By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
February 27, 2026
Two Democratic candidates for the state legislature will remain on the May primary ballot, after appearing before the Indiana Election Commission on Wednesday and fending off strong challenges to their candidacies.
Alexandra Wilson is a candidate for House District 38, currently held by Republican Sen. Greg Goode, of Terre Haute, and Kimberly Townsend is a candidate for House District 36, currently held by Republican Rep. Kyle Pierce, of Anderson. Wilson and Townsend were challenged by private citizens, represented by prominent lawyers, who claimed the two women were ineligible to run under state and federal laws.
The commission denied both challenges, allowing Wilson and Townsend to run in the Democratic primary.
Wilson and her attorney, Samantha DeWester, convinced the commission that her 2010 guilty plea to the crime of resisting arrest did not disqualify her from seeking public office. In the other case, Townsend showed the commission that her position as chief executive officer of the Anderson Housing Authority is not fully funded by federal monies, so her run for office is not prohibited by the Little Hatch Act.
In a nearly three-hour meeting at the Indiana State Library, the commission also heard – and upheld – challenges to six other individuals who had filed for the May primary. All tripped over the state’s affiliation statute, which requires Democrat and Republican candidates to prove they belong to the party whose primary they are trying to enter. The candidates had to show they had either voted in their affiliated party’s primary the last two times they participated in primary elections or their local county party chair had certified they are a member of the political party.
Richard Mayers and Chris Nelson, who had filed as Republicans, and Robert Lovely and Kuren Singh Sikand, who had filed as Democrats, did not appear at the Wednesday meeting. Consequently, the commission upheld those four challenges by default.
Jiamain “Billy” Qian, who filed to run in the GOP primary against Rep. Danny Lopez, of Carmel, for House District 39, and Jacob Johnson, who filed in the Republican primary against Rep. Jennifer Meltzer, of Shelbyville, for House District 73, appeared before the commission but conceded they did not meet the requirements of the affiliation statute. Consequently, the commission upheld the challenges to their candidacies, too.
An immigrant from China, Qian told the commission that he did not have time after receiving notification of the challenge to withdraw his candidacy. So, he attended the meeting, he said, to show respect for the commission and the process.
“America is a beacon of freedom … and seeing the rise of the divisive, violent, biased ideologies here breaks my heart,” Qian said in a statement to the commission. “I ran because I want to be a bridge for the younger generation and the future of our country. We must find unity and learn to disagree in peace.”
The challenge against Wilson boiled down to one question: Did she plead guilty to a felony?
As a 19-year-old, Wilson, who was then going by her maiden name of Anderson, was charged with resisting arrest, which, in 2010, was categorized as a Class D felony. However, the court’s docket shows she signed a plea agreement and the judgment was entered as a Class A misdemeanor.
Nationally-known conservative lawyer James Bopp, who appeared on behalf of the challenger, Jeffrey Gallant, argued Wilson pleaded guilty to a felony. He pointed to state statute, Indiana Code 3-8-1-5, which specifies that individuals who have pleaded guilty to a felony are disqualified from running for or holding elective office, and submitted multiple exhibits, which, he said, showed Wilson was prohibited by law from being a candidate.
“The legislature knows that felonies can be … reduced in sentencing to a misdemeanor … which is exactly what is referenced in the guilty plea here and in the subsequent reduction of a felony to a Class A misdemeanor,” Bopp told the commission. “They purposely wanted to focus on the guilty plea, not the judgment, not the conviction, not the sentencing.”
DeWester gave the commission Wilson’s actual plea agreement, which, she said, states the conviction would be entered as a misdemeanor. Wilson was not convicted of a felony and then reduced to a misdemeanor, but, rather, her conviction was always for a misdemeanor, her attorney argued.
“She is not a felon,” DeWester said at the commission meeting. “She is an upstanding citizen that just wanted to get involved and run for office. Nothing in her record shows that she has a felony conviction, whatsoever, not the sentence, not the (chronological case summary).”
The Democratic members of the commission, Karen Celestino-Horseman and Suzannah Overholt, questioned Bopp. They said the chronological case summary that he included in his exhibits did not have any entry for a felony conviction. Instead, the judgment entered was for a Class A misdemeanor.
Bopp pushed back, saying the statute does not mention conviction or judgment. An individual will be disqualified for pleading guilty to a felony, he asserted.
The Democratic commission members replied that Bopp was not reading the entire statute. Included in the law was a provision that defines a felony as a conviction, which could result in the defendant spending more than a year in prison.
“She was convicted of a Class A misdemeanor and for a Class A misdemeanor, she wouldn’t be and couldn’t be in prison for more than one year,” Overholt said.
Bopp reiterated his argument about the statute’s focus on the guilty plea. He also referred to the trial court’s order, which, he said, showed the judge entered a judgment of conviction for the crime of resisting law enforcement, a Class D felony.
DeWester highlighted the statute’s definition of felony. She said the plea agreement that Wilson signed did not fit the definition because it noted any sentence imposed would not be for more than a year.
“There is no felony anywhere on her record,” DeWester said of Wilson. “She is not a felon. She did not plead to a felony pursuant to this law.”
The commission deadlocked with the Democratic members voting to deny the challenge and the Republican members – chair Beth Boyce and John Westercamp – voting to uphold the challenge. Under commission rules, a tie vote results in a finding for the candidate, so Wilson will remain on the 2026 ballot.
In his challenge to Townsend’s candidacy, Birjan Crispin of Anderson appeared before the commission with attorney Alexandra “Alie” Bartlett of Greenberg Traurig’s Chicago office. He asserted Townsend holds two jobs and her position as CEO and executive director of the Anderson Housing Authority is fully funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Under the federal law known as the Little Hatch Act, an individual drawing a salary that is paid completely with federal dollars cannot be a candidate for elective office.
Bartlett presented each member of the commission with a binder of documents. Referring to the exhibits, Bartlett told the commission that Townsend works for two separate agencies, the AHA and Anderson Housing Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. And while Townsend may receive one paycheck, the income from the AHA position is all from a federal source.
“Miss Townsend holds the position of executive director of the Anderson Housing Authority, which, as was most recently publicly reported, pursuant to penalty of perjury, is paid completely in federal funds with zero dollars reported from other sources,” Bartlett said.
Townsend offered her own exhibits that she said showed she was only employed by the AHA and that part of her salary for that position comes from Anderson Housing Inc. for managing the nonprofit’s rental property. Also, she gave the commission an opinion she requested from the Hatch Act Office of Special Counsel that advised her candidacy would not violate the Little Hatch Act, because her salary is not completely funded by the federal government.
“I am Anderson Housing Authority’s bona-fide employee,” Townsend told the commission. “I have one job, but many duties.”
Bartlett countered by referencing a November 2025 audit report from the AHA to the Indiana State Board of Accounts that, she said, showed Townsend’s salary was all federal money. However, the form was not included in the binder.
Overholt pointed to the opinion Townsend submitted, which noted the AHA is a public housing authority established under Indiana law.
“So, your statement that she’s working for … a federal agency (as a) federal employee, that is not the case,” Overholt told Bartlett. “Even without this opinion, I would say that’s not the case, because local housing authorities are not federal agencies. They’re local.”
The commission unanimously denied the challenge.
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org
