A New Low: Republican Candidate Wins Primary From Jail After Allegedly Murdering His Wife

An Indiana man just won a Republican primary election from jail, where he’s currently sitting after being accused of murdering his wife.

The Washington Post writes:

Andrew Wilhoite was charged in March with killing his wife, Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, 41. She had completed her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer and was seeking a divorce after she found out her husband had been having an affair, according to the Lebanon Reporter.

Wilhoite reportedly confessed to hitting Nikki with a large, concrete flower pot during an argument and to dumping her body in a creek, so the “allegedly” here is strictly a legal requirement—although until he’s convicted of a felony, the elections board is apparently unable to remove him from the ballot going into the general election.

Wilhoite is running for a position on his local Township Board. It looks like there are three open positions and were only three candidates (and voters could choose three names on the primary ballot), so Wilhoite could have still “won” with only a single vote. He ended with 60 votes, while the other two candidates in his category received 110 and 106 votes. A total of 9763 people voted in the election, which means the overwhelming majority ignored the category entirely, but still, 60 of those voters either had no idea who they were casting a ballot for or did not think murder was a disqualifying feature for a candidate.

(WaPo says, “No Democratic candidates were on the ballot in the Clinton Township Board primary, but non-Republican candidates still could make the ballot by November, WXIN-FOX59 reported.”)

The murder of Nikki Wilhoite is a horrific tragedy. The fact that Andrew can admit to killing her and 60 people still think he deserves to hold public office is a disgrace.

If you need help or support regarding a domestic violence situation, you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 or www.thehotline.org.

(image: Facebook)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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