Mike Wolanin | The Republic Republican Joseph Jay Foyst speaks at a hearing over a challenge to his candidacy for Columbus City Council District 6 in the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office at the Bartholomew County Courthouse in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Thomas’s challenge asserted that the Bartholomew County Republican Party had not filed the paperwork for Foyst’s candidacy on time. The board upheld the challenge and Foyst will be removed from the ballot.
An attorney representing a GOP nominee for Columbus City Council whose candidacy in the upcoming election is being challenged in a lawsuit has asked a judge to delay a hearing set just days before early in-person voting starts because he will be on vacation.
The attorney, George “Jay” Hoffman, III, of Hoffman & Newcomb, is representing Republican nominee for Columbus City Council District 6 Joseph Jay Foyst in an ongoing lawsuit over the legitimacy of his candidacy.
The legal fight over Foyst’s candidacy could determine which party wins the new District 6 council seat. Should the lawsuit prevail, Democratic nominee Bryan Muñoz would run unopposed in the general election.
On Thursday, Hoffman filed a motion asking to delay a hearing set for Oct. 11 because he “will be out of state on a previously planned vacation,” as well as everyone else in his office, according to court filings. Early in-person voting starts Oct. 16.
During the hearing, called a pre-trial conference, the court is expected to discuss motions to dismiss the lawsuit and scheduling, among other things, according to an order by Special Judge K. Mark Loyd in Bartholomew Circuit Court.
“This motion is not made to delay or hinder the court, but is made in good faith, in order to insure (sic) justice to all parties,” Hoffman said in the filing.
The lawsuit, filed in September by Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair Ross Thomas, seeks court orders for Foyst to be deemed ineligible for the Nov. 7 municipal election and removed from the ballot.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chairman Ross Thomas addresses members of the Bartholomew Election Board during a hearing about his challenge of Republican Joseph Jay Foyst’s candidacy for Columbus City Council District 6 in the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office at the Bartholomew County Courthouse in Columbus, Ind., Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. Thomas’s challenge asserted that the Bartholomew County Republican Party had not filed the paperwork for Foyst’s candidacy on time. The board upheld the challenge and Foyst will be removed from the ballot.
Foyst, as well as members of the Bartholomew County Election Board, are named as defendants. The election board includes Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz, James Holland and Mark Kevitt.
The election board’s counsel did not object to the request to delay the hearing.
Thomas, however, has objected to delaying the hearing, arguing that the lawsuit is “time sensitive as it relates to the defendant’s legitimacy as a candidate to appear” on the ballot in the upcoming election.
“Counsel for the defendant, Mr. Foyst, was presumably aware of the time-sensitive nature of the issues raised in the complaint and the request for a speedy hearing, as well as his own vacation plans, when he entered into his representation of Mr. Foyst,” Thomas states in his objection.
Thomas said in court filings that he would not object to a “substitute or stand-in counsel” to appear on behalf of Foyst during the hearing, or if Hoffman were to appear virtually or telephonically.
Foyst, 60, previously a salesman for 25 years and now a dump truck driver, was initially selected as the Bartholomew County Republican Party’s nominee during a party caucus in July. The caucus was convened after no Republican filed to run for the office in the party’s May primary, leaving a vacancy in the Nov. 7 general election.
Later that month, Thomas filed a formal challenge against Foyst, arguing that his candidacy was invalid because the Bartholomew County Republican Party had failed to file its notice for a party caucus with the clerk’s office by the required deadline.
The election board upheld the challenge, but the Bartholomew County Republican Party decided to hold another caucus and selected Foyst once again to fill the vacancy, pointing to a section in the Indiana Code that allowed the GOP to fill the vacancy within 30 days.
Thomas then attempted to challange Foyst’s candidacy again, but his request was denied by Lentz because the deadline had passed to file a challenge, prompting Thomas to file the lawsuit.
Foyst, as well as the Bartholomew County Election Board, have asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit. In responses to the lawsuit filed this week, Foyst and the election board rejected several arguments in Thomas’ complaint, claiming, among other things, that Thomas failed to challange Foyst’s candidacy before a required deadline and that the challenge would “frustrate important objectives of the electoral process.”
“Mr. Thomas, as Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair, seeks to eliminate competition for the Democrat Party candidate in District 6 so that the Democrat candidate may win by default, thereby depriving the voters of Common Council District 6 a choice,” election board counsel Peter King wrote in the board’s motion to dismiss. “Such is not the result that the General Assembly intended.”
If the hearing is pushed back another week, it would coincide with the start of early in-person voting. Depending on how long the case drags out, people could wind up casting votes for a candidate who is later deemed ineligible and ordered removed from the ballot.
A total of 4,093 people were registered to vote in District 6 as of Wednesday afternoon, including 11 voters in the district who had already requested absentee-by-mail ballots, according to the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office. Those ballots include Foyst as a candidate.
