A crowd of more than 50 people gathered Wednesday for the Montgomery County Democrats’ annual dinner at the Masonic Cornerstone Event Center.
Party chair Virginia Servies welcomed guests and introduced featured speaker Jennifer McCormick, candidate for the party’s nomination for governor.
Other special guests included Mike Reidy, incumbent Crawfordsville City Councilman, and Marc Carmichael, candidate for U.S. Senate nomination.
McCormick, elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2016 on the Republican ticket, said she left the GOP for the Democratic Party based on her long-held principles. She had always been committed to empowering students, parents and educators, supporting and guiding schools and delivering high-quality public education for every child. McCormick became convinced that Republicans controlling the Indiana legislature and other state offices did not share this commitment.
McCormick pledged to stand up to those bent on “dismantling Indiana public education, stripping Hoosiers of their rights and freedoms (including women’s reproductive rights), leaving rural communities behind.”
She supports a commonsense bipartisanship and laments that the Republican super majority in the legislature has focused on fringe culture-wars issues having nothing to do with the everyday challenges facing Hoosiers.
Reidy, running for re-election in the 2023 municipal elections, expressed pride in his service to the Crawfordsville community during his 10 years on the city council. With votes from Democrats, Independents and Republicans who have supported him in the past, he looks forward to serving four more years.
Carmichael, former Indiana House of Representatives member and candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, also spoke. Carmichael said he chose to run because he did not believe the vast majority of Indiana citizens wanted or deserved to be represented by Republican candidate Jim Banks, whom Carmichael described as an extreme Right-wing, 2020-election- and climate change-denying Republican who uses hot-button culture-war issues to divide Hoosiers.
