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Sue Finkam, a three-term member of the Carmel City Council, won the city’s Republican mayoral primary election Tuesday night.
Finkam defeated City Councilor Kevin “Woody” Rider and former Hamilton County Council member Fred Glynn with 36.1% of the vote. Rider won 32.1% and Glynn won 31.8%.
Finkam will face Democrat Miles Nelson in the November general election.
The winner will become Carmel’s first new mayor since Jim Brainard was elected in 1995. Brainard, a Republican, announced in September that he would not seek an eighth term in office.
Finkam, a 16-year resident, is serving her third term on the Carmel City Council, where she represents the city’s Northeast District. She was council president from 2017 to 2021 and currently serves on the Hamilton County Solid Waste Board.
Finkam has worked 30 years in marketing and human resources administration. She is principal of Carmel-based FireStarter LLC, a marketing and public relations firm she founded in 2010.
She told IBJ in March that the three most important issues in Carmel are crime prevention, quality of life and economic development. Finkam would direct the Carmel Redevelopment Commission to incentivize more for-sale housing (including condos) than apartments.
One of her first objectives in office would be to conduct a citywide survey and create a community-driven city strategy.
Finkam would also like to create a city university that would invite tech and life sciences companies and other major employers to train future workers.
She dismissed criticism by some that 16% of the city’s budget is earmarked to pay for Carmel’s $1.5 billion debt and said there is no “impending doom.”
Nelson, who did not have a primary opponent, is serving his first term on the Carmel City Council after being elected in 2019 to represent the West District. He is the first Democrat to ever serve on the council and the first from his party to run for mayor since 2007.
The winner in the general election on Nov. 7 will take office Jan. 1.
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Congrats, Sue.
It looks like the retrograde constituency in Carmel lost again. That’s good news.
Great news. I’m 90% sure she’ll win, but it will be really interesting to see the final results in November. I wonder how the Nelson will perform without Brainard running. The Democratic party is definitely seeing growing support in Carmel for national elections. I think Democrats actually carried Carmel for the last couple presidential and congressional races, but national politics is completely different. Sue Finkam is definitely not MAGA.
I’m sure Carmel Democrats will vote for their party’s candidate, but the reality is that Carmel was turned into one of America’s best cities of its class by Republicans. What’s not to love about the results?
It’s too bad Indiana’s state Republicans didn’t take a page out of the Carmel Republican playbook.
I agree with you completely. I just wonder how the national GOP’s politics may have alienated the average Carmel voter away from the party in general. It wasn’t too long ago that Indianapolis had a Republican mayor. The Northside of Indy is basically solidly blue now. It’s not insane to think Carmel could be next. Brainard was always safe because he made Carmel what it is. He basically created the whole place as it is now like a Sim City game.
A relatively generic Republican won’t get the same level of support. I’ll be shocked if she loses, but I’ll be equally shocked if she gets the same number of votes as Brainard. I think she’s favored because she’s basically embracing the status quo. I don’t live in Indiana anymore, so I haven’t done much research. I just know I haven’t read much in the media at all about Nelson. That alone gives her a major advantage. I just think November will be more interesting than it ever has been in Carmel.
I’d also add that as a fromer Carmel resident and Democrat, I would have voted for Brainard if I still lived there. He’s a progressive Republican that has policies I believe in. I know a lot of other Carmel Democrats that voted for him too, and would continue to do so.
I think Sue is very similar on most of the issues to Brainard.
What is different between Carmel CRC and Indiana IEDC/Holcomb’s Next Level? “It’s too bad Indiana’s state Republicans didn’t take a page out of the Carmel Republican playbook.”
Regarding Indy/Carmel comments of yours below: Indianapolis uses taxpayer funds for sports, Carmel to prop up supposed arts. A magazine for which you write gave Goldmsith Public Official of the Year in 1995. What did he do wrong/different than Brainard? Peterson was a Dem so not part of your criticism. Ballard was mayor in wake of financial crisis. He sold the water utility specifically for infrastructure spending. Brainard has held onto it, and that is the one part of the debt that should be taken out of equation to compare to neighbors, but what has he done dieffrently with TIF than Indy itself. They both give it away like candy at the Carmel 4th of July parade.
Eric, I think the investments from the Regional Cities program, as well as READI (administered through the IEDC) are similar to what Carmel has done (not limiting that to just the CRC). The Regional Cities investments in Fort Wayne in particular have been paying off. I think those are great programs and I’m glad to see READI renewed in the new budget. These are positive moved by the Indiana GOP.
