FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — The caucus held by the Allen County Democratic Party to replace the late Mayor Tom Henry is Saturday, April 20 at 10:30 a.m.

The public is invited to attend. WANE 15 will also stream the entire process live on wane.com

There are instructions and details about the process anyone who decides to attend needs to know about:

• The caucus will be held at the Lincoln Financial Event Center at Parkview Field. Everyon — democratic precinct chairs and the public — need to enter Parkview Field at the gate off of Douglas Street, and then entire the Lincoln Financial Event Center at the first set of doors (closest to the gate).
• Once inside, there will be two check-in tables. One for the precinct chairs and one for the public. Precinct chairs must be in line to check in by 10:15 a.m. in order to be able to vote.
• There will be reserved seating inside for the precinct chairs, and seating available for the public.
• The caucus starts right at 10:30. Each eligible candidate will receive up to five minutes to address the crowd. Then, the first round of voting will take place.
• Ballot tellers will hand out the paper ballots, the precinct chairs will fill them out, and then the tellers will collect and count the ballots.
• The tellers will be split into two teams and will cross-check each other’s counts to verify they’re correct.
• This process will repeat until the top vote getter gets more than half of the vote.
• Each round of voting, the lowest vote getter plus anyone who received zero votes will be eliminated.

Derek Camp, the Chair for the Allen County Democratic Party, told WANE 15 that caucuses happen often, but none have been as big and important as the one to replace Henry because of the position and time remaining in his 5th term he won last November and officially started on January 1 of this year.

The winner will complete his term through the end of 2027.

The list of candidates who can participate in the caucus are:

• City Councilwoman At-Large Michelle Chambers
• 6th District City Councilwoman Sharon Tucker
• Palermo Galindo
• Jorge Fernandez
• State Representative Phil GiaQuinta
• Stephanie Crandall
• Wayne Township Trustee Austin Knox

“This is a process that we are being very open about, with this particular set of circumstances with both the townhall and the caucus,” Camp said. “These are not usually public affairs, but with this we are trying to make it available to as much of the public as we can, while also monitoring the logistics side of this as well.”

To hold the caucus, at least 50 precinct chairs have to be present to meet quorum. There are 98 precinct chairs in Fort Wayne who can vote in the caucus.

“We usually, nearly always meet quorum. With this one, we are actually expecting a pretty high turnout with what it is, being the mayor, and being a full term, and being the second largest city in the state. We’re expecting a pretty high turnout for this,” Camp explained.

The Allen County Democratic Party has not released the names of the precinct chairs who can vote in the caucus.

Camp told WANE 15 that they do this for security reasons. He said members of the party have dealt with security issues such as threatening voicemails and letters in the past.

They encourage anyone who is interested to reach out to the Allen County Democratic Party with questions. Those questions will then be forwarded to the correct precinct chair for the individual reaching out.

Nathan Gotsch, a former independent candidate for Indiana’s third district congressional seat, posted the list of precinct chairs on his Substack page, Fort Wayne Politics.

Camp did not verify if the list provided by Gotsch is correct or not.

He did tell WANE 15 that there are at least three precinct chairs who cannot attend the caucus because they’ll be out of town.

If a precinct chair can’t make it to a caucus, they can have a vice-chair vote in their place if they’ve been previously appointed through the party.

None of the three individuals who cannot attend have appointed vice-chairs.