Mayoral tie a teachable moment for former SPHS teacher Schuetter

Thursday, November 5, 2015

BY ERIC BERNSEE, Editor

JASPER -- Today's story, class, is how the teacher became the lesson.

As a South Putnam social studies teacher for 32 years, Wayne Schuetter certainly encountered his share of teachable moments and undoubtedly expounded a time or two on how one single vote could impact an election and the future.

Today he is living proof that every single election vote is indeed important.

Wayne Schuetter

For as the Democrat candidate for mayor of Jasper, Schuetter, who retired from South Putnam in 2006, finds himself uniquely in a deadheat with the Republican mayoral incumbent after Tuesday's municipal election.

That's right, sports fans, the happy totals don't lie. Once all the Jasper votes had been counted the other night, both Schuetter and Terry Seitz stood with identical 1,856-vote totals.

"It's unreal," then 65-year-old Schuetter responded via phone from his Dubois County home.

"People keep asking me, 'Aren't you nervous?,'" added Schuetter, who coached SPHS football for six years (1976-81) and boys' track for 17. "But as a former social studies teacher, it's been as fascinating as all get-out.

"If this isn't a teachable moment for a social studies teacher, I don't know what is. One vote is all it takes, and we're an example of that."

Schuetter shared that as he went to sleep Monday night, he knew that Tuesday's vote would mean either he was going back to work fulltime or he'd have a lot more time for playing golf.

Turns out neither was right just yet.

As Schuetter joined other Democrats at the Knights of Columbus Tuesday evening, monitoring the votes as they came in, his supporters wanted to jump the gun and celebrate as he held more than 100-vote lead after the early voting and absentee numbers were counted.

"You don't look excited," one well-wisher told him.

"It's early, it'll be close," Schuetter responded.

As more and more precincts reported, Schuetter was correct. His early lead soon shrank to eight votes, prompting an eight-year-old friend of the family to innocently ask "what happens if it ends up in a tie?"

And when it did, Schuetter said he told her, "You know, this is your fault," and the little girl just laughed.

Going into the race, Schuetter knew it would be tight. He reasoned that it's always difficult to beat an incumbent but knew there "were some things going on in the city" that had Jasper voters "pretty well split."

"I said I knew it was going to be close, but I didn't know it was going to be this close," he laughed.

The story going around Jasper was that since Schuetter had taken over the household chores and grocery shopping duties once he retired, wife Myra, a professional artist whose watercolor artistry was on display at the Putnam County Museum this past June, didn't vote for him for fear of losing that luxury,

"The joke was," Wayne elaborated, "if I lose by one vote, I'll know who did it.' People were even coming up to Myra and telling her, 'See, if you voted for him, he'd have won.'"

The Schuetters moved back to Jasper in 1994 when family issues required their day-to-day attention back home. That left Wayne making the 93-mile drive to South Putnam, a one-hour, 50-minute trip driveway to driveway.

People seemed to react incredulously to that notion, asking Wayne if he drove that 186-mile round trip every day.

"No," he'd say, "just 185 days a year."

Schuetter eventually got involved in his Jasper hometown again, accepting an appointment to the utility board and serving as its chairman the past five years. Four years ago, the former mayor urged him to run for the top spot but Schuetter said he "wasn't ready to make such a commitment then."

But in the past year, he began to receive bi-partisan support and adopted the attitude "I can do this," while wife Myra told him she didn't want him to wake up four years later saying he wished he had.

So heeding friend and former Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan's advice to "just go out and have fun," Schuetter threw his hat into the Jasper political ring.

Now he's in the political spotlight.

He heard Wednesday that the tie vote had even been mentioned on CNN.

"Being tied? This a quite a story," Schuetter said. "It's just fascinating to be in the middle of it."

And that's where he'll continue to be until a decision is reached.

So how will they decide the Jasper winner?

Well, not by a shooting match as they apparently did in Dubois County in 1950 when it was determined the winner would be chosen "fair and square by flip of the coin or some other form of chancery."

Instead, Schuetter is confident the mayoral outcome will be "based on procedure, not politics."

And regardless of that verdict, he says, "it's definitely been a fun experience."

Even the campaign was fun, he said, adding that he eschewed most of the traditional door-to-door efforts, choosing instead to have friends organize neighborhood chats and evening gatherings that were as much fun as they were information.

Protocol in a tie vote calls for a recount but only if either candidate asks for one within the next two weeks. If Schuetter and Seitz don't take that step, the county political chairmen have three days to file for a recount.

If that doesn't happen or any recount still comes out as a tie, the decision goes before the City Council, as it did in Greencastle in 2007 when the Third Ward seat ended up in a tie.

And going to the Jasper Council could be a favorable turn of events for Schuetter. Currently it has a 4-3 Democrat majority.

He notes that he has worked with everyone on the Council over the past four years in his position on the utility board.

"I'll be fine with the seven people making the decision," he assured.

In the meantime, Schuetter said he'd be surprised if the incumbent mayor did not file for a recount in the days to come.