The IEDC’s role has primarily been providing subsidies to business as part of transactional economic development deals. The CRC does some of that. However, Brainard used the CRC primarily to redevelop and urbanize Carmel’s central core into a higher density, mixed use, walkable district, including Main Street/Arts & Design District, City Center, and Midtown. Brainard leveraged the CRC to bring into being an entirely new vision of what Carmel could be as a city, one with a real walkable downtown.
The IEDC is trying to branch out, both into administering READI grants, and also industrial park development (the LEAP district), which are very interesting.
However, by and large the state of Indiana has pursued a policy of austerity since Mitch Daniels was elected governor. Daniels was hostile to local public capital improvements, railed against “gold plated projects”, and even used the DLGF to veto projects like a proposed Westfield library expansion and a schools project in Greenwood he thought were too nice. The state’s focus has been reducing taxes, particularly business taxes. And as Ball State economist Mike Hicks has documented, real (that is, inflation adjusted) state spending on core items like K12 education have declined significantly.
To see the difference, Mike Pence cut taxes by $500 million per year. That’s $6 billion forgone since they passed. That’s certainly a defensible policy, but imagine if the state had spent that $6 billion repairing our decayed local streets? We can see the results of these kinds of policy choices just by driving around the state. Do than, then drive around Carmel and see the difference.
And so what about Carmel, since Cook is trying to do the same with Grand Junction Park area (and I assume Wilis will move futher along now with easier access by state projects 31 and new 32) , Fadness with his emphasis downtown, Jensen in Noblesville, plus other towns in the area. Carmel had started growing for other reasons, as you know, before Brainard, and he ran on the pre-Tea Party Contract with America/Carmel platform in 1995! Regarding the “horrible” Tea Party retrogrades on Westfield council, Carmel is actually the city that is “losing” the Bastian Solutions HQ.
The only roads that absolutely stink in the state are Indy and Gary area. 69 is a boondoggle, but awesome to head south. Brainard wants biking/walking and yet his roundabouts and Keystone have allowed Westfield to grow as people can now quickly come/leave/pass through Carmel. Throughput in cars and highly walkable are at cross-ways. And check out backups on 31 north from 465 in the morning. He has not created a panacea (yes, both state control, but point remains).
What rich town in the area has not approved a school referendum, besides Rob Kendall shutting down the one in Brownsburg? Would my state tax dollars going to Santa Claus school district really change the future of Santa Claus, giving the smartest kids there a chance to remain? Arent’t the smartest kids going to do well either way, and end up in Indy, Chicago, NY, or Silicon Valley/RTP anyway?
Methinks you look at Brainard and Carmel with rose colored glasses. Dig deeper and you will see he is more Boss Tweed than visionary. And I have no love for Indiana Republicans.
Wesley H, Indianapolis under Republican guidance were the good ole days. Now, you wouldn’t want to be caught out late at night downtown. How many killings do you think we have today? The infrastructure is horrid and IPS is dying on the vine. I’m here everyday and have watched the decline since democrats have been in charge. The demographic just rubber stamps the vote without any understanding of the repercussions. This city is doomed if change doesn’t happen soon.
When Republicans governed Indianapolis, they did so in a very different manner than Brainard and the Carmel Republicans (which included many councilors and others in addition to the mayor). Carmel had the advantage of learning from Marion County’s mistakes to be sure, but they took a very different approach.
One big difference is that Carmel has invested to upgrade infrastructure. This is what complaints about the debt miss. Much of it is for infrastructure basics, including upgrading the streets with roundabouts, some boulevardization, multi-use paths, etc. Marion County’s GOP simply left the old county roads in place with little to no upgrading. Carmel did the same investing in building incredible parks and playgrounds. Indianapolis is broke now, but it wasn’t always, and the GOP leadership of the city back in the day, in retrospect, neglected the outlying areas in too much of a single minded focus on downtown.
Carmel’s GOP has also focused on building up the capacity and competence of government rather than gutting it. When I see parks crews show up to Midtown plaza every single day, or watch roundabout landscaping getting regularly maintained, we can see the difference.
Carmel also planned much better, even pre-dating Brainard, with billboards being banned, the Meridian St. overlay that preserved that corridor for high end uses like office space, and the wonderful tree lined – not retail lined – Keystone Parkway.
