The 2023 Gary, Indiana, mayoral election was held on November 7, 2023, to elect the mayor of Gary, Indiana. Primary elections were held on May 2.[1][2] Incumbent mayor Jerome Prince ran for re-election to a second term in office,[3] but lost the Democratic primary to state senator Eddie Melton.[1][4] This election marked the first time in the history of Gary, Indiana, that a one-term mayor was defeated in a reelection bid.[3] Melton defeated Republican nominee Andrew Delano in the general election.[4][5][6]
Mayoral elections in Gary, Indiana, are partisan. Mayors serve four-year terms, with no term limits.[7] Incumbent mayor Jerome Prince was first elected after defeating two-term mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson in 2019.[8] Prince had been criticized in his first term for the lack of a permanent police chief.[1] His challenger, state senator Eddie Melton, had also criticized him for his "abortive attempt" to sell the Genesis Convention Center to a company that later defaulted and was sued by the city.[4][9]
In late January 2023, Prince announced his reelection bid, with Melton and truck driver Danien Walls as his primary opponents.[3] In February 2023, Lake County Democratic Party chair Jim Wieser announced he would be seeking to remove Walls from the ballot, on the grounds that Walls "had no history of having voted as a Democrat."[10] In Indiana, in order to appear on a major party's primary ballot, a candidate must have requested for the primary ballot of that party and voted in that party's two prior primary elections, or obtain a waiver from the county party chair.[11][7] As Walls had not met either condition, the board upheld Wieser's challenge and removed Walls from the ballot.[11]
In April 2023, Howey Politics Indiana rated the Democratic primary race as a toss-up.[12] Melton defeated Prince in the primary. This election marked the first time in the history of Gary, Indiana, that a one-term mayor was defeated in a reelection bid,[3] and it also marked the second election in a row where an incumbent mayor was defeated by a challenger.[8]
The population of Gary had fallen by 61% from its peak in the 1960s down to only 66,583 residents as of December 2022.[13] Owing to the downward trend in population, the Democratic primary tally of 10,790 votes was 4,000 fewer votes than the Democratic primary in the 2019 mayoral race.[1]
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