East Daviess County Commissioner Janie Marksberry is challenging incumbent Judge-Executive Charlie Castlen in the May 19 Republican primary with a campaign strategy built on sustained social media engagement - including a 14-part video series explaining her candidacy - that she says has opened direct lines to voters beyond her traditional reach. The race centers not only on competing visions for local governance, but on fundamentally different ideas about how public officials should communicate with constituents. At stake is the judge-executive seat, the most powerful executive position in Daviess County's fiscal court system.
A Campaign Waged in Public View
Marksberry's approach is deliberate. Rather than relying solely on yard signs, endorsements, and traditional campaign events, she has invested heavily in video content - direct-to-camera messaging covering her positions, her record, and her case for replacing Castlen. The 14-part series is not a typical political format; most local candidates produce a handful of short clips at most. By structuring her outreach as an extended, episodic conversation, Marksberry is effectively treating voters as an audience capable of sustained attention, not just a target for brief impressions.
"I would venture to say we've done more videos and just talking to people, getting the message out, than any other candidate," she said. The strategy appears to be generating tangible response. Marksberry reports that voters who had previously disagreed with her on specific issues have nonetheless expressed respect for the openness of her approach - a dynamic that speaks to a broader shift in how trust is built between elected officials and the public. Transparency, increasingly, functions as a political value in its own right, separate from any individual policy position.
Disputes Over the Line Between Fact and Attack
Castlen has characterized Marksberry's campaign as an attack effort directed at him personally. Marksberry disputes that framing with force. She maintains that every claim she has made reflects documented conduct, including what she describes as deliberate exclusion from information flows within the fiscal court. She cites a specific instance in which, she says, a staff member was instructed not to share drainage information with her while fellow commissioners received it. "Facts are facts," she said. "I have never attacked Charlie Castlen. All I have done is stated the facts and the way I was treated with this Fiscal Court under his leadership."
The distinction she draws - between factual accountability and personal attack - is one that frequently defines contested local races. In smaller jurisdictions, where the boundary between institutional criticism and interpersonal grievance can be genuinely difficult to define, campaigns often turn on which candidate successfully frames the terms of that debate. Marksberry is arguing that accountability requires naming specific conduct; Castlen, implicitly, is arguing that some of that naming crosses a line. Voters will resolve that disagreement at the ballot box.
Policy Priorities: Infrastructure, Employees, and Solar
Beyond the dynamics of the race itself, Marksberry has outlined a substantive policy agenda. She has identified internal workforce concerns as a priority, arguing that qualified fiscal court employees have been displaced or moved into diminished roles - a claim with real implications for institutional capacity and morale. She has also pointed to inadequate information-sharing within the court as a structural problem that has compromised commissioners' ability to make well-informed decisions.
On solar energy development, Marksberry's position is measured rather than categorical. She supports private property rights but has expressed serious concern about decommissioning liability - the financial exposure counties can face if a solar operator exits the market and land owners cannot cover removal and disposal costs. "I've not had a single county tell me they're happy they've brought solar to their county," she said. This is not a trivial concern; decommissioning costs for utility-scale solar installations can run into the millions, and the question of who bears that burden when companies dissolve or walk away remains an active policy issue in rural counties across multiple states.
Marksberry has also raised the Daviess County animal shelter, expressing a preference for returning it to direct county administration, and cited constituent concerns about data centers and flooding and drainage infrastructure - issues with direct bearing on property, quality of life, and local fiscal planning.
What the Race Reflects About Local Governance
The Marksberry-Castlen primary is, at its core, a contest over what accountability looks like in county government. Marksberry is running explicitly on transparency as a governing philosophy, not merely a campaign tactic. Her argument is that residents are entitled to information about decisions affecting their land, their neighbors, and their tax dollars - and that the current administration has been insufficiently open about those decisions. Whether that argument resonates with Republican primary voters in Daviess County will become clear on May 19.
What is already evident is that her campaign has demonstrated something useful about local political communication: sustained, substantive direct outreach - even in a format as simple as a multi-part video series - can earn credibility with voters in ways that conventional advertising often cannot. For a challenger without incumbency advantages, that credibility may matter more than anything else.
