Powell
Election officials removed two local candidates for the Sixth Congressional District from the ballot.
The Johnson County Democratic Party challenged Rev. Mark J. Powell, a Whiteland resident running for U.S. Congress, before the Indiana Election Commission on Friday in Indianapolis. He failed to comply with state election law, which says a primary election candidate is only eligible if they voted for that party in the previous two elections. The exact law — Title 3, Article 8, Chapter 2, Section 1 — was changed last year and took effect in January.
Powell’s election record showed he voted on a Democratic ballot in the 2020 primary, and on a Republican ballot in the 2018 primary, said Amanda Stevenson-Holmes, Johnson County Democratic chair.
During Friday’s hearing, Powell criticized the state law and asked Stevenson-Holmes what sins he committed against the Democratic Party.
”What allows the legislature … to add this type of hardship to a number of candidates, myself included,” Powell said.
The commission voted unanimously to remove Powell from the primary ballot. The primary election is May 3.
Locally, Powell was also removed as a candidate for the party’s precinct committeemen and state convention delegates following two separate challenges. The Johnson County Election Board heard the challenges Thursday during a more than two-hour-long meeting in Franklin. He was challenged due to his voting history and past comments. He violated Rule 8, Section A of the Indiana Democratic Party Charter, which says any legally qualified voter who supports the purposes for the party can be a member, Stevenson-Holmes said.
She cited a May 2021 letter written by Powell and published in a Hamilton County newspaper. In the letter, Powell said he was running as a conservative Libertarian, and referred to Democrats as communists. He added he was a “Trump agenda” supporter and “Abortion abolitionist.”
Stevenson-Holmes said Powell was disavowed by the leadership of the Democratic Party’s Ninth Congressional District during a run for office in 2020. His conduct, which included the use of “stereotypes, racial or ethnic epithets, and derogatory and demeaning rhetoric, is irreconcilable with our party’s standards and values,” the Democratic leadership said in a statement.
Ultimately, the party decided to withhold all services and support for his campaign after they saw no change in his conduct, Stevenson-Holmes said.
During both of Powell’s responses to the challenges, he criticized the Democratic party for being willing to take his donations and support, but not offer him any support. He also brought up the letter he wrote in the Hamilton County newspaper.
“If you read it, it shows a clear need for another voice,” Powell said. “My thinking at the time was that the Democratic Party would no longer give me a voice, no longer give me an opportunity to be on the ballot, and we see that prophetically done today, don’t we?”
The Ninth District’s Democratic leadership brought “trumped-up charges” against him because they did not want someone like him to be their nominee, he said.
Later, Powell said he only explored with the Libertarians because of how he was treated by the Democratic Party, but eventually decided he did not want to affiliate with that party either. Local Democrats have done nothing to advance their causes, and the events surrounding the prosecution and removal from office of former prosecutor Brad Cooper led him to stray away from the Republican party, he said.
Cooper was removed from office in 2019 after he pleaded guilty to four criminal charges — criminal confinement, identity deception and official misconduct, all Level 6 felonies, and domestic battery, a misdemeanor. He did not serve any jail time. Powell criticized GOP officials for not immediately saying Cooper should resign after it was revealed he was under investigation, and said they could have handled the case better. So he switched parties and approached then-county Democratic chairman Kevin Service, he said.
Before the board made its decisions, Powell told them he understood the board had a job to do, and the law is the law, though he disagrees with it. He also said that while Stevenson-Homes was doing her job, the board should remember times when laws were immoral. He then referred to Anne Frank, and compared the law which forbids him from being eligible as a candidate to the laws of Nazi Germany.
“The (election) law, the way it was written, goes along with the laws that were written in Nazi Germany, and you’re upholding those today,” Powell told the board. “You’ll answer for that — not here because you have every right to do what you’re going to do.”
Powell also asked for the election board’s Democratic representative, Kevin Service, to recuse himself from Powell’s case. Powell gave the board a certificate that showed Service had given Powell permission to run as Democrat in 2020. He was, however, removed due to his issues with the Ninth District leadership, Service said.
Service did not recuse himself, and the board did not ask him to.
“The certificate I signed … I did give him permission, over the (party’s) rules, to run for the 2020 election. Nowhere on this statement does it say that he’s a Democrat for life or whenever he wants to be,” Service said.
The three-member board voted unanimously to remove Powell as a candidate for precinct committeeman and state convention delegate.
Also on Friday, the Johnson County Republican Party came before the Indiana Election Commission to request the removal of Zach Smith, a Republican candidate for the Sixth Congressional District, citing the same election law that led to Powell’s removal. Smith did not vote in the previous two elections in Indiana, and did not receive a letter of certification from the county GOP, said Beth Boyce, Johnson County GOP chair.
Smith told the commission he is a Republican and had inquired about the declaration, but the county GOP had said he needed to have voted in the two previous elections, so they declined to give him one. There is a flaw in the state law, and it is unconstitutional, he said.
