Scott Tibbs
blog post
May 08th, 2004

Back to Opinion page.

Thoughts on the 2004 GOP primary

As I expected, I lost my bid to be a delegate to the 2004 Republican state convention. I was pretty much slaughtered yesterday. Hoosier Review has a summary of the other results here.

At-Large delegate spot, Monroe County
Kathy Ellington2846
John Shean2435
Scott Tibbs942


But there is a bright spot. I got 15% of the vote against two big names in the party, Ellington and Shean. (Kathy Ellington is County Council member Jeff Ellington's sister, and John Shean is the Monroe GOP chairman.). I also got more votes (running in a much lower profile race) than the bottom two finishers in the County Council race. Dax Norton, who lost to Chris Sturbaum in last year's City Council elections, only got 173 more votes than I did.

A few other notes. Jeff Chalfant outpolled his November Democratic opponent Steve Galvin by 416 votes despite the fact that Wayne Warf had 1858 votes in the contested primary. Galvin ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. This is not good news for Galvin.

Scott Wells' time on the County Council is over. Wells placed last in a field of four. The top three vote-getters go on to represent the party in November, and Wells narrowly lost to newcomer Michael Woods by 114 votes, 3351 to 3277. Wells was the #1 vote-getter in the at-large race four years ago, with one more vote than rival Jeff Ellington.

I'm somewhat surprised that "Green Democrat" Mark Stoops lost to Matt Pierce, 1683 to 1158. I thought the more Left-leaning Democratic primary voters would choose Stoops, and that the "Green Democrats" would be motivated to turn out for Stoops. Looks like Pierce will be in for another two years in this heavily Democratic district.