In a news release issued on Monday, the Monroe County Democratic Party has announced that former Bloomington mayor John Fernandez will serve as David Henry’s replacement on the county election board.
On the three-member board, Fernandez will join the Monroe County Republican Party’s appointment, Judith Benckart, and county clerk Nicole Browne.
Browne serves on the election board in her role as elected county clerk.
As party chair, it was Henry who chose his own replacement to the election board.
Henry’s choice of Fernandez will not be considered a big surprise.
Fernandez served as Henry’s proxy during the spring 2023 episode when the residency of the Democratic Party’s nominee for Bloomington’s District 6 city council seat was disputed.
It was alleged that David Wolfe Bender did not satisfy the requirement that a candidate live in the council district that they hope to serve.
The board referred the matter to the prosecutor’s office and Bender wound up resigning as the nominee, which cleared the way for Sydney Zulich to be selected during a party caucus as the party’s candidate. Zulich was unopposed on the Nov. 7 ballot and is set to be sworn in on Jan. 1, 2023,
Fernandez currently serves as the vice president for innovation and strategic partnerships at The Mill, which is a coworking space in Bloomington’s Trades District. His public service includes a stretch working for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.
Fernandez served as Bloomington’s mayor from 1996 to 2003. In the early 1990s, he served on Bloomington’s city council. In 1993, Fernandez’s final year of city council service, he served alongside: Patricia Cole, Kirk White, Jack Hopkins, Jim Sherman, Regina Miller, Pam Service, Paul Swain, and Iris Kiesling.
The fact that there would soon be a new face on the county board was not a surprise. At the board’s meeting in the first week of December, Henry announced that he would be resigning from the board in order to run for one of the three at-large county council positions, which are up for election this year.
Henry had not intended to serve long term on the election board, when he appointed himself as Shruti Rana’s replacement, to start 2023. Rana also resigned from the board in order to run for office. In Rana’s case, it was for the District 5 city council seat, which she won.
After the Dec. 7 election board meeting, Henry told The B Square that he will continue to serve as party chair as he seeks county elected office, citing some local precedent for that.
Henry ticked through some party chairs who have, in the last 30 years, served in that role, even while running for and serving in elected office: Pat Williams, who served as Bloomington city clerk while serving as party chair; Dan Combs, who served as Perry Township trustee while serving as party chair; and Rick Dietz, who served on the county council in a district seat while party chair.
In his bid for a Democratic Party nomination for one of the three at-large seat city council seats, Henry joins incumbent Democrat Trent Deckard, who announced after Thanksgiving that he would be seeking re-election. Incumbent Democrat Cheryl Munson has not yet announced a reelection bid. Because he has become a federal employee since he was last elected, incumbent Geoff McKim is precluded prevented by the Hatch Act from running as a candidate in any partisan election.
Bloomington resident Joe Davis has filed the paperwork needed to establish a committee to support a run for a county council at-large seat as a candidate unaffiliated with any party.
The number of signatures required for an independent to qualify for the ballot depends on the number of people who voted in the most recent Indiana Secretary of State’s race. In 2022, a total of 39,884 Monroe County voters cast a ballot in the Secretary of State’s race. That translates into 798 signatures for an independent to qualify for the ballot as a candidate for Monroe County office in 2024.
In his bid to become a mayoral candidate his year, Davis came up 14 short of the 352 signatures he needed to qualify for the ballot.