GOP primary for Clear Creek Twp trustee remains three-way, as Monroe County election board denies Dem challenge 2–1

At a special meeting of the Monroe County election board on Tuesday, a skirmish over candidate paperwork ended with the denial of a challenge, which leaves intact the three-way race for Clear Creek Township trustee in the GOP primary.

On the ballot for the Republicans will be: Steven Hinds, Ty Mungle, and Thelma Kelley Jeffries. It was the incumbent, Jeffries, who faced the paperwork challenge on Tuesday, which could have removed her from the ballot.

At issue was the way that Jeffries had filled out her CAN-12 form, which is the “Statement of Economic Interests for Local And School Board Offices.” On her form, Jeffries had filled in “NA” in every blank—including the one for the name of her employer the previous year. That’s even though she was the township trustee the previous year.

On Tuesday, Jeffries conceded she had not looked carefully at the form before signing it. She had apparently filled in “NA” based on a possible misheard statement from election staff that if a question doesn’t apply, then she could fill in “NA” for it. She had heard the statement as an instruction that the questions on the form did not apply to her, and filled out everything as “NA.”

In November, the GOP winner will meet Susan Luther, the one Democrat in the party’s primary, to determine who will serve as the Clear Creek Township Trustee.

After nearly an hour of deliberations and testimony, voting to deny the challenge were two of the three election board members—Nicole Browne and Danny Shields. They were persuaded by the idea that voters should decide the question of who should serve as Clear Creek Township trustee. Browne serves on the board by virtue of the fact that she is the elected county clerk. Shields is the Republican Party’s appointee to the board.

Voting against the denial, that is, for removing Jeffries from the ballot, was Democratic Party appointee Penny Githens. It was Monroe County Democratic Party chair Chrissie Geels who appointed Githens to the board, and it was Geels who had brought the challenge.

In her testimony on Tuesday—witnesses were sworn in—Geels had this to say about the form: “[Jeffries] indicated that she has no occupation and no income. Given her role as the incumbent township trustee, this statement raises legitimate questions about whether the filing accurately reflects her current economic status.”

Geels said her challenge was not motivated by partisanship and was not meant to be punitive. She said, “It is about ensuring that all candidates are held to the same legal standards and that the integrity of the filing process is preserved.” As Geels pointed out, the statutory deadline for amending the form passed at noon on Feb. 13.

Jeffries, in her response, acknowledged she had not read the form carefully and had misunderstood instructions she said she received from an election staffer—she believed she was supposed to write “N/A” on each line and took that to mean she did not need to provide details about her work or income. Jeffries apologized to the board for the misunderstanding.

It became clear that Jeffries had not looked at the form carefully when Githens observed that even the blanks for name and the office sought were filled in with “NA”—even though the name and the office sought had been added.

It turned out that it was election office staff who had added that information, but had not initialled the amendment on the form in accordance with standard protocol, according to county election supervisor Kylie Farris. The election staff who had handled the paperwork were also eventually called to come testify.

One question that got some scrutiny at Tuesday’s meeting was the definition of “employer” for the purposes of filling out the CAN-12 form. County attorney Molly Turner-King gave the election board the statutory definition in the context of the form, which was

… “employer” means any person from whom the filer or the filer’s spouse received more than thirty-three percent (33%) of the filer’s or the filer’s spouse’s income.

In the Indiana statute, there is no carveout for elected officials, as there is in a piece of federal code on equal employment opportunity, which Turner was asked to track down on the fly during the meeting.

After the decision, The B Square asked Geels if she was satisfied with the outcome of her challenge: “Absolutely, this was purely procedural.” She continued, “We went through our folks’ filings with the same fine-tooth comb.”

Geels added, “I was a little disappointed to see that my counterpart, [GOP county chair] Cory Grass, didn’t look over his candidate filings to ensure that those same mistakes were caught.”