Republican Upset in Indianapolis
Written by Sam on November 7th, 2007
Ballard, a 52-year-old retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, didn’t have much money and didn’t have the support of party insiders or the business community. But he had something better: votes.
With votes from nearly all of the city’s 917 precincts tallied, Ballard was ahead by almost four percentage points. Peterson called him shortly before 10:30 p.m. to concede.
Only a few months ago, Peterson was expected to cruise to an easy re-election to a third term. But voter anger about rising taxes and crime blew massive change into the City-County Building, from the mayor’s office to the council, where Republicans also recaptured the majority they lost four years ago.
The repudiation by voters sent shock waves through Democrats who thought they had built an unbeatable majority in Marion County, and revived a county Republican Party that had been declared all but dead by some political insiders.
Wow, this is unbelievable. Not only did the Republicans win the mayoralship, they also practically swept the City Council. They now have a 17 to 12 majority. The best part is all of those local party hacks who wrote Ballard off will now be kissing his bum.
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It will be entertaining to see how many “supporters” come out of the woodwork now. Ballard had NO money ($300,000 or so compared to about $3M for Peterson.
We had a combination of events that let this happen (taxes, crime and corruption of the City Council) , but Ballard ran a good, positive, campaign and wore out a lot of shoe leather to capitalize on the situation.
My hope is that he can rebuild the County Republican Party which has been in shambles for years.
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PM
Ding, dong, the Bart is gone!
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PM
How is controlling 58% of the city council “practically swept”? Or were some of those Democrats not up for re-election this year?