Welcome to the Monday, May 6, Brew.
By: Briana Ryan
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Indiana voters to decide on primaries for congressional and state offices
- Two members of the Grant, Michigan Public School District Board of Education to face recall election tomorrow
- Three state supreme courts experience appointments, swearing-ins, and retirement news
Indiana voters to decide on primaries for congressional and state offices
Indiana is holding primaries for congressional and state offices tomorrow. Here’s what voters can expect to see on their ballots.
U.S. Senate
Marc Carmichael (D) and Valerie McCray (D) are running in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary. The Republican primary is uncontested, and the nominee, U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R), will face the Democratic primary winner in November.
U.S. House
Voters will decide primaries for all nine of the state’s U.S. House districts. The House delegation has seven Republicans and two Democrats.
- Sixty-three candidates are running in these primaries, including 18 Democrats and 45 Republicans. An average of seven candidates are running per district this year. The average was 5.6 in 2022 and 8.7 in 2020.
- Three districts—the 3rd, the 6th, and the 8th—are open, meaning no incumbents are running. That’s the most open districts in Indiana in an election year this decade.
- Rep. Jim Banks (R-3rd) is running for the U.S. Senate, while Reps. Greg Pence (R-6th) and Larry Bucshon (R-8th) are retiring from public office. As of May 2024, 44 members of Congress announced they would not seek re-election in 2024. Seventeen members are running for other offices, and 27 are retiring from public office.
- Fourteen primaries—six Democratic and eight Republican—are contested this year. Twelve primaries were contested in 2022 and 15 primaries were contested in 2020 and 2018, respectively.
- Four incumbents—one Democrat and three Republicans—are in contested primaries this year. Three incumbents were in contested primaries in 2022. Four incumbents had contested primaries in 2020 and 2018.
- Candidates are running in the Republican and Democratic primaries in all nine districts, meaning no districts are guaranteed to either party.
State executive offices
- Six candidates are running in the Republican gubernatorial primary: Mike Braun (R), Brad Chambers (R), Suzanne Crouch (R), Eric Doden (R), Curtis Hill (R), and Jamie Reitenour (R). The Democratic primary is uncontested, and the nominee, Jennifer McCormick (D), will face the Republican primary winner in November.
- Democratic and Republican nominees for the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general races will be selected during the respective party’s conventions this summer.
State legislature
All 100 seats in the state House and 25 of the 50 seats in the state Senate are up for election this year. Indiana has had a Republican trifecta since the party won control of the House in 2011. Republicans currently have a 70-30 majority in the House and a 40-9 majority in the Senate with one vacancy.
- A total of 230 major party candidates are running.
- Nine of the seats up for election are open, meaning no incumbents are running.
- From 2010 to 2024, there was an average of 13 retirements per election year. The highest number of incumbents who did not run for re-election was 24 in 2012, and the lowest was 7 in 2014.
- Eight of the nine incumbents retiring this year are House members, and one is in the Senate. This is the fewest Senate incumbents retiring in an election year since 2010.
- Eight of this year’s retiring incumbents are Republicans, and one is a Democrat. An average of eight Republicans and five Democrats retired in election years between 2010 and 2024.
- Forty-one primaries—eight Democratic and 33 Republican—are contested this year. Incumbents are running in 29 of those primaries.
State judicial offices
Three Indiana Supreme Court judges and two Indiana Intermediate Appellate Court judges will stand for retention this year. Mark S. Massa, Derek Molter, and Loretta H. Rush are the three state supreme court judges standing for retention. Peter R. Foley and Rudolph Pyle III will stand for retention on the intermediate appellate court.
Two members of the Grant, Michigan Public School District Board of Education to face recall election tomorrow
Two members of the Grant Public School District Board of Education in Michigan will face a recall election tomorrow over the termination of a healthcare clinic operating in the district’s middle school.
The recall effort began after a June 2023 vote in which the seven-member board voted 4-3 to issue a 90-day termination letter to Family Health Care. The provider has operated a health clinic in the district’s middle school since 2010. Due to the termination letter, the clinic’s contract with the district was scheduled to end on Oct. 6, 2023.
On Sept. 11, 2023, the board unanimously voted to approve a new contract with Family Health Care, keeping the clinic open. The contract included the stipulation that a student-painted mural featuring LGBTQ+ imagery be removed by the end of October 2023. Under the contract, the superintendent and school board president must approve any future decorations in the clinic.
The four members who voted in favor of issuing the termination letter—Rachel Gort, Richard Vance, Ken Thorne, and Sabrina Veltkamp-Blok—were all named in the recall petition. The efforts against Thorne and Veltkamp-Blok did not go to a vote. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Michigan is one of five states that uses a simultaneous model in which “the submission and certification of the recall petition essentially triggers a special election for the office.” Mindy Conley is running against Gort, and Lindsay Mahlich is running against Vance.
Of the 39 states that allow for the recall of elected officials at some level of government, 23 states allow for the recall of school board members. Between 2009 and 2023, Ballotpedia tracked an average of 35 recall efforts against an average of 81 school board members each year. A total of 19.28% of the school board members included in the efforts faced recall elections, and 10.21% of school board members were removed from office. So far this year, Ballotpedia has tracked 27 school board recall efforts against 55 board members.
Three state supreme courts experience appointments, swearing-ins, and retirement news
Last month, there were two appointments, one swearing-in, and one retirement announcement across three state supreme courts.
Minnesota’s Commission on Judicial Selection announced six finalists for two upcoming vacancies on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Governor Tim Walz (D) selected two appointees from the list – Sarah E. Hennesy and Theodora Gaïtas – to succeed outgoing justices Barry Anderson and Margaret Chutich, respectively. Anderson retires on May 10, and Chutich on July 31. The incoming justices will be sworn in the day following their predecessors’ retirement.
In Massachusetts, Gabrielle Wolohojian was sworn into the state’s Judicial Supreme Court on April 22. She is Gov. Maura Healey’s (D) second appointment to the seven-member court. Gov. Charlie Baker (R) appointed five current justices.
In Wisconsin, Ann Walsh Bradley announced on April 11, that she would retire from the state supreme court in July 2025. Her successor will be elected during the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections in 2025. Bradley is a member of the court’s 4-3 liberal majority and was first elected in 1995. The liberal majority was formed after Janet Claire Protasiewicz’s 2023 election.
Conservative’s most recent win in a court election was in 2019, when Brian Hagedorn defeated Lisa Neubauer by 0.5 percentage points to increase the court’s then-conservative majority to 5-2. Liberal justice Jill Karofsky defeated Daniel Kelly by 10.5 percentage points in 2020, followed by Protasiewicz’s victory over Kelly by 11.0 percentage points in 2023.Keep reading
Editor’s note: this article erroneously reported that primary candidates were up for election in the lieutenant governor and attorney general races. It has been updated to reflect that party nominees will be selected by convention.