Anti-Trump energy propels new Vanderburgh Democratic team
EVANSVILLE — Edie Hardcastle didn't have time for politics before Donald Trump was elected president. Now she's the new chairman of Vanderburgh County's battle-scarred Democratic Party.
Her meteoric rise says volumes about the local party's evolution in recent years. The show isn't being run anymore by people — the same people — who spent years toiling in the party vineyards, racking up victory after victory against disorganized, outnumbered Republicans. Death has claimed many of those people, even those who were relatively young. Careers and life took the rest.
The power in the Vanderburgh County Democratic Party now resides with people who became politically active in urgent response to Donald Trump. They run not on gas or food but on resistance. They haven't tasted victory yet.
"I voted — that's how active I was," Hardcastle, a biology professor at the University of Southern Indiana, said of her life before 2016. "I saw my political activity as simply making sure that I educated, basically, our future. I saw teaching as my activism."
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