Recruitment campaign has Vanderburgh GOP poised for a hostile takeover

EVANSVILLE — A handful of conservative activists disenchanted with Vanderburgh County Republican Party leadership quietly mounted a sweeping recruitment effort that could now deliver them control of one of the state's largest political organizations.

It could also mean an end — and soon — to current GOP Chairman Mike Duckworth's tenure.

It happened in the January-February runup to the May 7 primary election. In those days, most engaged local Republicans were gearing up for high-profile contests for the party's gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and House nominations and a battle royale between County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave and challenger Amy Canterbury.

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Inspired by platform Precinct Strategy, conservative activists Ken Colbert, Cheryl Batteiger-Smith and a few others set their sights instead on elections for Republican precinct committee (PC) positions held individually in each of Vanderburgh County's 135 precincts. It is precinct committee members (PCs) who choose party leaders.

PCs also are the ones who choose individuals to complete the terms of elected officeholders who leave early. Current Evansville Mayor Stephanie Terry and former Mayor Lloyd Winnecke got their starts in local politics by winning precinct caucuses for County Council vacancies.

"(PC is) a grassroots job, but it's very important and it holds a lot of power," Batteiger-Smith recently told the podcast This Week in Evansville. "(Recruits) didn't even know, in most cases, what a precinct committeeman was. And that's OK, because these are the forgotten men and women in our county that didn't know they could actually be a part of what's taking place."

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By party rules, PCs may be appointed by the GOP's chairman when no one in a given precinct stands for election to the position. Those appointees don't have to live in the precincts they represent. But if an eligible candidate who lives in the precinct does run for the job, with or without opposition, the candidate is in if he wins in the primary.

In all, Colbert said Monday, he and Batteiger-Smith and the other conservatives recruited nearly 100 PC candidates throughout Vanderburgh County precincts, with 66 of them winning on May 7 without opposition.

It all happened with very few people noticing.

Those uncontested precinct-level primary elections did not even appear on voters' ballots. You can't find them on the county clerk's elections results page, either. There were 68 of them in all, according to a Courier & Press analysis of PC candidates' filing documents cross-referenced with the GOP's own list of PC members before the primary.

Conservatives won head-to-head elections too

In the 41 contested elections for PC slots, some candidates Colbert says were recruited by his group ousted entrenched party establishment figures in their precincts. Among those who will no longer be part of the local Republican organization, according to unofficial results to be certified Friday: Wayne Parke, the party's chairman and a major funder of GOP operations from 2010 until 2021; and party stalwarts Lon Walters and Jeff Ahlers.

These were not high turnout elections. Assuming it holds in certification, Ahlers was ousted from his PC slot by Alan Leibundguth by a count of 67 to 65 votes. Walters lost to Britt Garnett, 28 to 26. Parke lost to Kent Brasseale, 68 to 48.

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A few existing PC members already believed to be aligned with the GOP's conservative factions were re-elected without opposition. Colbert, Smith and conservative activists Jim Braker and Ann Yates won open seats without opposition.

Others — such as Michael Daugherty, the 2023 Libertarian nominee for Evansville mayor and a vocal critic of Duckworth — won contested open seat elections for spots on the PC committee.

Conservatives celebrated pro-Trump activist Mike Boatman's victory in an open seat PC contest over the party's 2023 2nd Ward City Council candidate, Maytes Rivera, to whom Duckworth gave special permission to run. Rivera needed it because she didn't meet the requirements of Indiana's "two-primaries law," which 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.

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Party conservatives had been enflamed by Duckworth's use of the "two-primaries" law this year to block some conservative candidates for PC and state GOP convention delegate positions who didn't qualify while giving waivers to others he supports, like Rivera, who also didn't qualify. It's all legal under Indiana law.

Wednesday caucus is the latest battleground

Duckworth has called a caucus of precinct committee members at 6 p.m. Wednesday to pick someone to serve the remaining four months of Republican County Clerk Carla Hayden's term. Hayden plans to resign on Aug. 29.

Notably, the caucus Duckworth called is a caucus of the current PCs — not the group whose elections will be certified at a Vanderburgh County Election Board meeting two days later, on Friday. Party conservatives acknowledge Duckworth has the right under GOP rules to do it, but the move still rankles.

"It's a sneaky move to try to get somebody in there," said Daugherty, a vocal Duckworth critic. "It's almost like smoke and mirrors, having a meeting at midnight at an unsharable location. That's what we expect out of our current party chair, and that's why he's on the way out."

Duckworth said, in essence, those are the breaks.

"I guess I could have waited, but you only get so much time," he said Monday. "We’ve got all these graduations and things at the end of this month. You have the state (GOP) convention in the middle of next month.

"I guess that’s one of the advantages of being the chairman, is being able to select those dates to where — if it gives you an advantage, it gives you an advantage, and if it doesn’t, you have to live with it."

The outcome of the caucus is all but a foregone conclusion. Former Clerk Marsha Abell, a favorite of party establishment figures who retained her own PC committee slot by a healthy margin over a challenger, is supported by Duckworth. Colbert filed his own candidacy for clerk. He says he did so not in expectation of winning, but to be heard.

Colbert: 'We are firing Mike Duckworth'

Duckworth may have the ability to navigate his preferred candidate as Hayden's successor, Colbert said, but once the new PC members are certified on Friday, he's history. So is any potential successor Duckworth would support.

"We are firing Mike Duckworth," Colbert declared.

They should have the ability, given the election board meeting set for Friday.

The new elected PCs take office for four-year terms "beginning when the appropriate county election board declares under (state law) that the individual has been elected precinct committeeman in a precinct for the Republican Party," state Indiana Republican State Committee rules.

The rules say something else, too — something Colbert called to the attention of the Courier & Press.

"A motion to remove a County Committee officer requires a vote by two-thirds (2/3) of the eligible precinct committeemen and vice-precinct committeemen present and voting to be adopted," states one clause.

The new PCs may have to wait until Duckworth's own four-year term expires in March to be rid of him if it can't muster the required two-thirds to dump him sooner, Colbert conceded.

"It would be much easier if he just stepped down," Colbert said.

But Duckworth isn't willing to concede he would be outnumbered if it came to an actual attempt to oust him. He said he hasn't pored over the election results precinct-by-precinct.

"I don’t have all day to sit around and check out all that, but I’ve not talked to a lot of people that are within the existing party that would follow (Colbert)," he said.

Still, Duckworth has been around the local GOP for five decades. He's been on the winning side, and he's been on the losing side. If defeat happens, he said, it happens. He almost sounded resigned to it.

"I try to do what’s best for the party, and there’s a lot to this," he said. "There’s fundraising, there’s organization of events and all that. (Colbert) may be surprised as to what all it entails."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Recruitment campaign has Vanderburgh GOP poised for hostile takeover