Portage Dem race now uncontested; candidate disqualified for GOP voting

A Democrat who filed for the District 4 race for Portage City Council is now unopposed after the Porter County Election Board agreed with him that his challenger was a registered Republican and therefore ineligible to appear on the ballot as a Democrat.

The board voted 3-0 Thursday to knock Robert Hallmen off of the ballot for the May primary because he voted as a Republican in the 2018 primary, according to documentation of his voting record. That leaves Brian Gulley unopposed in the primary.

He will face either Jerry Butler or William Fekete, the Republican contenders in the primary, in November. Republican John Cannon, who holds the seat now, is on the ballot for mayor.

“The presumption for your party candidacy is based on your last primary,” said David Bengs, the board’s lone Republican.

Hallmen told the board he considered himself a lifelong Democrat who voted Republican a couple of times because he knew someone on the ballot or was frustrated with the Democratic Party.

He always believed his ballot was “secret, sacred and confidential,” he said, and wouldn’t have taken a Republican ballot otherwise.

The Democratic Party claims Hallmen is a Repub- lican, he said, and Republicans claim he’s a Democrat.

“So what party am I affiliated with? I feel like I’m being disenfranchised,” Hallmen said, adding no one told him when he took a Republican ballot that it would change his party affiliation.

Board president J.J. Stankiewecz, one of its two Democrats along with Clerk Jessica Bailey, said no one was trying to knock Hallmen off of the ballot but the board was bound to follow state statute.

Jeff Chidester, chair of the county’s Democratic Party, said he supported the ballot challenge and confirmed that Hallmen never came to him for a consent form to run as a Democrat.

Stankiewecz apologized to Hallmen for his confusion as a voter, and said the election board will try to do better in the future.

That wasn’t enough to appease Hallmen, who said he still felt disenfranchised.

“I’ll never vote a primary again in my life. I guarantee it,” he said.

In other business, the board voted, as they have in the past, to send notices to former candidates who did not file annual campaign reports as required by state statute.

The notices will give the former candidates 30 days to file the paperwork and if they don’t respond, they will be scheduled for a hearing before the board, with the potential of having the matter turned over to the prose- cutor’s office.

The forms were due Jan. 16, and violators can be charged $50 a day up to $1,000 for late reports.

In all, Bailey said 17 people have not filed the annual reports, including some people who did not file them two years in a row. Some people may not know they have to fill out the report when their campaign is over, she added.

According to the clerk’s office, the violators are: Jim Biggs; Amy Daly; Russell Franzman; Travis Gearhart; Lisa Kettwig; Rodney King; Jeffrey Larson; William Lopez; Stephanie Mathews; Doug Miller; Edward Morales; Jean Oehlman; Lynn Ross; Jeff Trout; Rhonda “Rho” Turner Day; Karyl VanDyke and Wilma Vazquez.

Additionally, the board voted to confirm four early voting locations for the upcoming primary, after some discussion about the potential impact of construction at the North County complex in Portage.

The ad mi n i st ra t i o n building in Valparaiso, the North County complex, Chesterton Town Hall, and the Hebron Community Building will serve as early voting locations. The Union Township fire station is not being used because there’s nothing on the ballot for the township in the municipal primaries.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.