Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect updates to May’s primary ballot. Read more about the changes here.
Autumn Carter is no stranger to a challenge. In 2019, she ended her candidacy for Marion County recorder after being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer.
Now she’s running against Democratic Rep. John Bartlett to represent House District 95 on the northeast side of the city. Carter said she respects her opponent but thinks voters should hear from another Democrat with fresh ideas.
“It’s not really my seat, it’s the people’s seat,” said Carter, 34. “I want to be an effective leader and walk behind my people.”
Carter and Bartlett are in rare company. While Marion County residents will be voting for 23 state representatives and senators in November, most of those candidates will have arrived on the ballots without facing any challenge during the May primary election.
For the primary, Marion County voters will have a choice in just 10 races, according to new secretary of state filings released last Friday.
Indiana often trails most states for voter turnout. In the 2022 midterms, for example, about a third of Indiana’s eligible voters cast a ballot, a lower rate than almost any other state, according to data from the University of Florida Election Lab.
One reason why? A lack of competition means voters are less likely to pay attention to those races or to vote at all, said Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis.
“Without competition, democracy is meaningless,” Wilson said. ”People won’t be paying attention.”
10 competitive primary races
Editor’s note: Since this story was published, the Indiana Election Commission removed three candidates from the ballot. Two other candidates took themselves out of the race. That brings the number of competitive primaries down to five. The original text of the article has been preserved with changes noted below.
The 2024 campaign season has just begun, and many candidates for state office have yet to launch their campaign websites. Here is Mirror Indy’s first look at who is running in contested primary races to represent Marion County.
We will update this article as more information becomes available.
House District 32
Patricia Bratton and Tom Havens, both Republicans, have filed to run for District 32, which is largely located in Hamilton County but includes a sliver of Indianapolis just below 96th Street.
Neither Bratton nor Havens immediately responded to requests for comment on Monday.
The district is represented by Democratic Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, who won the 2022 election to replace Republican Rep. Tony Cook following his retirement. Garcia Wilburn grew up in the Chicago suburbs and moved to Indiana in 2005. Her professional background is in occupational therapy and public health.
Update March 8: Havens dropped out of the race.
House District 88
Democrats Starr Joy Hairston and Stephanie Jo Yocum have filed to run for District 88, which includes Geist but is largely located outside of Marion County.
Efforts to reach Hairston on Monday morning were unsuccessful.
Yocum is the vice president of Playworks, a nonprofit that helps schools support childhood development through play, and chair of the Serve Indiana Commission, a group of people appointed by the government to inform and advocate on issues related to community services and volunteering in Indiana. She is also a graduate of the Hoosier Women Forward program.
Republican Rep. Chris Jeter holds the seat. He is a Navy Reserve officer who previously served on active duty. He is also a partner at Massillamany Jeter and Carson, a criminal defense law firm in Fishers. At the legislature, he chairs the House Judiciary Committee.
House District 90
Four hopefuls are competing to be the Republican candidate in the race to replace Rep. Mike Speedy in House District 90 on the south side. Speedy, a Republican, is leaving the legislature to run for Congress.
Andrew Ireland is a former Indiana deputy attorney general who now works in private practice representing trucking companies, according to his campaign website. He is pro-gun, anti-abortion rights and is running to support parental rights in education and lower property taxes. He also pledged to file a bill during his first session that would allow state officials to fire local prosecutors.
Tim McVey said he works for a property management company that oversees storage facilities. If elected, he would like to focus on local control of zoning in his district. He previously ran for the at-large seat on the Franklin Township School Board in 2022 but did not win.
David W. Waters said he is a former pharmacist who recently left his job at Honda to become more politically involved. He has run in Republican primaries before: Last year in the race for Indianapolis City-County Council District 25 and in 2022 against Speedy. One issue he’d like to address as a lawmaker is transparency around how tax increment financing dollars are spent.
Elizabeth Williams also has filed to run in District 90. Efforts to reach Williams were unsuccessful.
House District 95
Autumn Carter is running for District 95, which includes parts of Lawrence. She ran for Marion County recorder in 2019 but dropped out after receiving a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Carter is an author and public speaker who has experience working in elections and politics. She served as finance director for the Marion County Democratic Party and director of diversity and inclusion for the Indiana Young Democrats.
