LaBarre was surprised to see that Latitia Lamelle-Sharp had filed to run for treasurer in the August Democratic primary. LaBarre says he had talked to McClary several times about running for the office whenever she decided to retire—but since she had filed last year to run for an eighth term, he “wanted to tell her she had my support.”

LaBarre remembers McClary’s response seemed “odd,” and a day later he learned why: McClary, seventy-two, withdrew from the race, announced her retirement, and endorsed Lamelle-Sharp, a longtime county employee who lost a county commission primary in 2022. By waiting until after the deadline to withdraw, McClary ensured that Lamelle-Sharp will be unopposed in the August 6 primary—and, given the heavily Democratic makeup of the county’s electorate, is all but certain to win the office.

It wasn’t the only “switcheroo,” as LaBarre calls it. Water resources commissioner Evan Pratt also had filed for reelection only to withdraw on the last day as his chosen successor, former Saline mayor Gretchen Driskell, filed for the primary. Driskell, too, will have no opponent in August and a clear path to the job. Like the treasurer’s post, it pays $170,000 per year—and unlike state offices, there are no term limits. 

A man standing on a bridge looking down at construction.

Water commissioner Evan Pratt checking out a construction site in 2015. In March, Pratt and treasurer Catherine McClary finessed election rules to hand their jobs to successors they chose themselves. | Photo by Mark Bialek

The schemes sparked an uproar. The party’s executive committee castigated McClary and Pratt in a statement that called their behavior “contrary to the principles our party believes in.” Five commissioners, including LaBarre, condemned what they called “premeditated election engineering.”

McClary, who did not reply to requests for comment from the Observer, defended her decision to avert a competitive primary to MLive in April by insisting she and Pratt merely wanted to ensure their offices remain in capable hands.

“While we followed all the legal requirements for elections,” Pratt emails, “I agree people’s feelings are important and it would have been better to get here a different way.” While he “did not have anyone in mind before deciding to retire,” he writes, he felt a duty to “help identify a qualified candidate for a transition.”

Few prominent Democrats find that a satisfactory response, but county party chair Theresa Reid says they will accept and promote Lamelle-Sharp and Driskell as their nominees. But she adds that they and the retiring incumbents face “interpersonal blowback” in the form of “cold shoulders.”

“Is getting this job in this way worth the reputational hit and the relationship hit that it caused?” Reid asks.

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County commissioner Katie Scott is particularly disappointed in Driskell, a former state representative and two-time Democratic nominee for Congress. She “has been around the political scene long enough to understand that there was something untoward about the way that she came to running for that office,” Scott says. “Not that she’s not qualified, not that she might not do a wonderful job. Not that I don’t think she’s a good person. All of those things are true. I just don’t like how she put herself up for that seat.”

Driskell tells the Observer she and Pratt first discussed the prospects of her running for the post in March when Pratt confided he might retire. “It was a very last-minute decision on Evan’s part, and then certainly on my part it was very last-minute. And that’s about all I have to say about it.”

“These folks made sure voters wouldn’t have a say,” LaBarre says. “They can say it’s technically legal, but doing the wrong thing is always a bad move.”