A deep-pocketed Washington organization is throwing legal support behind Republican challenger Paula Copenhaver’s court fight to preserve her three-vote primary lead over State Sen. Spencer Deery.
A legal brief filed Monday with the Indiana Supreme Court by prominent conservative attorney Jim Bopp seeks permission for the Club for Growth to weigh in on the dispute over whether six ballots that voters cast for Deery were wrongly thrown out by the state Recount Commission because of omissions by election workers.
The brief from Bopp, a political ally of Gov. Mike Braun, echoes arguments from Copenhaver’s lawyers that courts can no longer overturn the Recount Commission’s decision because the Aug. 21 certification deadline for this fall’s election has passed.
Deery’s attorneys maintain that state law allows ballot-related errors to be corrected until 60 days before an election, giving the courts time to act.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Thursday, Sept. 10. That is more than four months after voting ended for the May primary in which President Donald Trump endorsed Copenhaver because of Deery’s vote last year against Indiana congressional redistricting.
Deery’s attorneys argue that state law allows the six ballots to be counted because missing county clerk seals or signatures were the result of election worker omissions rather than anything the voters did.
Bopp’s brief counters that those steps “protect the election process from nefarious intervention.”
“Upholding the plain meaning of the General Assembly’s requirement of a clerk’s signature and seal for a piece of paper to be a bona fide ballot is essential to prevent voter disenfranchisement and to secure election integrity,” the brief said.
The Club for Growth spent more than $2 million to support Republican primary challengers to eight senators who opposed redistricting. The group is led by David McIntosh, who was an Indiana congressman in the 1990s.
Political groups tied to Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Banks spent millions more to boost Trump’s retaliation campaign.
The Deery-Copenhaver race is the only one undecided from the primary in which Trump-endorsed challengers defeated six of the other incumbent senators targeted over their redistricting votes.
The Recount Commission decisions on challenged ballots during an Aug. 10 meeting turned what had been a three-vote lead for Deery into a three-vote margin for Copenhaver.
The commission’s certified totals gave Copenhaver 6,332 votes to Deery’s 6,329 in Senate District 23, which spans all or parts of six counties in the heavily Republican area between Lafayette and Terre Haute.