An update about the coming primary elections.
Fort Wayne City Councilman John Shoaff filed Tuesday morning for re-election. Â Shoaff is currently a Democrat holding one of three At-Large seats. Â At this point, he is the only Democrat on the ballot for an At-Large City Council seat.
Democrat Mike Avila has a ‘political’ announcement scheduled for Thursday. Â Avila ran against Allen County Commissioner Linda Bloom in last year’s election. Â His announcement is in the fourth district and while I’ve not been able to confirm and will leave it for him to reveal on Thursday, it would seem he could be making a run for the 4th District seat held currently by Republican Councilman Mitch Harper, or even throwing his hat into the At-Large arena.
Speaking of Councilman Harper, he has yet to announce what his plans are. Â Harper tends to play his cards pretty close to the vest. Â There has been talk of him running for Mayor, however, with a crowded field already in place, and with some candidates having a huge head start, I doubt he’ll give up a sure thing such as his current seat at the table for an uphill battle. Â I say that even taking into account his popularity.
The other reason I don’t think he’ll be switching seats is that Harper is a party man.  No, I don’t mean that he parties, I mean that he is heavily invested in the Republican Party and wants to do what is best for the Party.  If he was not going to run for the fourth, he would have announced a month ago to allow someone to step up, start a campaign and get up to speed.  As we saw with last week’s announcement by Councilman Pape, the field filled up pretty quickly once he made the announcement he was not running again.  To wait until the last minute to announce a switch would see the possibility of the Republicans not running a candidate and possibly losing the seat.  It’s a little late in the game to play musical seats.
UNLESS, Harper has someone in mind, a sort of successor that doesn’t want to announce until the last minute, thereby avoiding the long lines of other candidates lining up to make a run for it. Â But again, it doesn’t seem very safe or in character with Councilman Harper. Â So, my bets are that Harper stays in the fourth – for this election anyway.
I know there will be at least one other candidate filing on Friday morning. Â No details yet, but it’s from a reliable source. Â I would imagine there will be a few of those Friday morning as noon is the deadline for making it on the Primary ballot, if you’re a Democrat or Republican.
Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted.
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