A special judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging the candidacy of a GOP nominee for Columbus City Council pushed back a hearing in the case until the first day of early in-person voting.
Special Judge K. Mark Loyd on Friday granted a request by an attorney representing Republican nominee for Columbus City Council District 6 Jospeh Jay Foyst to delay a hearing set for this coming Wednesday because he “will be out of state on a previously planned vacation,” as well as everyone else in his office, according to the copy of the request.
Loyd has rescheduled the hearing for Oct. 16, the first day of early in-person voting, adding a handwritten note to his order stating “no further continuances absent extraordinary cause.”
During the hearing, called a pretrial conference, the court is expected to discuss motions to dismiss the lawsuit and scheduling, among other things, according to court filings.
The legal fight over Foyst’s candidacy could determine which party wins the new District 6 council seat. Should the lawsuit prevail, Democratic nominee Bryan Muñoz would run unopposed in the general election.
The lawsuit, filed in September by Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair Ross Thomas, seeks court orders for Foyst to be deemed ineligible for the Nov. 7 municipal election and removed from the ballot.
Foyst, as well as members of the Bartholomew County Election Board, are named as defendants. The election board includes Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz, James Holland and Mark Kevitt.
Foyst, 60, previously a salesman for 25 years and now a dump truck driver, was initially selected as the Bartholomew County Republican Party’s nominee during a party caucus in July. The caucus was convened after no Republican filed to run for the office in the party’s May primary, leaving a vacancy in the Nov. 7 general election.
Later that month, Thomas filed a formal challenge against Foyst, arguing that his candidacy was invalid because the Bartholomew County Republican Party had failed to file its notice for a party caucus with the clerk’s office by the required deadline.
The election board upheld the challenge, but the Bartholomew County Republican Party decided to hold another caucus and selected Foyst once again to fill the vacancy, pointing to a section in the Indiana Code that allowed the GOP to fill the vacancy within 30 days.
Thomas then attempted to challenge Foyst’s candidacy again, but his request was denied by Lentz because the deadline had passed to file a challenge, prompting Thomas to file the lawsuit.
Foyst, as well as the Bartholomew County Election Board, have asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit. In responses to the lawsuit filed this week, Foyst and the election board rejected several arguments in Thomas’ complaint, claiming, among other things, that Thomas failed to challenge Foyst’s candidacy before a required deadline and that the challenge would “frustrate important objectives of the electoral process.”
“Mr. Thomas, as Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair, seeks to eliminate competition for the Democrat Party candidate in District 6 so that the Democrat candidate may win by default, thereby depriving the voters of Common Council District 6 a choice,” election board counsel Peter King wrote in the board’s motion to dismiss. “Such is not the result that the General Assembly intended.”
Depending on how long the case drags out, people could wind up casting votes for a candidate who is later deemed ineligible and ordered removed from the ballot.
A total of 4,093 people were registered to vote in District 6 as of Wednesday afternoon, including 11 voters in the district who had already requested absentee-by-mail ballots, according to the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office. Those ballots include Foyst as a candidate.
Read more in Saturday’s edition of The Republic.
