'RINO' charge rings out in attack mailer for Vanderburgh commissioner race

Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE — "RINO."

It’s one of the saltiest insults one Republican can hurl against another in today’s GOP — and a new attack mailer in Vanderburgh County uses it twice. Three times, if you count the photo of an actual rhinoceros.

Amy Canterbury's mailer attacking incumbent County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave proclaims in capital letters that Musgrave's "RINO RECORD HAS NO PLACE IN VANDERBURGH COUNTY." On its other side is the rhinoceros photo and black and red letters proclaiming Musgrave's "RINO RECORD IS BAD FOR VANDERBURGH COUNTY."

For the uninitiated, RINO stands for "Republican in Name Only." It is a disparaging term, according to Mirriam-Webster, that means, "a member of the Republican party who is disloyal to the party or insufficiently conservative."

More: Musgrave-Canterbury race in Vanderburgh could be a nailbiter

Musgrave called the use of the word against her ridiculous, pointing out that she has voted in every single Republican primary election since moving to Vanderburgh County in the 1980s. Voting data confirms she hasn't missed voting in a GOP primary, city or county, since 1986. Canterbury's voting history dates back to 1988, but she has voted in just two Republican primaries and one Democratic primary.

Canterbury's vote in the 2022 Democratic primary election has been a key talking point for Musgrave, who dropped a mailer this week showing images of Democratic President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton smiling down on a photograph of Canterbury.

"My opponent voted Democrat and now says she's Republican!?!" the mailer says.

Canterbury has said she voted in the 2022 Democratic primary to weigh in on the contest between sheriff candidates Noah Robinson and Jason Ashworth.

Cheryl Musgrave
Cheryl Musgrave

It's not that Musgrave and Canterbury haven't talked issues in their mailers.

A recent Musgrave mailer includes a full page of "impressive achievements," including facilitating raises for sheriff's deputies, bringing fiber internet to the unincorporated county, road expansion and reconstruction projects and trails at Burdette Park, Green River and Baseline roads and others.

Canterbury is more general, pledging to support law enforcement and "stop woke policies in our community." She calls herself, "pro-life," "pro-gun" and ready to "cut taxes." She pledges to lead "new initiatives that will attract high-paying jobs."

More: Anti-Musgrave mailer ignites Vanderburgh GOP primary

But in a springtime intraparty contest that is expected to attract anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 Republican voters, Musgrave and Canterbury have waged war over what it means to be a loyal Republican. Each describes herself as a conservative Republican and the other a liberal.

In a recent text to the Courier & Press, Canterbury added color. Musgrave, she charged, is "a tax-and-spend liberal who has too many bad votes to even keep track of."

As evidence for her charge that Musgrave is a RINO, Canterbury offers this:

  • Musgrave "was removed as a Republican Party official for her work against the party," the Canterbury mailer charges.

It is a reference to the day in 2017 when then-GOP Chairman Wayne Parke — then and now an outspoken critic of Musgrave — spearheaded the removal of Musgrave's husband from his position as an elected Republican precinct committeeman.

Amy Canterbury
Amy Canterbury

Robert Musgrave had donated $500 to Democratic mayoral candidate Gail Riecken two years earlier. Indiana Republican Party rules prohibited ranking Republicans from donating outside the party.

More: Q&A: Vanderburgh County Commission candidates talk utility costs ahead of primary

When Parke learned of the donation, a three-person Republican board voted to remove Robert Musgrave from his party role. Since Cheryl Musgrave served as Robert Musgrave's vice precinct committee person, she too was removed from her position.

Leading the charge to remove the Musgraves from their positions in the party was one in a series of jabs by Parke against Cheryl Musgrave, who in turn called him heavy-handed and a bully.

In April 2017, Parke called for Cheryl Musgrave's resignation from her position as Vanderburgh County Commissioner in connection with the termination of Burdette Park's director. In the county commissioner's race the previous year, Parke had endorsed a candidate in the GOP primary election over Musgrave. She won that primary race. Then a day before the general election, Parke said she would lose to the Democratic incumbent. She didn't.

Parke removed Musgrave from her role as precinct committee member in 2014 after she called Parke out of touch with the GOP rank-and-file. Parke had helped Marsha Abell in that year's primary election against Bruce Ungethiem for county commissioner. Ungethiem beat Abell by a 55-45% margin.

More: By the numbers: What really happened in Evansville's mayoral election

In an incident Parke later acknowledged, he also asked her to leave a Republican Party dinner. She said Suzanne Crouch, who's now lieutenant governor, overheard the conversation and offered to let her be her guest.

Parke continued working against Musgrave when she ran for mayor of Evansville in 2023, pouring $5,000 into the campaign of her GOP primary opponent, Natalie Rascher. Musgrave lost that primary and Rascher then lost the general election to Democrat Stephanie Terry.

This year, Parke had contributed $5,000 to Canterbury's campaign by the time she turned in her pre-primary fundraising report on April 18.

But Canterbury has pointed out several times that Musgrave supported two Democratic colleagues on the three-member Board of Commissioners against Republican election opponents, a fact Musgrave does not deny. Musgrave backed Democrats Ben Shoulders and Jeff Hatfield in their 2020 and 2018 campaigns, respectively, and both defeated Republican opponents.

Current GOP Chairman Mike Duckworth lost the 2018 campaign to Hatfield by just 224 votes out of nearly 58,000 cast. Shoulders in 2020 defeated Republican Zac Rascher.

Hatfield, who was chairman of the Vanderburgh County Republican Party from 1997 until 2000, and Musgrave have long been political allies. Hatfield publicly supported her against Parke, then-Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke and other establishment Republicans in her bitterly contested but victorious 2016 GOP primary campaign.

Hatfield also strongly backed Musgrave when she was county assessor, as well, Musgrave said. Hatfield's father was Paul Hatfield — former Pigeon Township assessor, Evansville City Council member and Democratic Indiana state senator. Musgrave says Paul Hatfield worked closely with her when they were both involved in assessments.

Musgrave said her reasons for supporting Democrat Shoulders against a Republican in 2020 were grounded in a mix of policy and political realism.

"Ben and I worked well together on the commission," she said. "It's a three-member board, and you need a minimum of two votes to get anything done.

"We backed some key projects, including the Green River Road trail. It was project-specific support that the two of us worked on, and it takes two votes to get anything done. Ben and I drove projects. I drove, Ben was there voting with me."

  • It's got nothing to do with the Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners' projects or work, but the use of the word, RINO, has been popularized of late by former President Donald Trump, undeniably the central figure in the Republican Party of today.

Did Musgrave and Canterbury support Trump against his Republican primary opponents before the former president effectively wrapped up the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination?

It's a question neither of them particularly wanted to answer. Both answered at first that there is no opportunity for them to vote for Trump in a contested primary since there is no longer any seriously contested race for the GOP's presidential nomination.

But Canterbury eventually conceded that she had preferred former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump. If Trump is the party's nominee, she said, she will vote for him. Musgrave said she preferred Trump all along.

Primary election day is May 7. Early in-person voting continues until noon May 6 at Central Library in Downtown Evansville.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 'RINO' charge appears in Vanderburgh commissioner race attack mailer

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