She also worked as a legal assistant for Ice Miller, where she said she became interested in the legislative process. Carter said if she is elected, she would prioritize education, public safety, affordable housing and health care.
District 95 is represented by Rep. John Bartlett, a Democrat who has served in the House since 2007 when he was appointed to replace retiring Rep. Mae Dickinson. Bartlett is a lifelong resident of Indianapolis who worked for Rolls-Royce for 42 years until his retirement.
He is the parliamentarian of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus.
House District 96
Deandra Thompson has filed to run for District 96 on the city’s north side. Attempts to reach Thompson on Friday afternoon were unsuccessful.
She would need to defeat Democratic Rep. Greg Porter, who has served in the House since 1992. He is the senior vice president of external affairs for the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, the agency that oversees much of the county’s public health system. He is the ranking minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Update March 8: Thompson was taken off the ballot after she could not prove to the state election commission that she had voted in two Democratic Indiana primaries. Read more about the decision here.
House District 97
Democrat Sarah Shydale, a 23-year-old woman who moved to Indianapolis from Bargersville, said she is running to provide a new voice for District 97, which includes much of downtown and parts of the near south and west sides. She currently works for the state Family and Social Services Administration, where she helps people who are blind, disabled and over 65 find lodging and medical services.
If elected, Shydale said she would focus on housing affordability, access to mental health treatment and other services that could address homelessness in her district.
She is facing incumbent Rep. Justin Moed, a Democrat who has represented the district since 2012. Before he was elected, Moed spent several years working as a Statehouse staffer. He is the ranking minority member of the House Public Policy Committee and last session carried a bill to address a prison-to-homelessness “pipeline” in Indianapolis.
House District 99
Edward Rogers, a Democrat, has filed to run for District 99 on the city’s near northwest side. Attempts to reach Rogers on Friday afternoon were unsuccessful.
Democratic Rep. Vanessa Summers, who represents District 99, was first elected in 1991. In 2012, she became the first woman and first Black person to become chair of the Indiana Democratic Caucus. Professionally, Summer has worked for the ARC of Indiana and the Julian Center.
She is the ranking minority member of the House Family, Children and Human Affairs Committee.
Update March 8: Rogers has dropped out of the race.
Senate District 32
Two Democrats — David Nicholson and Katrina Owens — have filed to run in southside Senate District 32. The Republican incumbent, Sen. Aaron Freeman, has been the target of backlash after he authored a bill that could jeopardize the Blue Line bus project.
Indianapolis City-County Councilor Jesse Brown has been organizing volunteers and taking donations to support a candidate to defeat Freeman. Neither Owens nor Nicholson were identified as part of the effort, Brown told Mirror Indy.
Efforts to reach Nicholson were unsuccessful. Reached by phone, Owens declined to speak with a reporter.
Freeman was first elected to the State Senate in 2016. Before that, he served on the Indianapolis City-County Council. He is an attorney and owner of Freeman Law Office. He chairs the Senate Corrections and Criminal Law Committee and carried a bill last year to send an extra $8 million in road funding to Indianapolis.
Update March 8: Nicholson was taken off the ballot after he filed his financial paperwork with the wrong legislative chamber.
Senate District 34
Chunia L. Graves filed to run for District 34, which spans from Martindale Brightwood to Lawrence and the far east side. She previously unsuccessfully ran for an at-large seat on the Lawrence City Council.
Graves did not respond to requests for an interview.
District 34 is represented by Sen. Jean Breaux, a Democrat who was first elected to the Indiana General Assembly in 2006. She has worked for the Indiana Department of Commerce. She serves on several committees, including as a ranking minority member on the Senate Health and Provider Services, Agriculture, and Natural Resources committees.
Update March 8: Graves was taken off the ballot after she could not prove to the state election commission that she had voted in two Democratic Indiana primaries. Read more about the decision here.
