A Look Back: Marion County 2010 Election Analysis

With the 2014 "midterm" election just a few days away, I wanted to dive back and look at what happened four years ago in 2010. While I'm only looking over what happened in Marion County, Indiana and limiting myself to only the races all Marion County voters could vote in, I'm also taking into consideration events happening throughout the state and nation that could influence the outcome. In addition to looking at a candidate's vote total and vote percentage, I'll also be looking at the vote total for each office on the ballot. I'll also look into why candidate's of the same party may receive different vote totals or percentages of the vote. Finally, if there is no Libertarian candidate on the ballot, where do those Libertarian voters go?

At the top of the ballot was a United States Senate race, followed by three state-wide elections for Secretary of State, Auditor of State, and Treasurer of State. Following any state legislative races, the county wide offices were listed in the order of Prosecutor, Clerk, Auditor, Recorder, Sheriff, and Assessor. I initially planned on analyzing each race, but the US Senate and the state-wide races actually provide perfect examples of how votes shift based on circumstances of a race, availability of a specific political party's candidate to vote for, the "protest vote", and how people change their votes even when a candidate from a specific political party isn't available.

My source for these statistics are from the Marion County Clerk's certified election results.

Nationally, Democrats had victories across the nation in 2006 and 2008. With the national Tea Party movement arguably at the peak of its power, Republicans swept elections across the United States, gaining a majority in the United States House of Representatives and strengthening their minority within the United States Senate. Within the states, 29 Governorships ended up in the hands of Republicans and a majority of the state legislatures had GOP majorities as well, including our state of Indiana. It was a good year for Republicans. And even though Marion County is a Democratic county, the votes still reflect a strong Republican year even though no Republican won a majority in any contest that all Marion County voters could participate in.

The top of the ballot was a United States Senate race that was won by a former GOP US Senator, Dan Coats. Even though the total number of votes for the race was 214,077, neither Coats nor his Democratic challenger, then-US Rep Brad Ellsworth, received the most votes among their party's candidates eligible for a county wide vote. Coats finished last among all Republican candidates in Marion County, while Ellsworth trailed Democratic candidates in the much lower profile races of County Sheriff, Clerk, and Recorder. Ellsworth's campaign had a late start when US Senator Evan Bayh opted not to run for re-election, announcing the decision only days before the filing deadline to run in the Democratic primary closed. With no candidate on the primary ballot, the state Democratic Party had to vote and the Indiana Stonewall Democrats abstained from voting. He also skipped out on Indy Pride that year, though staffers were present. Looking back, it would be hard for any Democrat to win a US Senate Race in Indiana in 2010.

Coats ran honestly a boring race in the general, but his campaign wasn't a perfect campaign either. He won a GOP primary only because the Tea Party vote was split between four candidates and only rented a home and gathered enough signatures just before the deadline to be in the primary. Throughout the campaign, he was surrounded on questions of where he lived and why he didn't run for re-election back in 1998.

For disgruntled Republicans, Democrats, and actual Libertarians, the Libertarian candidate Rebecca-Sink Burris benefited receiving 11,879 votes, the most votes any LP candidate received that qualified for a county wide vote.

The Secretary of State race is special because a party that wins at least 2% of the vote in this contest gains automatic ballot access for the next four years. The Libertarian Party makes a special effort in this race so as to maintain automatic ballot access. On a county-by-county basis, the party that wins the SOS race also gets placed first on the ballot, so even if a party knows it is going to win or lose the race state wide, they'll still put in an effort in their strongholds to get the best ballot placement in general elections.

Two outside factors played an important part in this race. Democratic candidate Vop Osili is an Indianapolis native and campaigned heavily within Marion County. GOP candidate Charlie White, who won, was eventually forced out of office due to a series of felony convictions, including voter fraud. While the criminal charges and eventual conviction didn't occur until after he took office, the blogosphere started to pick up on the story as the election played out. At the time, sources told me that the White campaign effectively stopped campaigning in the final days of the campaign. Generally, the state-wide non-gubernatorial races are fairly low profile and people vote for the party they feel most aligned with, and White underperformed compared to the GOP candidates for Auditor of State and Treasurer of State.

Mike Wherry, the LP candidate for Secretary of State, seemed to gather some protest votes for Republicans who couldn't vote for White. Independents seemed also to break for Osili, perhaps due to the campaigning he did or having the home court advantage. He very well may have gotten some disgruntled Republican votes as well.

The difference in vote totals between Secretary of State and Auditor of State, 1780, can mostly be attributed to the drop off in the Libertarian candidate no longer being used as a protest vote. The Libertarian candidate only had 1510 less votes in the Auditor's race but the Republican candidate, incumbent Tim Berry, performed very well in the race getting nearly 47% of the vote while the Democrat didn't even crack 50% in Marion County. In these lower profile races, with no extenuating circumstances, people tend to go with their party identity and vote that candidate since they aren't familiar with the issues surrounding the race or the candidates. The Democratic candidate for Auditor of State also gets the honor of the lowest vote total for any Democrat running in 2010 that all Marion County voters were able to vote for.

