The 2029 Indianapolis mayoral election took place on November 5, 1929, and saw Democrat Reginald H. Sullivan winning in a landslide victory.[1] Incumbent mayor, Democrat Lemuel Ertus Slack, had been appointed mayor in 1927 following the resignation of Republican John L. Duvall after he was charged with corruption by the state.
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Duvall had been elected mayor in 1925 with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Marion County Republican Party had close Klan ties.[1] The City Council and school board both were composed of Klan-supported members.[1] Opposition arose by 1929 to both the Klan and to the corruption in the city government.[1] Sullivan's victory was seen as a rebuke of the Ku Klux Klan.[1]
The Republican nominee was businessman Alfed M. Glossbrenner.[2]
Sullivan spent much of the campaign in a hospital bed after being injured in an airplane crash.[3] Sullivan received strong support from African American and Catholic voters.[3]
Coinciding mayoral elections across the state also saw Klan-supported, generally Republican, mayors voted out and replaced by new, generally Democratic, mayors.[1] Anderson, Elkhart, Evansville, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Muncie, and Terre Haute all replaced Klan-supported Republicans with Democratic mayors in what the New York Times hoped would be, "The dawn of a more liberal and cleaner political day in Indiana".[1]
References
Preceded by 1925 | Indianapolis mayoral election 1929 | Succeeded by 1933 |