EVANSVILLE — The gates to one of Indiana's largest political organizations were thrown open Friday when the Vanderburgh County Election Board certified the victories of a new majority of local Republican leaders.
What comes next no one knows — or is willing to say.
The certification of 84 Republicans recruited by conservative activist Ken Colbert and others to run for precinct committee slots — and then elected in the May 7 GOP primary — leaves current party chairman Mike Duckworth with a target on his back. It's a majority on a body that can have only as many as 135 members, one for each of Vanderburgh County's voting precincts.
Most importantly, it's the PCs who may remove Duckworth before his four-year term expires in March. In addition to choosing the party's chairman, PCs are the ones who choose individuals to complete the terms of elected officeholders who leave early.
Duckworth's alienation from the ascendant new majority traces back at least several months.
Party conservatives have raged against Duckworth for using Indiana's "two-primaries law" to block some of them from seeking elected positions while waiving the law's requirements for candidates he favors who have voted in Democratic primaries. The statute requires that a candidate's two most recent votes in Indiana primary elections must have been cast in primaries held by the party he or she seeks to represent.
Duckworth angered supporters of County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave by waiving in a GOP primary challenger for Musgrave, Amy Canterbury, even though Canterbury had voted in the 2022 Democratic primary. Canterbury ultimately won that contest, but Musgrave supporters said Duckworth's action unnecessarily extended the GOP's internal warfare. Duckworth's supporters noted that Musgrave declared her intention to run for Evansville mayor last year before Republican incumbent Lloyd Winnecke had decided whether to seek re-election.
Duckworth's decision to call a caucus of precinct committee members, or "PCs," to choose a new county clerk this past Wednesday — two days before the group supported by Colbert could be certified Friday — only added fuel to the fire.
Colbert has declared Duckworth must go — and he may go soon if the new precinct committee can raise the necessary two-thirds of its members to oust the chairman before his four-year term expires in March.
But when the smoke cleared from Friday's election board meeting, Colbert was still calculating whether conservative PCs have the votes and the will to act. Duckworth said he intends to stay as chairman. Both men held back key pieces of information.
"I'm going until the end of my term (in March), unless somebody tells me I don't have the reason to do it," Duckworth said.
The Courier & Press asked Duckworth if he hopes to make an accommodation with the conservatives led by Colbert.
"Well, we've got some other things we're looking at first before we do that," he said.
Duckworth declined to elaborate.
Crunching the numbers: 'We don't know yet'
For Colbert, who was himself elected without opposition to the precinct committee, it's all about the math.
GOP Vice Chair Dottie Thomas said after Friday's election board meeting that 19 of the 135 PC positions remain vacant. Under party rules, Duckworth may appoint people — likely supporters of his — to those vacancies without regard for whether they live in those precincts.
Along with the 84 new PCs recruited by Colbert's group are an undisclosed number who were in office before Friday and who voted for Colbert against Marsha Abell Barnhart in Wednesday's county clerk caucus. The party hasn't disclosed the vote margin in that contest and neither would Colbert, who says he knows what it is.
Colbert wouldn't say how many votes he received Wednesday, but some of that previous group of PCs are aligned with the GOP's conservative factions, and they were re-elected on May 7. Other veteran PCs who were re-elected may simply want change at the top, Colbert said.
"(Barnhart), she'll do a great job (as county clerk), she's done it before," he said. "But the point is, people voted for me — and don't you think that perhaps those individuals are willing to make additional changes within the party?"
The math is this: Two-thirds of 135 is 90. If all 84 new PCs want to remove Duckworth, Colbert said, that means they need six more PC votes.
"I got way more votes than that (in Wednesday's caucus), OK?" Colbert said.
As many as nine Republicans, by Colbert's count, have expressed interest in succeeding Duckworth as chairman of the Vanderburgh County Republican Party. Colbert stressed that he's not one of them.
"I don't have time (to be chairman)," he said. "But we could make this happen if we wanted to call a caucus to remove (Duckworth).
"I'm not saying that's going to happen. We don't know yet. We're going to have dialogue about this with all of our PCs and see what their opinion is."
Most Popular
Comments / 0