All Brown County offices will be run by representatives of one party come January.
Republican candidates swept all major partisan offices on Tuesday, picking up the four posts that Democrats had been holding: circuit court judge, circuit court clerk, auditor and one county council seat.
Retiring Judge Judith Stewart will be replaced by Republican Mary Wertz in January. Wertz, who won the Republican primary over two challengers, has 16 years’ experience working under former Democrat prosecutor Jim Oliver. She has been working as a deputy prosecutor in Bartholomew County.
Brown County Clerk Brenda Woods will be replaced by Republican Kathy Grimes Smith, who has been a frequent election worker for many years.
Brown County Auditor Beth Mulry will be replaced by Republican Julia Reeves, who’s been commuting to work in the auditor’s office in Hancock County.
Brown County Council Dist. 1 representative Debra Guffey lost her re-election bid to Republican Bill Hamilton, a retired AT&T executive and U.S. Air Force veteran.
The only partisan seats Democrats won were on the Washington Township board. Republican Keith Baker was the top vote-getter with 1,378, but Democrats Gerald Joe Miller and Stefanie Gore won the other two seats with 1,322 and 1,261 votes, respectively.
Straight-ticket voting was more popular in this election than in the past 10 years. This year, 56.7 percent of voters automatically voted for everyone on the ballot for their chosen party, and the majority — 65.5 percent of them — were Republicans. However, straight-party voters had to manually choose winners of some races separately, such as nonpartisan offices.
In the five nonpartisan races for school board and town council seats, three longtime incumbents were unseated.
First-time candidate Nancy Crocker defeated town council President “Buzz” King, a 16-year veteran of the board. Political newcomer Anna Hofstetter and incumbent David Rudd won the two at-large council seats over 16-year incumbent Arthur Omberg and challenger Mike Roberts.
Twelve-year school board veteran Judy Hardwick lost her re-election bid to Vicki Harden. Carolyn Bowden and Steve Miller Jr. retained their seats.
Turnout for this election was 56.7 percent — not a record, but on par with turnouts for elections since 2008. The record in that time period was 64 percent for the 2016 presidential election.
Early voting didn’t set a record either, but it wasn’t far off. In the 2016 general election, 3,037 people voted early; this time, 2,598 voters did. The highest early-voter turnout before 2016 was in the 2012 general election, at 2,162.
The Brown County Election Board still has 40 provisional ballots to inspect which have not been counted. Provisional ballots are issued when there’s a question about a voter’s ability to cast a ballot in a precinct. When the election board will meet to inspect those ballots isn’t known yet; until that happens, election results are unofficial.
Read more results in the Nov. 14 paper.
