Whiteland Council Ward 2 seat tied, Brown wins Ward 1

Two Republican candidates tied for Whiteland Town Council Ward 2 with exactly 103 votes each.

Also, an incumbent on the council was unseated by a challenger in the Ward 1 primary race.

Ford

Council member Brad Goedeker is tied with challenger and former council member Scot Ford in the primary for Ward 2, with all precincts in Whiteland reporting. They are tied at 50% each with 103 votes.

Johnson County Clerk Trena McLaughlin was immediately unsure how to proceed with breaking the tie, and she did not get an exact answer by press time Tuesday night.

Ford had previously been on the town council for five years before he resigned from his at-large seat in May 2021, halfway through his second term. He has said he decided to run again, this time in Ward 2, because several people in the community asked him to come back to the council.

For Goedeker, he wanted to run for one more term to see Whiteland through its period of growth and change, he said. He joined the town council through a caucus in 2019 to fill the

Goedeker

term of a council member who left, and he won the municipal election for Ward 2 later that year. He also served as president of the council in 2022.

In the Ward 1 race, Tim Brown unseated council member David Hawkins.

Brown will move on to the November general election. No Democrat or third-party candidate has filed for the general election for Wards 1 and 2 in Whiteland, but there is time for parties to slate candidates this summer.

The Whiteland Town Council is charged with setting annual spending for the town, adopting local rules and ordinances and appointing members to various town boards. Council members make $6,000 annually, according to 2022 salary data.

Brown

This was Brown’s second time challenging the seat to represent Ward 1, after he lost to Hawkins in the 2019 Republican primary. Brown has said he is not a politician, and he ran because he wants to do right by the citizens of Whiteland. He has been a member of the town planning commission for several years.

One of Brown’s top priorities is to listen to all sides when a proposal comes before the town. As Whiteland continues to grow, he has said he wants to make sure new developments coming in are the right fit for Whiteland. He also wants to get the town council to livestream its meetings.


HOW YOU VOTED

Whiteland Town Council, Ward 1

Matthew Tim Brown: 68%

David Hawkins: 32%

Whiteland Town Council, Ward 2

Scot Ford: 50%

Brad Goedeker: 50%