Indianapolis GOP mayoral primary battle heats up, with Shabazz and Shreve as front-runners

The race for the Republican nomination for Indianapolis mayor is widely expected to come down to two candidates: Abdul-Hakim Shabazz and Jefferson Shreve.

The big question is whether the cigar-chomping, straight-talking populism of political pundit Shabazz will be enough to overcome the deep pockets and measured approach of Shreve, a businessman and former city-county councilor whose campaign ads have become a mainstay on local television, radio and the internet.

The two are among four candidates seeking the nomination in the May 2 primary election. The others are the Rev. James W. Jackson, who has focused primarily on fighting crime, and John Couch, a former state Senate candidate who was recently charged with theft in Hendricks County.

Political operatives say the race boils down to Shreve and Shabazz, with Shreve spending some of his personal wealth following the $590 million sale of his self-storage company to saturate the airwaves with campaign ads.

Shreve’s influential allies

Shreve is backed by some high-powered Republicans who believe his wealth and city government experience could give the party its best shot ever at taking down Democratic incumbent Mayor Joe Hogsett, who is seeking a third term but must first win a contested Democratic primary where he holds a significant fundraising advantage.

Mark Lubbers, a highly regarded political operative and close adviser of former Gov. Mitch Daniels, is providing Shreve with guidance in an unofficial capacity. Eric Cullen, former campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Todd Young, helped launch Shreve’s campaign.

“I’ve been able to attract a talented team because they see something in me that they’re buying into,” Shreve told IBJ.

Lubbers is considered one of Daniels’ closest confidants. He also worked for Indiana Gov. Robert D. Orr and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar.

In a text with IBJ, Lubbers said Shreve is following a paradigm similar to Daniels’: Both have government and political experience but had their biggest successes in business.

“Jefferson Shreve is a dream candidate. He’s brilliant—maybe too smart. He’s a proven leader. He has knowledge of city government with city experience,” Lubbers wrote.

Lubbers also made the Shreve pitch to former state GOP Chair Jim Kittle Jr. and introduced the pair. Kittle is chair of Indiana-based Kittle’s Furniture, which has six stores in Indiana, including one in Indianapolis.

Kittle is supporting Shreve despite having just met him within the past month.

“I know he’s willing to work because I’m not sure why anyone who’s successful, as he has been, would want to be on the council for five years … or honestly even want to be mayor,” Kittle told IBJ.

If Hogsett wins the Democratic nomination, Kittle said, Shreve has a shot to beat him in the fall and “get the city headed in the right direction.”

“And I’ve told Jefferson that I’ll do anything he wants me to,” Kittle said. “I’ll help put together the finance team of the best folks not only in Marion County, but in any county.”

Name recognition vs. money

Shreve’s ads, which have cost the campaign at least $600,000, make it sound like he’s already running against Hogsett. In one campaign commercial, Shreve says, “Indianapolis is crumbling under the failed leadership of Joe Hogsett,” pointing to rising crime and pock-marked streets.

Shabazz’s name is never mentioned in the ads.

Kittle said Shabazz is a longtime friend—they’ve smoked cigars together, a habit Kittle has since quit—but he said the decision to support Shreve is the most realistic one if the goal is to get a Republican elected in a city dominated by Democrats, where GOP candidates are often underfunded.

“I think [Shabazz is] a great guy. I just don’t think he would have the wherewithal, because this is going to be an expensive campaign,” Kittle said. “And a Republican that does not at least have the ability to self-fund to a certain level just is not going to have a chance.”

In the primary, though, Kittle said, Shabazz still has name recognition due to his radio hosting gig, and Shreve’s name ID was hurt by his late campaign entry. Shreve didn’t enter the race until the Feb. 3 filing deadline, while Shabazz was teasing a potential campaign as early as last September.

“It’s not what I’d call a laid-out hand, even in the primary,” Kittle said. “But I think the primary campaign … I think [Shreve will] definitely win that.”

Al Hubbard, former deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and a frequent Republican donor, declined an IBJ request for an interview but said in an email that he plans to support Shreve.

Other Republican leaders are holding their cards closer to the vest.

Former Mayor Greg Ballard is remaining neutral for now. A spokesperson said Ballard has spoken with the candidates but is “awaiting the verdict of the voters in the May primary.”

Brian Mowery, the top Republican leader on the Democratic-dominated City-County Council, said he isn’t certain whom he will support.

The path forward for Shabazz

Polling commissioned by Shabazz in late December and early January—around the time he formed an exploratory committee—looked favorable. But that was before Shreve entered the race.

The December poll of about 550 likely voters, Shabazz said, found that only 25% thought the city was on the right track, a third thought Hogsett should run for a third term, and about 43% of likely Democratic voters said they would vote for the incumbent mayor in a primary.

Shabazz, an attorney and publisher of IndyPolitics.org, also asked likely Republican voters who would receive their vote in the primary. The results showed Shabazz and “undecided” as the most common responses.

And at least on the surface, Shreve’s late entry hasn’t deterred the Shabazz campaign.

Shabazz maintains that his campaign is a grassroots effort that will target Republican voters—rather than spend thousands on ads for the general public.

“Yes, Jefferson’s got the bigger army … but we’ve got some tactics we think can work,” Shabazz said.

Brad Klopfenstein, a former leader of the Indiana Libertarian Party, is on Shabazz’s campaign team. He echoed that the campaign will be hypertargeted, but there are goals to get on TV.

“We’re trying to get there,” Klopfenstein said. “Obviously, you can’t spend more than you have. So, you know, we’re already on the air now [on radio], and we’re looking at doing some television.”