Senate District 35
Philip Clay is a 29-year-old Plainfield native running to represent Decatur Township and part of Hendricks County. Clay, who has a background in banking and real estate investment, said he is focused on economic development, business and Indiana’s growth. If elected, he said he would like to find ways to support young entrepreneurs, law enforcement and first responders.
Now that the state has passed its ban on most abortions, Clay would like to reform state law to make it easier to adopt.
Clay will face Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Young. Young is a longtime lawmaker: He was first elected to the House in 1986, and then to the Senate in 2000.
In recent years, Young has clashed with his party. In 2022, Young resigned from the Republican caucus because he disagreed with lawmakers’ inclusion of rape and incest exceptions in the state’s ban on abortion care. Young also was removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee last year after he stopped attending the committee meetings, according to a spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray.
Running unopposed
The following lawmakers who represent Marion County will face no opposition on May’s primary ballot.
House:
- Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, Democrat, District 32
- Rep. Ed DeLaney, Democrat, District 86
- Rep. Carey Hamilton, Democrat, District 87
- Rep. Chris Jeter, Republican, District 88
- Rep. Mitch Gore, Democrat, District 89
- Rep. Robert Behning, Republican, District 91
- Rep. Renee Pack, Democrat, District 92
- Rep. Julie McGuire, Republican, District 93
- Rep. Cherrish Pryor, Democrat, District 94
- Rep. Robin Shackleford, Democrat, District 98
- Rep. Blake Johnson, Democrat, District 100
Update March 8: Reps. Greg Porter, District 96, and Vanessa Summers, District 99, will now run unopposed in May’s primary.
Senate:
- Sen. Michael Crider, Republican, District 28
- Sen. Fady Qaddoura, Democrat, District 30
- Sen. Aaron Freeman, Republican, District 32
- Sen. Greg Taylor, Democrat, District 33
- Sen. Cyndi Carrasco, Republican, District 36
Update March 8: Sen. Jean Breaux, District 34, will now run unopposed in May’s primary.
Also, seven other people are running in uncontested primary races.
You can see a list of candidates in every race on the Indiana Secretary of State’s website.
Major parties lay out their priorities
In addition to facing no primary challenger, many incumbent candidates running for reelection also are facing no competition in November.
That is likely to change, as the major parties have until July 3 to fill vacancies on the ballot, which they can do if no one met the Feb. 9 filing deadline.
State party leaders told Mirror Indy that they plan to recruit additional candidates in the coming months.
Mike Schmuhl, chair of the Indiana Democratic Party, said his party’s priority this year is to eliminate the Republican supermajority in the House.
Currently, Democrats need to turn just four seats, compared to the seven they would need to flip in the Senate.
In Marion County, one of the bluest areas in the state, only three out of seven incumbent Republicans so far are facing challenges by Democrats, though that could change in the coming months.
Schmuhl said that a lot of competitive races are in other parts of the state. When he spoke to Mirror Indy before the filing deadline he said the party still was recruiting for candidates to run on the south side, where Marion County’s conservative voters are concentrated.
Gerrymandered districts make the races in Marion County less competitive, either because they lean heavily Democrat or Republican, Schmuhl said. Many of the state Senate districts, for example, are either completely within the city, a Democratic stronghold, or include small sections of Indianapolis and large areas of the surrounding Republican-friendly counties.
Joe Elsener, chair of the county and executive director of the state Republican party, said he hopes to continue the momentum from last year’s mayoral election to pick up seats in Marion County. Elsener said his party tripled the number of doors it knocked on last year to 150,000 compared to the year before.
Although Republican mayoral candidate Jefferson Shreve lost handily to Mayor Joe Hogsett last year, Elsener sees progress in the smaller margin between the two candidates. Shreve lost to Hogsett by 18 percentage points, down from the 45-point margin between Hogsett and Republican Jim Merritt in 2019.
Republicans also picked up a seat on the City-County Council last year.
“Our goal is to continue to build,” Elsener said. “It’s literally meeting to meeting, event to event, taking our message to voters.”
Mirror Indy reporter Emily Hopkins uses data to write stories about people. Contact them at 317-790-5268 or emily.hopkins@mirrorindy.org. Follow them on most social media @indyemapolis.