New Vanderburgh elections chief picked in temporary GOP ceasefire

EVANSVILLE — In a closed but reportedly amicable meeting, Vanderburgh County Republicans chose Marsha Abell Barnhart on Wednesday night as a caretaker to run this year's election.

Barnhart prevailed over conservative activist Ken Colbert in a caucus of the GOP's precinct committee members to pick someone to serve the remaining four months of Republican County Clerk Carla Hayden's term. Hayden departs on August 29.

It wasn't an open meeting. Republican Chairman Mike Duckworth turned reporters away from the caucus at GOP headquarters, where windows were covered by shades. The party didn't disclose Barnhart's victory margin.

Having served as county clerk herself from 1997 until 2005, Barnhart needs no orientation period, but she said after Wednesday's meeting that she will review Indiana election law "to see what's changed."

"I'll of course rely on (Hayden) to help me some, and I've talked to (former Clerk) Susie Kirk, and she's going to help me," she said. "I feel like we've got a pretty good team put together, and we won't have any problems having a fair election. My intention is to contact the chairman of the Democratic Party and offer the same thing to her."

Infighting ceases for a night

Wednesday's caucus featured none of the harsh rhetoric and infighting that has characterized the days after the May 7 GOP primary election, according to Republicans who were present for Barnhart's and Colbert's remarks.

Barnhart said afterward that she welcomed into the party the conservative activists, led by Colbert, who say they captured control of the precinct committee in the primary with intent to unseat Duckworth. The new committee, which can have as many as 135 members if all positions are filled, will include Colbert himself.

For his part, Colbert said he will support Barnhart and make available to her his "knowledge and expertise in knowing about election integrity issues."

Colbert even appeared to soften his earlier vow that he and the other conservative precinct committee members "are firing Mike Duckworth" after their ascension to the positions in Friday's certification of primary election results. He had since calculated that conservative "PCs," as they are known informally, would need six more votes to achieve the necessary two-thirds to oust Duckworth before his four-year term expires in March.

Removing Duckworth is "not my decision," Colbert said. "That's the precinct committeemen's decision."

Meeting was last hurrah for some PCs

Duckworth had blamed Colbert for Hayden's decision to leave office just a few months before her four-year term expires.

Hayden said she can't face running another election involving former President Donald Trump after months of what she calls harassment by a tiny but "relentless" band of pro-Trump individuals demanding confidential voting records and threatening to come to polling places.

Colbert, the acknowledged leader of the group, insisted his requests for a dataset called "cast vote records" wasn't an attempt to uncover which candidates voters voted for, but to ensure that elections are free and fair.

Hayden declined to comment after Wednesday's GOP precinct committee caucus, but she has been resolute that she will leave office in August. Colbert, meanwhile, appears to be on the rise in the local party.

The caucus was the last hurrah for many PCs who didn't survive last week's primary elections or who didn't stand for the positions again. The new PCs will take office upon certification of primary results at a Friday meeting of the Vanderburgh County Election Board.

That's too late for them to have chosen a successor to Hayden more to their liking, though. Duckworth set the caucus for Wednesday to ensure that the current PCs — not the group recruited by Colbert — would make the selection.

Colbert says 66 likeminded Republicans recruited by his group won without opposition in precinct-level PC elections and more won contested races against party establishment figures. He asserted again Wednesday night that he and his allies will have a substantial majority on the GOP's committee.

One side won the recruiting game

The recruitment effort Colbert's forces made in PC races — he said they found nearly 100 candidates in all — far outpaced recruitment conducted relatively late in the game by Republicans aligned with Duckworth.

James Raben, a member of the Vanderburgh County Council for more than 30 years, filed his PC candidacy against Martha Wilhite in a German Township precinct on Feb. 8, the next-to-last day possible under filing deadlines. Wilhite had filed two weeks earlier. Raben won their contest.

"I was asked (to run) by Republican staff," Raben said this week.

Robert Dion, a political scientist at the University of Evansville, said there is no good reason for a party chairman or his allies to be so thoroughly out-recruited by opposition forces in precinct-level primary races.

It's one thing to lose elections, Dion said, "but if you fail to even put somebody in position while the other side is mobilizing and putting people in place to make a move, then you didn't keep your eye on the ball."

Small but well-organized groups can capitalize on opportunity in precinct-level races precisely because so few voters participate in them, Dion said. He called it "ballot roll-off."

"People tend to vote in the marquee races at the top, and they peter out at the bottom," the UE political scientist said. "They say, 'I don't know these names and I have no reason to pick one or the other.'"

The clerk's office hasn't published unofficial precinct-level election results in the GOP's state and federal primaries, but the point is illustrated in one PC race that both sides in the party's ongoing conflict targeted. In Ward 2 Precinct 11, pro-Trump activist Mike Boatman defeated last year's Republican City Council candidate in the ward, Maytes Rivera, who was supported by Duckworth.

Boatman's victory margin? Nineteen votes to Rivera's 10.

"You're talking about a very vanishingly small number of people who would determine who the precinct committee person is," Dion said. "It wouldn't take much at all. You would just have to organize."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: New Vanderburgh elections chief picked in temporary GOP ceasefire