Mike Wolanin | The Republic Columbus City Council District 6 candidate Joseph Jay Foyst listens to arguments in a pretrial hearing for Ross Thomas’ lawsuit against him and the Bartholomew County Election Board at the Bartholomew County Courthouse in Columbus, Ind., Monday, Oct. 16, 2023.
4 P.M. UPDATE
Special Judge K. Mark Loyd has signed an order granting a continuance, with the hearing moved to Nov. 1 at 8:30 a.m. It will still be held in Johnson County Superior Court 4.
ORIGINAL STORY
A Republican whose candidacy is being challenged via a lawsuit is requesting that an upcoming hearing be postponed.
Joseph Jay Foyst and his counsel, George Hoffman, III, have filed a motion for a brief continuance of Wednesday’s evidentiary hearing, stating that Hoffman will be “out of town for a family emergency.”
“This motion is not made to delay or hinder the Court, but is made in good faith, in order to insure justice to all parties,” Hoffman wrote.
Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chairman Ross Thomas is suing Foyst, the Republican candidate for Columbus City Council District 6, and the county election board in an attempt to get Foyst’s name removed from the ballot.
At present, an evidentiary hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday at Johnson County Superior Court No. 4, second floor, in the Johnson County Courthouse. This is to accommodate Thomas, who is representing a client at a federal jury trial in Franklin. Nov. 1 has been reserved as a back-up date.
Foyst 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.
Thomas filed a formal challenge against Foyst, arguing that his candidacy was invalid because the GOP 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 in August, but the 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 allows parties to fill a vacancy within 30 days under certain circumstances.
Thomas attempted to challenge Foyst’s candidacy again, but his request was denied by Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz because the deadline had passed to file a challenge, prompting Thomas to file the lawsuit on Sept. 6.
If Special Judge K. Mark Loyd chooses to grant Hoffman’s request, it would not be the first time that dates have been pushed back in the case.
Both the board and Foyst previously requested that their deadline to respond to Thomas’s complaint be pushed back from Sept. 26 to Oct. 10, and Loyd extended it to Oct. 2.
Additionally, the initial pre-trial hearing was initially set for Oct. 11, but it was moved to Oct. 16 after Hoffman requested a continuance because he was going to be “out of state on a previously planned vacation.”
Loyd wrote in his order granting the request that there would be “no further continuances absent extraordinary cause.”
Oct. 16 also marked the first day of early in-person voting for the municipal election.
The outcome of the legal fight could determine which party wins the new District 6 council seat. If Thomas wins the lawsuit, Democratic nominee Bryan Munoz would have no opponent in the general election. And depending on how long the case continues during early voting, people could wind up casting votes for a candidate who may later be ruled ineligible.
Early voting is off to a fast start; local officials have reported that a total of 482 people cast ballots during the first four days of early in-person voting, and an additional 96 people had voted on Friday as of 3 p.m.
Local election officials also had mailed out 365 absentee-by-mail ballot requests as of Friday afternoon and received 137 completed absentee-by-mail ballots.