Klopfenstein is confident that Shabazz’s name and personality are cemented in the minds of the Republican voters he needs to win the primary.

For nearly two decades, he’s been writing columns and appearing as a political commentator on local TV and radio, but his weekly conservative radio show is now on hiatus due to his run for mayor.

Indianapolis attorney Murray Clark, a former state GOP chair, has a different take on Shabazz’s reach.

“Abdul has name recognition in his own right, but it’s kind of in smaller, political-insider circles mostly,” Clark said.

Social media campaign

Clark, who considered a run for mayor to succeed Ballard in 2015 but ultimately declined, isn’t ruling out a primary win for Shabazz. The answer might be in social media, where, Klopfenstein said, the campaign is targeting Republican voters.

“With the heightened importance of social media in political campaigns, it’s not all about money,” Clark said. “There are ways to run a really smart social media campaign.”

Shabazz has a history of writing columns and tweets considered controversial by some—including the Marion County Democratic Party, which has condemned the candidate for writing that increased crime could make the city a “self-cleaning oven,” among other things.

For downhearted Marion County Republicans long shut out of power, Clark said the fact that Shabazz does not shy away from controversy might be energizing.

“Today, when you’re having the structural disadvantage that Republicans have in Marion County, I think that’s something that’s looked on with favor from Republican primary voters,” said Clark, who said he hasn’t decided whom he’ll support in the race.

Because Shabazz is a Black Republican with some views that border on Libertarian, Klopfenstein is also hopeful his candidacy will spur individuals who don’t normally vote to come out for Shabazz in May and potentially November.

Shabazz said he’s seen a lot of hope rallying around his candidacy.

“The one thing I’ve noticed—when I announced I was running, when I was thinking about running—is just how excited people were,” Shabazz said. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is kind of weird.’”

If Shabazz does not win the primary, he said, it’s back to business as usual as a political commentator. Shabazz is also an attorney and teaches classes at the University of Indianapolis and Ivy Tech Community College, gigs he said he’s maintained throughout his campaign.

On the issues

Shabazz and Shreve generally identify the same issues—crime and infrastructure funding—as the city’s top concerns, but they differ on how to tackle them.

One of Shabazz’s crime-fighting proposals calls for the creation of “economically challenged zones” based on census data, where individuals who commit crimes in those areas could receive a sentence enhancement.

The stated goal of the proposal is to deter crime against low-income residents, but critics say it would lead to disproportionate sentencing between poor and wealthy individuals.

Shabazz also is calling for an increase in programming to help offenders re-enter society, including allowing judges to require nonviolent, first-time offenders to receive schooling as a condition of probation.

Shreve’s main crime-fighting proposal has been to eliminate the 200-officer shortage in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. He said the situation could improve if the department learns through exit interviews what drives officers to leave IMPD, then fixes those problems.

Both candidates support reinstating the position of public safety director, which the Hogsett administration eliminated in 2016 when it created the Office of Public Health and Safety.

Shabazz also has a unique proposition to fix the city’s street-funding problem, which is exacerbated by a state funding formula that favors rural areas.

He would push for a tax-increment-financing district for streets. “We collect a penny from the sales tax, or from the gas tax, from a gas station, and basically draw a mile circle around the gas station, [then] use that for roads,” Shabazz said at a March 31 candidate town hall.

Shreve’s approach has been more cautious. At the town hall, Shreve said he would not promise to accomplish any big infrastructure goal—like adding sidewalks throughout the city—but he would work to make road fixes more cost-effective and efficient.

In a March 8 interview with IBJ, he said it’s unlikely that his being elected mayor would improve the city’s chances of getting the Republican-dominated Legislature to make accommodations for the state’s urban centers.

“We’re kidding ourselves if we think the General Assembly is going to suddenly pivot its position and open up the road-funding formula to make it friendly to Marion County,” Shreve said. “The ground rules are unlikely to change wholesale with a change of administration.”

He added that the next elected leader will have to work within the current constraints.

Some Republicans have criticized Hogsett for not creating the next big vision for the city, like the sports strategy that led to tremendous downtown growth and national acclaim for decades.

Shabazz wants Indianapolis to attract more corporate headquarters by taking full advantage of its geographic position, located conveniently in the middle of a hub that includes Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville and Columbus, Ohio. In a perfect world, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange would move to Indianapolis, he added.

Shreve has been more circumspect.

“This isn’t quite the time to lay out my administration’s big vision for downtown,” he said, adding that those opportunities would come later.

Focus on crime-fighting

Some Republicans fear that the two candidates’ focus on crime could be a losing strategy for the GOP come fall.

Republican Mike Murphy, a former state representative, noted that the anti-crime pitch fell flat last November when Republican Cyndi Carrasco lost her bid for prosecutor against incumbent Democrat Ryan Mears by 17 percentage points.

“It seems to me that [Shreve] thinks his way to [win] is connecting with people on crime … and, frankly, nobody seems to care as long as the crime is mostly out at 42nd [Street] and Post [Road],” Murphy said.

Former Marion County GOP Chair Tom John said the race for prosecutor is too different from the mayoral race to compare the two because the municipal election will have lower turnout, Mears was popular among Democrats, and Carrasco had less funding than what would be available to a Republican mayoral candidate, especially if that Republican happens to be Shreve.

Ultimately, Murphy said, he’ll support whoever wins the GOP primary.

“I think whoever wins is going to have a formidable challenge against Hogsett,” Murphy said, “even though you might give the nod to Shreve because he can match Hogsett dollar for dollar, probably outspend him.”•