Eaton triumphs in primary

HANCOCK COUNTY — Brent Eaton shot his arms into the air before leaning forward in a flurry of fist pumps as the final results of his election came in at the Hancock County Annex Tuesday night.

The incumbent Hancock County prosecutor had defeated Grey Chandler in the Republican primary, tallying 3,639 votes over his challenger’s 3,360.

“I’m just really grateful to have the confidence of the people in Hancock County,” he said between supporters sharing handshakes and hugs with him at the end of the evening.

Eaton is in his second term as county prosecutor.

“This is a community where we’ve been working for seven years,” he said. “We found a lot of things to make better, and I’m just really gratified and grateful that they see fit to return me to the prosecutor’s office.”

No Democrats filed for the county prosecutor position in the primary, but they and other candidates will have time to do so in the coming months before the general election in November.

“Running campaigns is hard,” Eaton said. “You really think, why do I want to do this? Why do I want to put my family through this? Why do I want to put myself through it?”

His success in 2018 and 2014 followed two failed attempts to get elected.

“All I ever really wanted was the opportunity to try to make things better, because I just fully in my heart did not believe the office was as good as it could be at serving the people in the community,” he said. “So from that point until now every single day you wake up and you want to make it better.”

Eaton said he plans to continue those efforts at the helm of the prosecutor’s office.

“To have it be something people in this community can be proud of, they can have confidence in the way things are done,” he said.

He ran on a campaign of improving what he described as mismanagement and failures in the office that preceded him.

“When I first became prosecutor, we were on the heels of our sheriff getting arrested, treasurer getting arrested,” Eaton recalled. “There were a lot of people in law enforcement getting arrested for stuff, and so people may not have had confidence in what was happening. And this is my home. My mom and dad live here. My kids went to school here. It’s where I’ve been my whole life. And so to have that happen is just unacceptable, and so you want to do whatever you can to make it serve the people better.”

One way he said he’s done that is by focusing on victims of crimes more, like through a victim assistance program the prosecutor’s office brought on board under his leadership.

“We’ve tried to do a lot related to cases of domestic violence and victim-intensive cases, because that’s about making it work for the people, making it work for the people that can’t defend themselves,” Eaton said. “That’s why you have a prosecutor’s office, is to help those people that can’t. … We have to be their voice, we have to be the one that they have confidence in.”

He estimates his opponent invested much in his efforts.

“That’s a lot of money on a losing campaign,” Eaton said. “The prosecutor’s office is not for sale.”

Chandler, a former deputy prosecutor in Madison, Hancock and Marion counties, also lost to Eaton in the 2018 primary.

“It’s disappointing,” he said after shaking Eaton’s hand in the Annex’s lobby once all the results were in. “We were hoping for a better outcome.”

Chandler ran on a campaign of what he described as a need for change in the prosecutor’s office, citing feedback he’d received from members of law enforcement desiring better communication between their agencies and the prosecutor’s office.

“I think we put the message out there that we wanted to get out there,” he said. “And that’s the important part. Let the voters take it from there.”

He currently has a private law practice in McCordsville, which he said he’ll continue. He wished Eaton well.

“He ran a very effective campaign, and did well, and had been a public servant for the last seven years, and another five, so congratulations to him,” Chandler said.