Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett had plenty of reason to be optimistic going into November’s municipal election.
The city was in the best financial shape it had been in since 2017 — he would say it was healthier than it had been in a couple of decades — and he was sitting on some $30 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding that would bring all manner of needed improvements to the city.
As a Republican, he had been getting along well with an all-Democrats City Council, a major turnaround since 2017, and he was collaborating fruitfully with Vigo County officials.
And yet he lost the election, 60%-40%, to a political newcomer, 27-year-old Democratic candidate Brandon Sakbun.
“I was hopeful that I would get elected for this, but I didn’t know if I would be able to pull it off,” Bennett said in an interview with the Tribune-Star.
“I’ve crunched the numbers quite a bit and you can see that there are some areas where I didn’t do as well as I have in the last couple of elections with certain groups,” he added.
“Every election is unique like that — there’s different factors and different people who are motivated to support you or work against you.”
But Bennett doesn’t mope over the loss — after all, he has the memories of four previous electoral victories.
“Getting elected that first time was really special, and getting elected three more times made it even more special,” he said. “So I’m thankful for this opportunity, without any doubt. I met a lot of great people all across the state. It’s been a great ride in a way that I enjoyed coming to work every day and tackling the issues of the community.
“Every four years, I was prepared to — anything can happen,” Bennett added. “I was surprised at the outcome, but thankful for the 16 years. It could have been at any time.”
A mayor’s life can be thankless, unless the leader can find gratification in helping those who call in to complain on a daily basis.
“You know, people don’t call the mayor’s office to say, ‘You’re doing a good job,’” Bennett said. “They call because they’ve got a problem; that’s what it boils down to.
Every community has issues, but you have to take them on head-on. We’ve done that from day one, and I’ve felt good being able to scratch things off, to say we helped these folks.”
“I would say that Duke’s probably the reason I ran for office,” said Vigo County Commissioner Chris Switzer, also a Republican.
“I admired him from the beginning — I was super young when he got elected, Switzer said. “Duke took over and he did a phenomenal job. He and I got really close, my family and his got really close; my kids admire him 100%. He’s done a phenomenal job for this community and I hope whatever he does in the future turns out really well for him and his family.”
“The one thing that has always stood out to me about Mayor Bennett is how involved with the community he is,” said Curtis DeBaun, IV, the City Council’s president and a Democrat. “Seeing him out at numerous community events, it has always been obvious to me how much he cares about Terre Haute.”
Bennett isn’t leaving public service: Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch announced on Dec. 18 that he would become the new executive director of the Office of Community and Rural Affairs effective Jan. 8. Which means that Bennett will be unemployed for a whole week before taking his new job.
“I wasn’t sure, it was looking like it would be more than that,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a job that I understand very well. I’ve been around it. It’s a good fit from the perspective of working with local government.”
Bennett interviewed for and was offered the position the week before Crouch made her announcement. His new gig will have him working three days a week in Indianapolis and two in Terre Haute.
In the meantime, Bennett has a number of projects lined up for the city even past his time in office.
“It makes me feel good to be leaving the city in better shape that you found it,” he said. “We had our challenges when I came in and we inherited some challenges along the way. At the end, we’re humming on all cylinders.”
Those projects include $300 million in storm water and wastewater projects and $200 million in infrastructure to repair parks, streets, and sidewalks.
Several local parks are in the process of receiving extensive makeovers — Herz-Rose’s will be finished by the end of 2024, Rea Park’s clubhouse renovation will begin in the spring and be completed by mid-to-late 2025 and Fairbanks Park will commence an ambitious $20 million, 10-year project next year, beginning with designing plans.
Bennett mentioned pride in a number of projects, including current and future railroad overpasses, an idea that came to him, unsurprisingly, while he himself was being railroaded.
“About 60 trains a day come through this community, so we all get caught by a train,” he said. “When I first took office, I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have any overpasses, especially over Margaret Avenue — that was our biggest problem area.
The feedback we got back on Margaret Avenue was phenomenal and still is today. It should’ve been done a long time ago, but those are such big projects and we don’t have enough local revenue to build something like that.”
The Margaret overpass went through two governors and cost $17 million. The next, at 13th Street and 8th Avenue, will cost $26 million and is fully funded, with a groundbreaking scheduled for 2025.
The final project will be an underpass downtown, at either Poplar Street or Ohio Street, which will be completed within the next decade.
Bennett’s also proud of the immediate public embrace of the Terre Haute 311 app, one of the first of its kind in Indiana. People are particularly taken with the data hub that allows them to track autumn leaf bag collections and snow plow locations during winter storms.
“Feedback has been phenomenal,” he said. “People can understand what we’re up against. We have to keep doing that. People have to be confident that their tax dollars are being spent wisely.”
Switzer, on the other hand, said a large portion of Bennett’s legacy will be the level of collaboration he initiated with county officials.
“Just being able to bring people together and have tough conversations at a table and not argue and yell and scream at one another and have a good civil conversation,” Switzer said. “Collaboration is really important, but (also) all kinds of things downtown, just bringing it all back to life, and the development on the east side — being a positive role model for the community. He did a really phenomenal job.”
Bennett said he enjoyed working with Vigo County’s commissioners.
“It’s been an amazing run,” he said. “There had not been that kind of comaraderie in the past — it didn’t work out very well. But I liked working with the commissioners. We didn’t always agree on everything, but it’s just kind of trying to make sure everybody has the facts. Have you thought about this? ‘No I haven’t’ or ‘Yeah, I have and I still want to do this.’ That’s OK. It’s led to some really good projects and things that are coming.”
Likewise, Bennett said he enjoyed working with the City Council.
“I thought we had a great relationship,” he said. “There were times a few of them didn’t agree on everything, but at the end of the day, I got 9-0 votes on almost everything. That’s pretty amazing, because I tried to not put them in a bad spot, to make sure I gave them the information they needed to make a good decision and not put any pressure on them.
“I don’t care what anybody’s politics are,” Bennett added. “The whole time I would get up and think, what can I do to contribute to making Terre Haute and Vigo County a better place. I think more people in politics here have that same mentality. I’m thinking that’s going to continue.”
In fact, he said, “I’ve talked the next administration about their priorities and it looks like they’re going to move ahead. I’m thankful for that.” The transition with the Sakbun administration is going smoothly, he said, and the mayor-elect’s team “will be ready to hit the ground running on day one.”
The nuts and bolts of running a city is a mayor’s primary duty, but even that becomes secondary when tragedy strikes in the city. During Bennett’s time in office, three police officers and a firefighter lost their lives in the line of duty.
“You need to pave streets, but those things bring it home to you that it’s about the people and taking care of folks,” he said. “You completely shift into being supportive of the department, of the family, the community. It’s like all the other stuff doesn’t matter anymore, it just doesn’t.
“Yes, life goes on and you have to deal with those infrastructure things but it needs to take a back seat when something like that happens,” he continued. “Those are just horrible times — I still feel bad for those families today — they worked for the city of Terre Haute, and they lost their life doing that, and there’s no greater sacrifice than that. It makes some of the other stuff I’m doing look minuscule at times.”
As Bennett has been cleaning out his office in City Hall, he has come across drawers upon drawers of souvenirs reflecting his time as the leader of the city — plaques, certificates, hard hats and images of his throwing out the first pitch at baseball games.
“I’d forgotten about a lot of those things,” he admitted. “There have been a lot of mementos and pictures reminding me of really neat things that happened in the community that in the hustle and bustle of work, you kind of forget. It’s hard to quantify that. It’s been a great run, a great ride.”
