe just about every day. We’re always bouncing ideas off each other, having these conversations and trying to work together.”
It helps, he said, to have money in the bank, thanks to IndyGOP’s stepped-up fundraising efforts.
Marion County Democrats, meanwhile, have been focused on cementing their numbers.
The party’s REV Up Indy campaign, which stands for “register every voter,” seeks to identify Marion County newcomers who were once registered Democrats elsewhere, but who haven’t re-registered since moving. The number of recent arrivals fluctuates, since the voter file Indy Democrats uses gets updated monthly, but is in the high 30,000s, according to Chair Kate Sweeney Bell.
“We did that because we heard nary a whisper about what the new districts would look like,” Sweeney Bell said, referencing the recent Republican-led state-level legislative redistricting.
“We tried to be prepared for maps that are the worst-case scenario by increasing our base across the county,” she added.
For Sweeney Bell and the Indy Democrats, outreach strategies like social media usage, a newsletter and regular township meetings are basics, and already well-established. But there’s still room to do more, she said, especially in the townships where the party’s hold isn’t as strong.
“I’m old enough to remember a time where the only Democrat stronghold was in Center Township. Six are now reliably Democrat. But it’s important for our party to not take them for granted, and to not ignore the other three,” Sweeney Bell said. “So we intend to welcome and, if necessary, recruit, candidates—even in those townships.”
The position of mayor and all 25 City-County Council seats will be up for election in 2023. But some county-level roles, including assessor, auditor, clerk, prosecutor, recorder and sheriff will be up in next fall’s elections. (Sweeney Bell is also Marion County Recorder.)
“We’ve got to finish the year strong, right? We still have two months … and then from there, it’s looking at 2022,” Elsener said. “You know, people love to talk about the mayor’s race and council races, and we’re focused on all those, on a daily basis. But also, there are important races in 2022, whether it’s the state House, state Senate, countywide races, local races.”
And both Elsener and Sweeney Bell said they will pay careful attention to county-level redistricting, which the council is scheduled to begin early in 2022. It’ll be the first time Democrats will control the process.
Republicans have said they’d like to see both caucuses get money to work on maps. The nonpartisan council office, which was budgeted $300,000 for redistricting, has been mum on how the money will be used, besides an initial community engagement and civic education campaign.
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Odd but Republicans are trying to “reach out” but Democrats, ever the vanguard of socialism, are busy trying to find ways to “cement” their position and make it difficult to vote them out of office.
Whatever happened to trying to SERVE THE LOCAL POPULATION AND CONSTITUENCY? If the Mayor and the City Council ran on their records and current state of the City and County, none of them would still be in office. Although Indianapolis has resisted the norm and have put up a good fight, they face the issue becoming like so many other metropolitan areas that elect a very left leaning political situation and when things go south, the people that voted those politicians into office, simply move away leaving a hollowed out core, much like a donut.
Republicans just finished gerrymandering the US congressional and Indiana legislative maps to their own advantage and you think they’re better than the Democrats? Democrats are additionally trying to cement their position by recruiting more voters. The GOP response is that “those people” shouldn’t be voting because they’re not “real” Americans.
Here’s the real issue – Democrats are winning in Indianapolis because the GOP hasn’t had a good candidate since Greg Ballard quit. Hogsett doesn’t have to do anything but not screw up when the Republicans aren’t going to offer any resistance.
The Republican candidate in 2015, Chuck Brewer, a guy with no experience outside of owning a sandwich shop, did better than James Merritt in 2019, who did so poorly that he helped numerous Republican city councilors to lose. And the councilors lost with maps that Republicans had drawn to their own advantage! If there was ever a must-win election for the IndyGOP, it was 2019 … and they got routed.
So … who is going to be their candidate in 2023? IMO, if they want to be competitive in an urban environment, they need a moderate Republican who doesn’t make people think “Trump” when they first see them. Are there even any of those left in Indiana? I know it worked at the state level in Virginia, maybe it would work in Indiana?
I mean, there’s plenty of issues Republicans can run on – like crime, crime, and I dunno, crime. Crime was also an issue in the last election and Republicans did nothing with it.
Maybe the Republican candidate could also promise that he’ll get the state GOP to re-evaluate the road funding formula so Indianapolis has more money for better roads. Better roads and less crime is a platform that maybe can work in a big city for a candidate.
Or they could just continue what they’ve done the last few years – just have the Legislature continue to interfere with the city’s affairs while the city of Indianapolis (and the suburbs) financially subsidizes the rest of Indiana. Do more stunts like trying to stop bus expansion (jeopardizing millions set aside to fix the roads at the same time) or making sure Indianapolis can’t change it’s name…. all the while, not offering any real competition for Democrats in elections.
Joe B nailed it. I have nothing more to add 🙂
At the local level, I used to think Republicans stood for something. I had thought they were “pro-business” and that sounded like a good idea. What I found out is that being pro-business means pooping on all the people that live in the city so that some rich businessman benefits, and can continue to make rich campaign contributions.
Now I am pretty sure republicans stand for tearing down government until it is dysfunctional and blocking anything that might benefit the average guy. I keep waiting for years of “trickle down” economics to work and so far the only thing that seems to trickle down is more divisive propaganda.
The problem with Republicans is not their “message” or lack of “outreach.” It is their prior actions which have been out of sync with the majority of residents living in Indianapolis. As result is they are viewed as throwbacks from the “Naptown” days when Indy’s future looked – and indeed was – bleak. And few Indianapolitans want to return there. Unless and until their attitudes and their actions change, Republicans here will remain on the outside looking in.