State lawmaker from South Bend resigns one month after election

SOUTH BEND — State Rep. Joe Taylor, D-South Bend, announced Monday that he’ll resign from office to take a new job with the United Auto Workers International, just a month after narrowly winning re-election.

Taylor, an AM General worker and president of UAW Local 5, said the union approached him less than two months before the Nov. 6 election and let him know it was “interested” in him for the position. He said he told them he would think about it but at the time didn’t want to withdraw from the race because he didn’t want to risk Democrats losing the seat.

“As a lifelong Democrat, I think my job first and foremost was to keep the seat in the party’s hands,” Taylor said. “Anything after that was an afterthought.”

In one of the election’s closest races, Taylor beat Republican Troy Dillon, a welder/fabricator and Donald Trump fan from North Liberty, by just 715 votes. The margin was so close that some people were telling Dillon he had won when he went to bed on election night.

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