Dear Fellow Democrats,
It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve as your Chairman for ten and a half of the past twelve years. It is now time for a new Chairperson to lead us. I will not be a candidate for re-election when our Party elects its leader on Saturday, March 2nd, 2013 (an official notice will be sent to eligible voters at a later date).
I would like to thank each and every Precinct Committeeperson, Vice Precinct Committeeperson, Ward Chair, Vice Ward Chair, Office Holder, financial supporter and ALL Democrats as our victories and accomplishments are born of your efforts.
In preparing this letter I reviewed my past letters to you; together we have transformed Marion County into a Democratic County. We had only 48 Democrats serving in office in Marion County when I was first elected in February 2001 and when I first retired six years later we had 103 elected Democrats in office at the national, state, county, city, town and township levels. Now in 2013 we have a new record of 123 elected Democrats holding office.
This occurred because all segments of our community have worked together to shape our ticket and to assure that they are truly representative of our voters. I recently reviewed this list and was pleased to find out that 47% of all of our elected officials were of color, including three countywide Latino office holders. I believe that having our community being fairly represented has yielded a successful slating process, thus successful primaries and in 2012 we carried every slated candidate in the Primary.
When I first took office in March 2001, we had a one room office in the State Committees offices. We had one very old computer and its “guts” had been removed, absolutely no files-not even one piece of paper, a stool, and a desk comprised of an old door placed on cement blocks. Well, we’ve come a long way with updated professional offices and fulltime staff, space for all of our candidates and office holders. We also had a zero bank balance and bills to be paid. We now have a system of annual giving and a standing finance committee that helps to fund our campaigns.
In 2001, we had 914 precincts and on Election Day possibly 50% of the precincts were manned by Democrats and our Election Day efforts were typically aimed at turning out the vote in the 150 largest inner city precincts.
Today, the precincts have been trimmed to 600 and on Election Day we not only name the Inspectors, but also fill ALL board positions in those 600 precincts. We now man all of these 1800 positions on Election Day. We also recruit over 50 team captains and man over 320 phone lines on Election Day (including 225 portable phones owned by the Party).
This year our county wide candidates averaged over 61% of the vote. Our Marion County Democrat straight-line vote plurality set a new record of 65,185 votes ahead of the Republicans for an increase of 9,126 over our record 2008 straight line plurality and we delivered Senator Joe Donnelly a record plurality of 120,939 votes. I am enclosing a copy of my analysis of the last 4 election cycles for your review.
All of the gains for the Marion County Democrat Party have occurred because of your efforts. As I leave, I ask you to reflect and to make sure that if you think that those accomplishments ARE important, then for the future growth of our party, that you assure that my successor can maintain, improve and even make gains for our party. Our next Chairperson must lead our ticket in 2014 with Congressman Carson, Prosecutor Curry, Sheriff Layton and our other countywide candidates, state legislative and township candidates AND then complete our goal with a NEW Democrat MAYOR and re-elected city-county council in 2015.
Again, thank you, as you made it happen. It has been an honor!
Ed Treacy, Chairman
Marion County Democratic Party
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