The Fishers municipal primary election is well in the rear-view-mirror, and I’ve been a little busy covering other news around here, so allow me a few comments on the election results.
First, I always congratulate the winners and losers. Why do I congratulate the losers, you may ask?
It takes tons of work, money, volunteers and organizing effort to mount a campaign for public office. When you lose, it is very frustrating after all that effort. But that’s our political system – we have winners and we have losers.
So, I admire the willingness of anyone to run for public office. It is difficult and you make personal sacrifices just to be a candidate. So, losing makes it doubly hard.
So, to the losers, thanks for being a part of the political process. As a community, we should tip our hats to all the candidates, winners or losers.
As far as the results go, all incumbents in the Fishers Republican primary election ran for re-election. There were five contested races in the GOP primary, with all those incumbents prevailing by easy margins. The closest election was City Council At-Large, where Gurinder Singh lost by over 1,300 votes to the next in line in the tally, Rich Block. Cecilia Coble and Todd Zimmerman won re-nomination by a wide margin in the At-Large contest.
Singh invested a lot of resources in his campaign, including money and volunteers, but fell short of getting his name on the general election ballot.
Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness won a decisive victory over challenger Logan Day. Fadness had more than 67% of the vote. The mayor told me on election night that residents of Fishers should expect more of the same in his coming four-year term.
Day was in good spirits when I visited him on election night. He felt the campaign he ran involved more people in the political process, and his view is that involvement is a good thing.
But GOP primary voters, by a very wide margin, appear to like the development strategies Scott Fadness has employed in his first 5 years from the second-floor corner office at City Hall. The pace of development in the city was a major campaign issue, and Fadness’ strategy of “full-speed-ahead” on development received a vote of confidence from a large majority of primary voters.
City Clerk Jennifer Kehl, along with City Councilmen Pete Peterson and Brad DeReamer, coasted to easy victories in their primary campaigns. DeReamer says this was his last campaign and does not expect to seek another term on the council.
We do have some Democrats set to be on the general election ballot. Jocelyn Vare will be campaigning in the fall for an At-Large seat on the Council. Lane Skeeters is challenging John Weingardt in his Council District and Adam Kaps has filed to run against David George in the Southwest Council District.
Hamilton County Democratic Chairman Joe Weingarten has the authority to appoint candidates where there are none on the ballot, but must decide later in the summer. Weingarten told Fred Swift of the Hamilton County Reporter he has no plans to appoint a Democratic mayoral candidate in Fishers.
Allow me to make one comment about voter turnout.
The Fishers voter turnout was 15.8% of registered voters. That just considers those eligible voters that bothered to register. There are no hard numbers on the percentage of eligible voters choosing to sit this election out, but it would likely be down into the single digits.
Many involved in Hamilton County political life have been asking the question – why are the primary election turnout numbers so low, and how can that be improved?
I have a humble suggestion that neither major political party will like, but it is the only way I see of getting voters to the polls for primary elections. Indiana needs to find a way to get independent voters involved in primaries.
The way Indiana’s election laws work, the state essentially pays for an election run by the two major political parties so those parties may nominate candidates for the November general election.
There are many ways this could be changed. Some states have open primaries, but there are inherent problems with that system. I am not married to any particular solution, but unless independent voters are brought-in as part of the solution, it is unlikely these voter turnout numbers will improve.
Whether we like it or not, more voters than ever do not identify with either the Republican or Democratic Parties. That growing pool of voters would likely have more incentive to be a part of the primary election if our law did not tie the process to declaring for one of the two major parties.
So, I hope there is some discussion of making changes to our primary election system in Indiana. If not, turnout numbers will not likely go up (short of a major public issue in a particular election).
Just something to think about.
