Democrat Jody Madeira won the Monroe County Board of Commissioners District 3 seat with 33,591 votes as of Wednesday night. Her opponent, Republican Joe VanDeventer has 23,119.
She will take office on Jan. 1, 2025.
Madeira described VanDeventer as "the most un-oppositional opponent you could ever have," meaning they agreed on most issues, looking for effective and transparent government.
"I'm looking forward to not just talking but genuinely listening," she told the IDS.
Madeira is a law professor at the Maurer School of Law and the co-director of the Center for Law, an IU program that produces and presents research on the law and legal problems from graduate and professional students across the university. She has taught at IU since 2007.
Before coming to IU, Madeira served as a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and served as a lecturer in law at Harvard University. According to her IU faculty page, her research and expertise focuses on bioethics, law and medicine, fertility fraud, emotion in law and the sociology of law, as well as the Second Amendment.
Madeira’s campaign website features four priorities. The first is dealing with Monroe County’s housing crisis. Madeira stressed the importance of bringing the community together to address the issue. Her second priority is to revise the Monroe County development regulations, including stopping an ongoing effort to rezone residential zones to rural zones, which Madeira says would hurt the available supply of housing. The third goal is to help further the development of a new county jail and justice center. The website’s final priority is to improve city and county collaborations.
The Monroe County Board of Commissioners handles auditing and authorizing claims against the county, supervising county road and bridge maintenance, supervising waste management strategies and maintaining county properties.
The District 3 seat represents Clear Creek Township, Washington Township, Benton Township, Salt Creek Township and parts of Perry and Polk townships.
This story has been updated with the most recent election results.
