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Democrats hold onto City-County Council

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The Marion County City-County Council has been retained by the Democrats, but only by a small margin of votes.

The entire race came down to District 22, which was the last district to be called for the night. The majority of votes that came in were for Jared Evans (D) who beat the incumbent Robert Lutz (R).

The race was close in most districts, and many residents were worried that the council might be lost to the Republicans, which would cause hiccups with the new Democrat mayor, Joe Hogsett.

Democrats currently control the council, but many Republicans thought they could pull out a win. Many said with redistricting after the last election they thought they could do it. Also a 2013 state law eliminated all of the council’s at-large seats. All those seats were controlled by Democrats.

But despite who controls the council, both sides said they’ll be able to work with Mayor-elect Hogsett.

“The sun will rise tomorrow,” said Michael McQuillen, the council’s republican minority leader. “I’ve had a conversation with a member of the other caucus and they’ve also expressed interest in having a bipartisan working relationship. So I think there’s a future where we won’t have in-fighting and we will be able to move forward.”

“They want to always say that we didn’t get along with the Ballard, well it wasn’t that we didn’t get along, it was just that he ignored us,” said Joseph Simpson, a democrat from District 7. “And we finally got a mayor that we can work with to get a lot of things that the taxpayers in the city want to get done.”

Mayor-elect Hogsett, and the new council will be sworn in January 1 at noon.