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By Marilyn Odendahl

The Indiana Citizen

January 4, 2024

After a voting glitch that forced a second round of balloting, David Vinzant, former Hobart city councilman and business owner, was selected by the Lake County Democratic Party caucus Wednesday to fill the Indiana Senate seat previously held by the newly elected Gary mayor, Eddie Melton.

Vinzant won on the second ballot by a 34-to-32 vote, narrowly defeating Mark Spencer, a Gary city councilman at-large, who had been endorsed by Melton. Vinzant will serve Senate District 3, which comprises portions of Lake County and includes Gary, Merrillville and Crown Point.

“I’ve always felt when people have the ability to help make their community a better place, they have an obligation to do so,” Vinzant told The Indiana Citizen. “I’m not one who’s going to sit on the sidelines and watch things be bad.”

Scheduled to be sworn into office Monday, Vinzant will serve the remainder of Melton’s Senate term, which ends this year. He said he will be running for the seat in the May primary.

“I’m not just going to sit through one session and call it quits or anything,” Vinzant said.

Lake County Democratic Party chair Jim Wieser credited Vinzant’s victory to the former city councilman’s diligence in contacting and talking to the precinct committee members who were eligible to vote in the caucus. He said Vinzant did the hard work of campaigning and will be equally industrious in the Indiana General Assembly.

“I know David,” Wieser said. “David will work. He is a 24/7 kind of guy. I think he’ll really, really work hard in his new role. I think Lake County will be happy and, I think, his Statehouse colleagues will like working with him.”

Wieser also complimented Spencer and expected the newly elected Gary councilman to have a bright future.

“Mark is going to be a really good addition to our party,” Wieser said, noting Spencer was “very gracious and respectful in defeat.”

The caucus was held at the Dean and Barbara White Community Center in Merrillville. Of the 87 precinct committee members eligible to participate, 69 showed up initially, Wieser said.

Vinzant and Spencer both gave three-minute speeches and then the precinct members formed a line and went behind a screen to mark their paper ballots. However, Wieser said, when the votes were counted, there were 70 ballots.

Wieser called the mishap an “honest mistake.”

The Gary Democratic Precinct had recently appointed some new committee members. Although those new appointees were not eligible to vote for Melton’s replacement, one new member got confused, attended the caucus and cast a ballot.

Wieser said the candidates agreed to discard the results and hold a second round of voting. By that time, three precinct members had already left, mistakenly thinking the event was over after the first vote. The three were called and given the opportunity to return for the second vote, but they all declined.

In the second round of voting, 66 precinct members cast a ballot.

Vinzant will arrive at the Statehouse with 16 years of experience as a city councilman and with the legislative insight he gained last session during Hobart’s appeal to the state for financial help. He said he and Hobart mayor Brian Snedecor worked with state officials and legislators to craft a solution after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled the city had to repay millions in property taxes to Southlake Mall.

Language was added onto House Enrolled Act 1454, which, Vinzant said, allowed the state treasurer to dip into Indiana’s rainy day fund and make a multimillion-dollar loan to Hobart. The city has an extended period of time to repay the interest-free loan, he said.

Without the state’s help, Vinzant said, the city of Hobart would have been devastated.

“The big lesson that came out of that for me was Democrats or Republicans, it doesn’t really matter,” Vinzant said. “If you’ve got a real problem and you can really explain it, they will all work together.”

Property taxes are on his agenda, Vinzant said, now that he is about to join the state Senate. In working through Hobart’s financial crisis, he said he came to realize the problem was widespread, as he met other leaders from across the state whose communities were facing similar money troubles.

“The property tax system we’ve got, particularly now that we’ve put these three caps on property tax revenue, is just, in many situations, inadequate to fund local government,” Vinzant said. “I don’t have a solution to that but I’m in a good position to be able to explain that problem, I think, from my experience in Hobart.”

Dwight Adams, a freelance 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.