The reality is that if Carmel had been governed by the Marion County GOP class, it would now be facing the same problems as northern Marion County. Those problems are still heading Carmel’s way, but at least the city made key decisions and investments that gives it a very solid shot to remain strong for the long term.
Mike H – what do you mean, doomed? Indianapolis is on the glorious path to become as vibrant as, say, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis….hey – wait a minute…
Aaron R., one of the advantages that Carmel has which allows it to spend more on infrastructure is more taxes collected from property that have roughly twice the average property valuations.
Indianapolis definitely suffers from lower overall property valuations, as well as having older infrastructure that needs to not just be maintained but in many places totally replaced. And the Republican-controlled state legislature is hell-bent on denying the largest Democratic city in the state its fair share of state funds to make the Capital city a better place to live and work.
Brent, everybody likes to just say “Carmel is rich” or “Carmel has high property” values to explain away the differences. But lots of suburban communities have high property values. The total assessed valuation of Carmel is a bit over $10 billion I believe, but Fishers is north of $8 billion. The valuation gap between the two isn’t that high, and Fishers also has plenty of high income earners. Keep in mind, about 40% of Carmel was built prior to 1990. The city has a lot of older, modest homes and apartments that have only recently run up in value. When Brainard took over, much of the old core of Carmel was decayed industrial and retail strips.
But places like Fishers and Westfield and Zionsville made very different choices in how to grow and how to invest. Carmel has 145 roundabouts. Fishers has something like 25 according to that city’s web site. Fishers has underinvested in core infrastructure. Zionsville – which has tons of rich people – decided to try to simply fight development. Westfield voted in a Tea Party council in the 2019 elections.
And Brainard had to fight every step of the way against big opposition – a material amount of which still exists – in order to build what’s there today. He had to fight huge opposition just to build the Monon Trail. He implemented over 60 annexations, including waging multiple appellate battles to do so. It took him 20 years just to bring all of Clay Township into the city. (The state of Indiana then changed its annexation laws specifically to stop other communities from doing what Carmel did, one of multiple pieces of anti-Brainardism legislation, showing that the GOP is in many ways actively hostile to success). He had to fight to take over water lines from the Indianapolis Water Company. He had entire terms where the city council was against him. It took well over a decade to finish City Center, and the project really struggled through the Great Recession. He had to make the very tough sell to his citizens to borrow large amounts of money to invest, something unprecedented in Indiana. He had to fight with INDOT to get control of Keystone – INDOT claimed what Brainard wanted to do with roundabout interchanges was impossible. Brainard understood the details of Indiana’s public finance laws, and leveraged them to the max, leaving other cities like Fishers to complain it wasn’t fair.
There was nothing inevitable about Carmel, nor was it simply a matter of having more money.
At the same time, post-Unigov (Unigov being just one of many special pieces of state legislation passed for the specific benefit of Indianapolis), Indy had money pouring in from suburban growth. Almost the entirety of suburbia was contained within the city of Indianapolis for 20 years after Unigov was passed. Every major company in the region is still HQd in Indianapolis. (Carmel actually has zero Fortune 500 HQs). Indianapolis has the Lilly Endowment, worth $32.5 billion, which equates to $1.6 billion per year in grantmaking, some categories of which, such as arts funding, are entirely ringfenced for the benefit of Marion County.
Indianapolis put all the focus on downtown – and did a fantastic job I might add – but completely ignored the outer township areas. Its development standards were long rock bottom and the city was built out with the most generic kind of sprawl. Goldsmith basically gutted city government, which now can barely tie its shoes. Brainard put the first roundabouts in Carmel about 25 years ago. How long did it take before Indy DPW started building them? DPW still doesn’t have decent street design standards long after Carmel showed the way.
Undoubtedly Carmel is an affluent suburb, which gave it the capacity to do things others places couldn’t. And yes, Indianapolis has the challenges common to central cities. But the gap is not simply a matter of luck or money. Carmel has done much smarter things.
I really struggle with the 16% debt load.
Indianapolis has a much lower debt load. Would you prefer their infrastructure? Their parks? Their level of government services? Their crime levels?
We’ve seen what austerity based government looks like, and it isn’t very pretty. That’s why even the people who say they prefer austerity, and even governed that way – like Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence – decided to move to Carmel.
It’s very easy to find communities that have taken a different route, but somehow a lot of the people who say they don’t like debt keep moving to Carmel. A huge share of the people in Carmel who say they don’t like the debt moved into town after much of it was borrowed because the environment that debt created is so attractive.