Race for new House District 32 stretches into Wednesday
By STU CLAMPITT
The newly redrawn State Representative District 32 has been a hot topic this year, and it continues to be so the day after the primary. The new district in southern Hamilton County includes portions of Clay and Delaware townships, as well as a small slice of northern Marion County.
Jaworowski
Glynn
That Marion County portion of the district has caused delays in getting final numbers from a very tight race with exceptionally low voter turnout.
Tuesday night, well after midnight and long after Hamilton County results were in, Marion County was reporting results from 180 of its 181 vote centers. Final numbers were not made available from the last vote center until late Wednesday afternoon.
District 32 results posted by Marion County, then later by the Indiana Secretary of State, indicate Fred Glynn won by only six votes.
The Reporter spoke Wednesday with both candidates about the last 24 hours and what comes next.
When asked how the last day was for him in such a tight and results-delayed race, Glynn said, “It’s one of those things where I just couldn’t think about anything else. They weren’t updating the results, so it was very tough. It made it so it just consumed everything you were thinking about.”
Jaworowski was further behind in the early voting numbers, but the gap closed over the course of the evening, stalling at under 10 votes by the time Marion County stopped updating its numbers late Tuesday night.
“It was definitely an exciting night last night coming from behind and watching the votes tick up,” Jaworowski told The Reporter. “I believe I was about five votes ahead, then for a period of what seemed like about two hours my name and Paul Nix’s names were switched. It wasn’t just switched on the TV; it was switched online in every news outlet we saw. I don’t know what happened there. So that was confusing. We called Fox 59 and they said they were going to fix it, but it wasn’t just Fox 59. That left us confused. From them on it was always about six votes behind and it didn’t seem to change much.”
Now that the Secretary of State’s website is updated and shows his six-vote lead with all polling location in both Hamilton and Marion counties reporting, Glynn said he is confident the posted results will be upheld in the days to come.
“It feels really good and I think we are in a good position to close this out,” Glynn told The Reporter. “With past experience and where we are at it feels pretty good that it’s over.”
Glynn is looking ahead to the next steps on the road to a November victory against Democrat Victoria Garcia Wilburn this fall.
“I think it’s about a 56 percent Republican baseline this year, so I still need to get out there and work,” Glynn said. “Anything could happen. I have to take a week or two at least, but after that what I want to do is unite as many of the Republicans together as possible. We’re in a position where we want to bring everyone together and then move this thing forward on behalf of everybody. It’s not about one person now, it’s about putting the best person in the seat who matches our values.”
There are, of course, some provisional ballots to be accounted for, and Jaworowski is waiting to see how those may bear on this exceptionally close election.
“It’s definitely a frustrating time, but I’m a very patient person and I’m ready to wait until all the votes are counted and everything is finalized before I make any decisions about any possible next steps,” Jaworowski said. “I know that they will require perhaps 10 days to go through the provisional votes. The election board is going to meet – I’ve been told – Thursday. In the meantime – I’m not sure if this is typical protocol or not – but I’ve been told that they will look to see, of the provisional votes, if any of them are in District 32 and see if it might make any difference. So they are trying to speed up that process as much as possible.”
