(INDIANAPOLIS) – Indiana may not have a U.S. Senate primary after all.
Three Democrats and one Republican filed to run against Republican Todd Young. But all those candidates except Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott are accused of failing to submit the required 45-hundred petition signatures to get on the ballot.
And one of the Democrats, Indianapolis psychologist Valerie McCray, wants McDermott disqualified from the ballot as well, charging he submitted photocopied petitions.
The bipartisan Indiana Election Commission will consider the challenges to McCray, McDermott, Democrat Haneefah Khaaliq, and Republican Danny Niederberger next Friday. It takes at least three votes on the four-vote commission to boot a candidate off the ballot.
The commission will also consider a challenge to Republican Congressman Jim Banks from one of his four Democratic opponents, arguing he’s ineligible under the 14th Amendment provision barring candidates who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Banks has blasted the challenge as “a joke allegation that will be quickly dismissed and ignored by voters.”
Banks was one of 139 House Republicans, including Indiana’s Jackie Walorski, Jim Baird, and Greg Pence, to vote against certifying the electors from at least one state won by President Biden in the 2020 election.
No challenges have been filed to the candidacies of the other three Republicans, but Baird’s primary opponent, Charles Bookwalter, faces a challenge contending he hasn’t met the requirement of voting in two Republican primaries.
