Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett says he will appeal his eligibility for office to Indiana's Supreme Court. Indiana's Appeals Court ruled on Thursday to have Bennett and former mayor Kevin Burke re-run in a special election.

Burke went to Vigo County Circuit Court after last year's election claiming Bennett violated the Hatch Act. That state and federal law prevents federally paid employees from running for office.

Here's part of the transcript from our interview with Mayor Bennett on Monday's WTWO Live at Five:

Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett said "I was never paid with any federal funds. Hamilton Center got reimbursed for paying me. So it's a very important point. I never got any direct federal funds ever in my entire career at Hamilton Center."

Fazio said, "But that's what the ruling said, that you..."

Bennett said, "Right, and see that's another misconception and that wasn't presented properly in the beginning and that's why we are where we're at today. But the idea is only if the Office of Special Counsel deems you to be, and once again they're the only authority, that they deem you to be ineligible, they can apply a penalty on the company you work for. The candidate really has no penalty other than maybe you have to sit out 18 months. But that can never happen because I was never ruled ineligible by that body prior to the election and they're never going to come back and rule after the fact."

Fazio asked, "How come those two court rulings so far haven't accepted that as a, as a defense?"

Bennett said, "Well, we've presented it to them and they've chose to, the Appeals Court just listened to the local judge's ruling on that. But it's very clear in all the statutes we've looked at, I've got all kinds of documentation that shows that the United States Supreme Court has said that there has been a case, one of these cases several years ago, that the Office of Special Counsel has a non-delegable authority in that matter."

Fazio said, "So you would be, as far as you know, eligible for a special election and that's what the Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled for, but you're appealing that at this point to the Indiana Supreme Court. Why not, just, instead of spending more of your own money to defend yourself, why not just say, 'OK, I agree with the special election. Let's go ahead with it. I've already beat Burke once, I've been in office and proved myself, let's go ahead with a special election'?"

Bennett said, "Well, there's two big reasons. One is because we'd be throwing away all the votes from the first election. You know, I won the first election fair and square and that's over. All the people that voted at that time, they made it known who they wanted to be the mayor and they chose me. The second thing is I don't want to put that burden on the taxpayers. It's going to be several hundreds thousands dollars, somewhere probably between the range of 3-400,000 dollars to run an election. I just don't think that makes any fiscal sense for our community."