Dawn Jones elected as South Bend city clerk in special caucus vote

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. ---- A new face is taking over as South Bend’s city clerk.

After a special caucus vote Thursday, Dawn Jones was elected to serve in the position until the end of 2019. She’ll be taking over for Kareemah Fowler who resigned from her post in July to work for South Bend Schools.

While the general public was invited to attend the caucus tonight, they were not able to cast a vote.

Only district precinct chairs were able to vote. They were called one by one to cast their votes in seven separate ballots after hearing three minute speeches from each candidate.The candidate with the least votes in each ballot was dropped from the ticket until there was a winner. 

Mary Jenkins was dropped off after the first ballot, followed by Stephanie Ball in the second. John Voorde and Jason Banicki were voted out in the third ballot and Pat Shelton in the fourth. In the fifth ballot, Bianca Tirado was dropped off the ticket and Jill LaFountain was dropped in the sixth. After the seventh ballot, Dawn Jones was determined as the winner after earning 50% of the votes cast. She defeated Lisa Plencer. 

In her new position Dawn Jones will be primarily responsible for keeping a record of council meetings, reading bills and taking roll call votes at city meetings, and overseeing the collection of ordinance and parking tickets.

Dawn Jones was only elected to serve until the end of the year because Fowler will be automatically re-elected for the next term as clerk in the Nov. 5 general election. That’s because there’s no republican candidate on the November ballot and because the deadline for Fowler to remove her name from the ballot had already passed when she resigned.  

In January of 2020, there will be another special caucus vote to determine who will serve when the new term begins.



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