Treasurer of State only had 603 less votes than Auditor but no Libertarian candidate. The vast majority of voters who chose Libertarian candidates elsewhere on the ballot simply chose one of the two major party candidates, Democrat Pete Buttigieg or Republican incumbent Richard Mourdock. Mourdock received 5754 more votes than the GOP candidate for Auditor did, while Buttigieg received  2195 more votes than the Democratic candidate for Auditor. If we had those two vote differences together and add the 603 less votes cast in this race, we get 8552, which is the same number of votes the Libertarian candidate received in the Auditor race. Mourdock had already been making the rounds at Tea Party meetings, so it is likely that self-identified Libertarians were already familiar with him and that's why they broke for him in such strong numbers.

Races for Treasurer and Auditor are important because, to the average voter, they have no idea who these people even are, and might not even know what the office of Auditor or Treasurer even does. In that case, voters are more likely to default to their standard political affiliation. Even more important in Indiana politics is that for a Democrat to win a state-wide seat, they really need to drive up the margins within Marion County and Lake County and not do horrible elsewhere. So if a Democrat candidate is only going to win Marion County by a slim margin, such as in the Treasurer of State's race, things don't bode well for Democrats.

And a brief note on the county races: Discounting the Prosecutor's race, which received the bulk of campaign money and media attention, they all heavily re-enforce that Marion County is a Democratic county. There are some interesting disparity in the numbers each Democrat candidate received, but that likely has to do with who really worked with grassroots party activist and who just decided to coast on the Democratic baseline. Also of note that even though the state-wide races had a decent showing for their GOP candidates within Marion County, that didn't translate into votes for Republicans lower on the ballot.

What does this have to do with the 2014 race tomorrow? Probably nothing. But it is interesting to see how voters well...vote. We'll of course have fun analyzing the 2014 results later this week.

Some Open Questions on IPS School Board Candidates and Campaigns

I'll go ahead and say that I am completely unfamiliar with what the formal laws are regarding school board candidates and their campaigns, or if they operate differently than partisan political candidates and their campaign committees. I know that when I ran for council in 2011, even though I never raised a dime, I was still required to turn in a form every several weeks declaring how much I had raised.

So I'll admit at the outset that I could just be missing something so that this all makes sense.

Let's start with what we know. School board elections have been moved from the primaries to the general elections, where they will be placed on the ballot along with all of the other offices that are up for election on November 4th. 

The deadline to declare a candidacy for a school board campaign was August 22, which is much later than the deadline for a political party to either choose someone by a primary election, or appointment by July for any vacancies after the primary is held. 

School board elections are traditionally low key affairs, with candidates raising little to no money. That includes the successful ones. Pike Township has an At-Large school board seat up for election this year. Only the incumbent has even filed a campaign report, indicating she had a bit over $300 as of the end of last year. Her two opponents haven't filed anything. 

In contrast, Indianapolis Recorder columnist and WTLC-AM radio host Amos Brown attended an Indianapolis Public Schools' School Board candidate forum and had this to say. This is probably the most attention the school board races have gotten this year within the mainstream media:

Campaign cash. Yes, I did it. I threw out the unspoken question in this year’s IPS School Board race.

Two years ago, IPS winners Sam Odle, Caitlin Hannon and Gayle Cosby raised $207,689 combined in campaign cash. An unprecedented sum.

At a candidate forum at Martin University, I asked the candidates to outline their current campaign funds. Already three candidates, Kelly Bentley, Mary Ann Sullivan, and Dr. David Hampton have raised some $76,000. A fourth candidate expected to have oodles of cash is relatively unknown Black candidate, Lanier Echols.

Expect the issue of money and outside business interests to be raised as the IPS Board campaign heats up.

After I read that, I headed over to the IPS School Board candidates' section for campaign finance reports. Clicking on the candidates that Brown names only brings up a Statement of Organization. Not a single dime has been disclosed.

I think some of these candidates are good people. Kelly Bentley and Mary Ann Sullivan are both good public servants and I have no doubt that they'd be an asset on the IPS School Board. They have both run for public office before and surely know the ins and outs of how to run a campaign committee and the reporting requirements better than I, so I'm not alleging anything illegal going on in their campaigns or the other candidates' campaigns. 

But I think it is a fatal flaw in the system if candidates can raise several thousands of dollars within a relatively short 1-2 month period and not have disclosed any of it a month before the election.

The pre-general election campaign finance report is October 17th. But I hope the legislature looks into moving that forward so that transparency occurs a little bit earlier in the election cycle.

Endorsements and The Treasurers

According to social media and confirmed by several sources, GOP candidate for Treasurer Don Bates sent out an e-mail last night claiming he was endorsed by the Indiana State Police Alliance. The e-mail was also posted on several social media outlets run by the Bates' campaign.

The Bates' website for Treasurer has since deleted the e-mail and most social media outlets announcing the endorsement have been deleted as well.

A source that is connected with the Bates' campaign said that Bates did meet with the Indiana State Police Alliance for an endorsement and that Bates wasn't expecting an endorsement this early in the cycle. The source said that Bates was approached by an individual from the ISPA pledging support and believes that the e-mail and social media posts were an honest mistake.

