EVANSVILLE — Mary Allen is trying to pull off one of the hardest feats in American politics — but that didn’t matter to the roughly 250 people who came to Wesselman Park on Wednesday to help launch her campaign for Congress.
To them, the at-large member of Evansville City Council offers the best hope 8th District Democrats have to deal a blow to Republican President Donald Trump and help usher in a Democratic House majority.
Allen didn’t mention Trump’s name or the name of the Republican who holds the congressional seat she is seeking, Mark Messmer, in her seven-minute speech.
Allen rejects the notion that by running for Messmer’s seat she is asking voters to fire him and hire her instead.
“I want to tell people why they should vote for me,” she told the Courier & Press this week. “I’m not telling people why they should fire Mark Messmer. I want people to know and believe in me and why they should hire me.”
Allen, who was elected to the City Council in 2023, did offer reasons for her new campaign during her announcement speech. They hinted at the frustration of a Democrat confronting the reality of a Republican Congress and White House.
“Looking at the national landscape, I was tired of feeling helpless and hopeless,” she said. “And I don’t know if any of you all can relate to that.”
The crowd responded with hearty agreement and applause.
“And I thought, ‘Why not me?'” Allen continued. “Why not? And even more so, ‘If not now, then when?'”
Elsewhere in her announcement speech, Allen alluded to a need for “new voices in Congress who are willing to make decisions that truly represent the people of the 8th District.”
But that was as close as she came to articulating a case against Messmer, who would have a lot of advantages in a general election.
The 21-county 8th District, which stretches all the way from southern Posey County up the Illinois-Indiana border to the top of Fountain County, is solidly Republican. Messmer also has the benefits of incumbency — contributions from political action committees, the ability to send taxpayer-funded mailers that tout his accomplishments and the power to help constituents by sorting out their problems with government agencies.
A majority member of the House Committee on Agriculture, House Armed Services Committee and House Committee on Education and Workforce, Messmer also has the unqualified support of Trump, who won the 8th District in the 2024 election with 67% of the vote.
And then there’s money. Money in a congressional race is very much to the point.
Messmer’s campaign reports having $427,302 cash on-hand as of June 30 with $8,250 in debt, according to the Federal Election Commission. Allen had a little more than $3,400 in her City Council campaign account as of January.
Allen’s community service has been her emphasis
Against Messmer’s advantages, Allen plans to sell herself to voters as a hand-on servant to her community, something she says is “at the heart of” her life. A resident of Downtown Evansville, Allen is the owner/operator of small business Sixth and Zero.
The business’s website gives a glimpse of where Allen’s passions lie.
“SIXTH is a nod to the original Sixth Street Soapery in Evansville, IN where we first began creating pure and natural skincare and body products to help you be kinder to yourself (because you are lovely),” it states.
“As we learned more about the goodness of nature and being kinder to the planet, we started to expand and carry more products to help us all live more sustainably, thus the ZERO for zero waste. Or as we like to say, zero-ish. Because it’s simply about taking our next step to waste less, live more, right?”
Allen is the founder of the Haynie’s Corner Art District Association and served alongside her husband for a decade in a nonprofit urban ministry. She chairs the board of the Evansville Urban Enterprise Zone, where she says she works to revitalize distressed neighborhoods. She’s a member of Rotary International, whose motto, she noted Wednesday, is Service Above Self.
Allen recalled the day she decided to create a parent-teacher organization to support the then-newly established New Tech Institute High School in 2010.
“(One of her three daughters) was in the first class at New Tech Institute,” she said. “When she first started going there, there was no parent-teacher organization. It was literally a freshman class of new students, new teachers, a new principal into this new program and type of school.”
Allen remembered wondering, “How can we pull everybody together to support one another?”
“Just always looking for ways to gather people around a cause, to garner support and just to create a positive environment and change,” she told the Courier & Press.
Will a positive campaign be enough?
Matthew Hanka, a political scientist at the University of Southern Indiana, said it won’t be enough for Allen to run a positive campaign that doesn’t sharpen the distinctions between her and Messmer.
Allen faces the daunting prospects of raising millions of dollars in campaign cash, appealing to people in parts of the 8th District that bear no resemblance to her base in Downtown Evansville and convincing scores of voters who went with Messmer in 2024 to change their minds, Hanka said.
And Hanka said he hasn’t seen a sign as yet that a national wave of support for Democrats in 2026 is building,
Allen will have to artfully blend a rationale for ousting Messmer with positive information about herself, the USI political scientist said. It’s a narrow ledge to walk.
“You’ve got to present something and yes, it might be perceived as criticisms or could even be (perceived as) potential attacks, but you’re making your case,” he said. “Often times you’re making your case by saying, ‘This is what my opponent isn’t doing and here’s what I would do.’
“If she doesn’t mention Messmer at all by name, she runs the risk of it being hard to kind of pinpoint what she’s going to do.”
What happened the last time 8th District Democrats ousted a GOP congressman?
It was 19 years ago that Democrats last won the 8th District congressional seat by unseating a Republican congressman. That year, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Brad Ellsworth defeated Rep. John Hostettler, then a 12-year veteran of Congress.
Ellsworth ran a positive campaign — but he didn’t shy away from criticizing Hostettler. Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people and ravaged Gulf Coast cities in 2005, was a focal point.
Hostettler voted against a $51.8 billion Katrina relief package in 2005, saying he wasn’t against aid but preferred smaller amounts and greater oversight. Almost $52 billion was a budget-busting figure and an invitation to fraud, the Republican congressman said.
But Ellsworth told the Courier & Press he couldn’t fathom why Hostettler would vote no.
“These are Americans on our soil that are dying,” the Democrat said. “You buck up and do what you have to do.”
Ellsworth also said, among other things, that Hostettler had been ineffective against a surge of illegal immigrants since his election in 1994. He accused Hostettler’s campaign of accepting “dirty special interest money” and said the Republican congressman had stopped listening to voters.
But Ellsworth had money. If Allen can’t raise several million dollars, Hanka said, she won’t be able to get her message out. And even then, the right framing of her differences with Messmer will be critical, he said.
“This is somebody who’s going to motivate and inspire a lot of people,” Hanka said of Allen. “But that alone, when you’re trying to convince a blood-red (Republican) district that ‘Hey, I’m the person,’ there has to be more to bring to it.”
For her part, Allen envisions earning victory with hard work.
“We’re going to connect with voters in all 21 counties in person at community events, public forums and door-to-door,” she said Wednesday. “Through mailboxes to inboxes, we’re going to remind our neighbors that they’re not alone — and I say ‘we,’ because it’s going to take all of us.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville City Councilor Mary Allen launches bid for seat in Congress: ‘Why not me?’
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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