Ruthie Jackson announces run for Charlestown mayoral seat

Brooke McAfee, The Evening News and the Tribune, Jeffersonville, Ind.
·3 min read

Jan. 27—CHARLESTOWN — Republican Ruthie Jackson will challenge Charlestown Mayor Treva Hodges in the 2023 municipal election.

Jackson, the president of the Charlestown City Council, has filed to run for the mayoral seat. Hodges, the Democratic incumbent, has held the seat since 2020 and is seeking a second term in office.

The Republican is serving her fourth year on the city council, and she has been council president for three of those four years. Jackson is also the deputy trustee at the Charlestown Township Trustee's Office, and she is the director and founder of the North Clark County Outreach Center, a local food bank.

"I'm a hometown girl," Jackson said. "I have put my heart and soul in Charlestown in different aspects of the town. I just think it's time. I never had aspirations to be mayor, but being on the city council and seeing that side of it, I just think it's time that I offer the city what I have to offer."

Through her work with the North Clark Outreach Center, she has helped provide food and clothing to people in need, and she started the Elf Tree program to serve local children at Christmastime.

Jackson emphasizes that she has lived in the Charlestown community her whole life, and she and her husband raised their children in the city. She feels that she has "a good pulse of what the people want and what the people need in Charlestown."

"I just want to serve my community," she said. "I have done that for 30-plus years, and I want to continue doing that."

Her priorities include building the new wastewater treatment plant in the city and keeping the sewer rates low.

"We're building a new plant, and it's imperative that the people inside the city not have to suffer for that," Jackson said. "But they should also have good service, and a new plant is going to bring a lot of that to the table."

One of her focuses includes serving the youth in the community.

"We owe it to the people in Charlestown to make sure that we are doing everything we can to offer them a good quality of life and things to do [for] the kids in the town," Jackson said. "We want the kids to be involved in our town, because we want them to come back and have their kids here and raise their families here."

Jackson also wants to prioritize bringing businesses and restaurants into the Charlestown community, saying she wants "people to stay here in town and enjoy it."

She said she wants to restore the "hometown feel" that she believes "has been taken out of our town.

"I want people to still be proud that they're from Charlestown and for us to be able to give them the services that they deserve," she said.

If elected, she would focus on working in collaboration with the city council, she said.

"I would have a concerted effort to make sure if it's two different party lines or whatever that we are able to communicate and have a good relationship," Jackson said.