When contacted, a source within the Wayne Seybold camp didn't confirm or deny that Seybold had sought the endorsement of the ISPA and pointed out that their political action committee has less than $150 in the bank. Rumors are also swirling that an FBI investigation into Marion, Indiana's finances could become public before the November election. Seybold is the current Mayor of Marion. A source within the Seybold camp dismissed these rumors, noting that Standard and Poor's just gave an A+ credit rating to the city.

Seybold, Bates, and candidate Kelly Mitchell are all vying for the GOP nomination for State Treasurer. The Republican nominee will be elected by Republican delegates during their June convention in Fort Wayne.

UPDATE: A separate source within the Bates campaign says ISPA did endorse but they were later advises by legal counsel that they can't endorse before the convention.

UPDATE II: ISPA has released a statement echoing similar sentiments as to what my source said earlier. 

What I'll Be Watching: Election Day Edition

It is kind of an extra dull primary day today in Indiana. There are no state-wide offices on the primary ballot. This year, all of those offices will be decided in conventions of the respective parties. But there are county wide elections being held, a handful of referendums, and the town of Fishers, now being a city, will be holding its first municipal primary today for their city government.

Within Marion County county wide offices and the 7th Congressional District, I'm not expecting anything too out of the ordinary. I've spotted some t-shirts, yard signs, and even one of those billboards-on-a-truck for Mark Brown, the IMPD officer challenging Sheriff John Layton in the Democratic primary. But I've also seen Layton roll out his A-game as well. It isn't so much that I think Brown will win, but it could be interesting to see if Brown breaks, say, 40%. He's not running a paper candidacy and obviously has some money to spend. But listening to him on Amos Brown's program, I felt that he just wasn't ready for prime time.

While some may be hopeful that one of the three unslated judicial candidates in the Democratic primary may make it through, the slate has performed strongly in the past. I'll just leave it at that.

The Republicans have a five way race going on in the 7th Congressional District primary. Cat Ping came within a few points of beating Carlos May last time around, so I expect the same may occur again.

Social media reports are saying the race between Bob Behning and Michael Scott in the District 91 Republican primary has gotten heated. I don't live in that part of the county, so maybe I'm not hearing the ads myself. It could be the closest race this neck of the woods will get. Scott previously ran in 2012 as a Lunchpail Republican and lost. The Democrat in District 91, Patrick Lockheart, is uncontested in the primary.

If Someone Could Get Me to Vote Republican, It'd Be Dr. Frank Lloyd

The Marion County Democratic Party will hold its "slating" convention this coming Saturday. Slating is where elected and appointed officials at the precinct level will meet and cast votes to decide who the county party will endorse for the May primary for various races. In the case of the county party, eight judge slots and all of the non-mayoral county offices are up for election.

The county wide offices looked like there could be open season in several of the races but most of that has settled down. Now, the only real question is Marion County Clerk. One of the candidates that is seeking the party's slating is Dr. Frank Lloyd, the current Marion County Coroner.

Early on in Dr. Lloyd's administration, his staff fumbled the removal of an obese woman who died on the northeast side. After pleading immunity, a Court of Appeals said the Coroner's office was not immune because they were operating under internal regulations rather than state code. Two years ago, RTV6 received a video from a whistle blower showing abysmal conditions in the Coroner's office.

I've been impressed with Clerk Beth White's management of the Clerk's office and most of the elections she has run. But if this is Dr. Lloyd's record, I don't know if I'd want to hand over the office of Clerk to him.

Would you?

Clerk White to Run for Secretary of State

To nobody's surprise, Marion County Clerk Beth White has set up a website and held a rally announcing that she'll be running for Secretary of State.

Like several of the other state-wide non-Gubernatorial offices, political parties choose their nominees via conventions rather than primaries. There typically aren't too many contested conventions, and White has been making the rounds around the state for some time.

After a rocky first year in office, Clerk White has been running the Clerk's office with great efficiency. The county clerk's duties are very administrative, and honestly, there's a whole lot of them.

As a candidate who ran for office in 2011, I found the election division staffed by professionals. I was never treated any differently just because I was from a minor party. Whenever I've had to talk to a employee from the Clerk's office for any reason, they've been incredibly attentive and helpful. I really can't complain about the job Beth White has done within the office.

There are a few of her votes on the bi-partisan Election Board that I can quibble with. But I'm okay with that if it meant running and modernizing the Secretary of State's office as she has with the Marion County Clerk's office.

The question now is if Beth White can take out incumbent Republican Connie Lawson. Lawson was appointed by then-Governor Mitch Daniels after then-SOS Charlie White was forced out of office due to several felony convictions.

Lawson is a former state Senator, but running a state-wide campaign is a whole different ballgame.

On the other hand, these non-Gubernatorial offices tend to be much closer to baseline votes. People tend to vote their political party affiliation since these campaigns tend to be fairly low profile and candidates usually don't get the big bucks and the media coverage.

It could be an interesting race to watch.