Former Constable Denise Hatch Running Against Andre Carson...
Former Constable Denise Hatch Running Against Andre Carson and Others for Seat in Congress
- Hatch seeks to decriminalize marijuana to benefit Indiana's tax revenue
- Hatch proposes free therapy education to address childhood trauma in Indiana
- Hatch faces a felony conviction for official misconduct, which she is challenging
Former Constable Denise Hatch Running Against Andre Carson and Others for Seat in Congress
INDIANAPOLIS–One of the candidates running against incumbent Democrat Congressman Andre Carson in Tuesday night’s primary is former Center Township Constable Denise Hatch.
The battle is for Indiana’s 7th Congressional district, which covers most of Indianapolis. One of her passions is trying to decriminalize marijuana. She says decriminalizing it would allow Indiana’s tax revenue to benefit from it becoming legal.
Hatch has other ideas as well about what tax dollars could be spent on.
“I really would like to take Indiana’s tax money and spend some of it on trained therapists. Anybody who wants to go to school to be a therapist, they get a free education. Then you can have one for every single grade,” said Hatch.
Hatch says her inspiration for this idea came from the heartache she has seen come from Hoosier children.
“In Indiana, we have 160 unsolved murders. That’s a lot of trauma for children. Nobody thinks about the children. I have five kids, so I know how horrible it would be to lose a mother or a father whether it be to death or to prison. And then after that you don’t have any help,” said Hatch.
She’s also been a vocal critic of AES Indiana being purchased by a group led by a BlackRock subsidiary because of the economic strain that’s been causing on many people, especially in neighborhoods that she used to spend time in when she was a Constable.
Hatch ran for Mayor of Indianapolis in 2020. Not long after she was elected Constable for Center Township, she ended up with a felony conviction for official misconduct. For that, she’s seeking post-conviction relief. Tha allows a convicted person to challenge a criminal conviction or sentence after trial, often addressing errors, constitutional violations, or new evidence.
“After six or seven months of spending the taxpayers’ money, they came up with a $3 theft of broccoli, touching a police car, wearing a gun while in uniform. In a meeting, I asked ‘where is my money? where’s my income? Because the constable only gets paid by the papers they serve, and a judge decided that she would take my papers away and give it to the men around me in the other townships,” said Hatch.
In the Democratic primary for the 7th district, Hatch is running against Andre Carson, George Hornedo, and Destiny Wells. On the Republican side, Patrick McAuley is going up against Felipe Rios.
Carson has been the Congressman for this district ever since winning a special election for it in 2008 to succeed his grandmother Julia Carson after she died in December 2007.
