Fact-checking claims made in Indy mayoral campaign ads

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, left, and Jefferson Shreve

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett and Republican challenger Jefferson Shreve are engaged in a costly and contentious campaign advertising fight, which culminated this week with the Shreve campaign demanding that local TV stations pull Hogsett’s latest ad.

With all the back-and-forth between the two candidates, IBJ is taking the opportunity to check some of the campaign ad claims on public safety, gun control and former President Donald Trump.

PUBLIC SAFETY CLAIMS

Hogsett ad: “Mayor Hogsett has recruited over 700 new police officers.”

Since Hogsett took office, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department had hired 715 new police officers as of the airing of the ad, IMPD Sgt. Genae Cook confirmed. Since then, an additional 33 officers have graduated from training to join the force.

The Shreve campaign has argued that the ad was “designed to be misleading” because it fails to acknowledge the city’s officer shortage and the constant churn of officers leaving the force.

IMPD has enough funding to pay 1,843 officers but was 28o short of that staffing level as of March. Also, at least 806 officers have left the force since Hogsett became mayor, according to IMPD staffing data.

Shreve ad: “Murders up 52% since 2016”

The Shreve campaign notes in multiple campaign commercials that homicides in Indianapolis have risen from 149 in 2016 to 226 in 2022. 

The statistics match what was earlier reported by IndyStar and WRTV. IMPD asked IBJ to submit a public records request to confirm the numbers for 2016, and IBJ is awaiting a response.

The Hogsett campaign argues that those statistics alone do not accurately represent the current situation and ignore a recent downward trend in homicides.

At a July 26 media breakfast, IMPD reported a 12.5% year-to-date decrease in criminal homicides, from 120 to 105. In 2022, homicides dropped 16% from the previous year, the department told IBJ in February.

HOGSETT AD ON TRUMP AND GUNS

The Hogsett ad that prompted the Shreve campaign to most loudly cry foul paints Shreve as someone “proud to be on the Trump campaign” and as previously opposed to the gun-right restrictions for which he is now advocating.

The ad resulted in a lawyer for the Shreve campaign to send cease-and-desist letters to local television stations, calling on them to pull the “false, misleading and defamatory” campaign commercial.

There’s no indication that any TV station has pulled the ad. Lana Durban, general manager of WRTV, said political ads are protected by a broad no-censorship rule.

With a zoom-in on Shreve participating as a delegate at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the Hogsett ad says, “Shreve was proud to be on the Trump campaign.”

In the cease-and-desist letter, attorney John J. Morse writes that Shreve was not “on” the Trump campaign and did not work for the Trump campaign in any official capacity. He was merely a delegate to the convention.

And as one of Indiana’s 57 national GOP delegates, Shreve was required to vote for Trump on the convention’s first ballot because Trump won Indiana’s primary election.

“Under state law and party rule he was bound on the first ballot to have his vote cast for the winner of the Indiana Primary at the district or statewide level, as was every other member of the delegation,” attorney John Hammond III, an Indiana representative on the Republican National Committee, wrote to IBJ in an email. “Hogsett’s campaign must be worried about defections from their base voters to resort to a disingenuous, if not outright dishonest, ad to paint Jefferson Shreve as something he is not.”

Hammond was one of the most prominent Republican anti-Trump voices in Indiana’s 2016 primary.

The Hogsett campaign has contended that Shreve could have withdrawn as a delegate, but “he instead maintained his role after Trump cinched the nomination and attended the convention personally,” campaign manager Blake Hesch wrote in an email.

When asked if Shreve supported the former president in 2016 or would support him in 2024, campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Erbacher responded with another question.

“I would challenge it by saying/asking the bigger question here: What does being mayor of Indianapolis have to do with national presidential politics? Jefferson is focused on Indiana and our issues here in Marion County,” Erbacher wrote in an email.

To characterize Shreve’s position on gun control, the Hogsett advertisement uses a clip from the “Mouthwash Talk Show.” 

In the interview, Lucy Benton, a Libertarian, asks Shreve, “How do you intend to protect the individual liberty of the citizens of Indianapolis from the encroachment by local, municipal, federal and state governments? How are you going to keep our rights from being infringed by those by those big, bad entities?”

In the clip presented by the ad, Shreve says, “Well, I don’t think we need any more laws.” It implies that he previously did not support laws regulating guns, an opinion that contradicts gun-control measures he recently introduced in a lengthy public safety plan.

But there is no mention of guns through the “Mouthwash” interview, which took place before the May primary election. Show host John Schmitz—whose wife, Republican Lisa Schmitz, is running against Democrat City-County Councilor Jared Evans to represent the Mars Hill area—said the framing in the ad was misleading. 

“Jefferson Shreve said he didn’t want to infringe on our rights,” Schmitz told IBJ. “ And is our Second Amendment a right? Yes. But did he say gun laws? No.”

Hesch, spokesman for Hogsett’s campaign, noted that Brenton told the Importantville political newsletter that “it was very clear” that she was referring to infringement upon the right to bear arms when she posed the question to Shreve.

Both Shreve and Hogsett are calling on the Legislature to impose gun restrictions in Indianapolis, including ending permitless carry, increasing the age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21 and banning the sale of assault weapons.

SHREVE RESPONSE AD

A draft of a Shreve response ad that appeared Thursday in Adam Wren’s Importantville newsletter caused a bit of a stir.

The digital draft, which was a graphic rather than a video, showed a screen shot of The Indianapolis Star headline for a story on Shreve’s cease-and-desist letter, overlaid with the text, “Indy Star: Stop running ‘false, defamatory’ Hogsett gun control ad.”

 In an email to IBJ, Hogsett campaign manager Hesch called the draft, which was never officially used as an ad, a “misrepresentation of the reporting by the Indianapolis press corps.”

“Contrary to their claim, the press has not labeled the Hogsett campaign’s ‘Proud’ ad as ‘False’ or ‘Defamatory’,” Hesch wrote.

The Indy Star story never called for the ad to be pulled; it merely reported on Shreve’s demands for the ad to be halted.

After IBJ questioned the Shreve campaign about the draft, it sent a new version that changed the text to: “Joe Hogsett. No ideas & a bad record. False ads are all he has left.”

Wren told IBJ in an email that he “obtained an earlier version of the ad from a source who shared it as it was in development.”

The campaign will pay to promote the newest version of the graphic on social media, campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Erbacher said.