INDIANAPOLIS — I’ve conjured the word “unprecedented” hundreds of times during the Donald Trump era over the past decade. Why not apply it once again, to the emerging Indiana secretary of state race?
This marquee race is for an office bureaucratic in function, designed to regulate business, securities and elections. It comes in this midterm election cycle, which has historically served as a referendum on the party in power in Washington and, to a lesser extent, in Indianapolis.
Trump and Gov. Mike Braun won’t be on the ballot, but their influence will. Trump’s war in Iran, affordability issues and whiplash tariffs have smacked his blue-collar and farm base. Braun’s 2025 property tax reforms have cleaved local budgets and instigated a coming free-for-all of ballot funding referendums.
Hoosier voters will have four unique choices. Republicans ended the career of incumbent Diego Morales this past Saturday in favor of Max Engling, a longtime Capitol Hill operative who earned 53% of delegates’ support. Democratic delegates nominated scion Beau Bayh, who garnered 61% of the vote to defeat Blythe Potter June 6. Libertarians opted for Lauri Shillings. On Monday, former Republican Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard submitted 64,183 ballot petition signatures, more than the 36,943 needed to qualify his fledgling Lincoln Party for the ballot.
The prevailing conventional wisdom is this: Engling will have access to $10 million to $20 million in dark money via political action committees associated with U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, David McIntosh’s Club for Growth Action, and Turning Point USA. Bayh will be equally well funded as he attempts to revive a party that hasn’t won a statewide race since 2012. Schilling will play the Libertarian card of snarky debate appearances on the way to grabbing 2% to 3% of the vote.
Ballard is the wild card.
He’s not expected to raise the kind of money the two major-party nominees will. He won’t have any institutional support, but that’s how he pulled off his historic upset of Democratic Mayor Bart Peterson in the tax revolt of 2007. Ballard identified and then exploited a wave of voter angst. Speculation abounds that he will shave off support for Bayh in Indianapolis and Engling in the doughnut counties. A former Indy mayor will be met with skepticism in rural Indiana.
The stakes go beyond November. If Ballard meets the 2% threshold, the Lincoln Party will have ballot access in 2028 and beyond.
When Indiana Democratic Party Chair Karen Tallian was elected in March 2025, I asked her whether the party needed to rebrand, perhaps even changing its name, as Minnesota Democrats run under the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Tallian responded, “I don’t know if I have the ability to do that. But we certainly have the ability to focus on that — even if we don’t change our name, we have to be able to call ourselves the party of farmers, the party of labor.”
George Hornedo, a Democratic operative who lost a May primary challenge to U.S. Rep. André Carson, observed in a Substack column, “If Beau Bayh wins statewide, many people will understandably conclude that Indiana Democrats are back. If he loses, many others will conclude that Indiana is simply unwinnable. Both conclusions would be too simple.”
Democrats have face branding, candidate quality and organizational problems.
“So Beau’s campaign should be evaluated against two standards simultaneously,” Hornedo explains. “Whether it won and what it built that still exists after Election Day.”
Ballard is striving for that second point.
An abundance of warning signs are flitting around. They include the Indiana GOP civil war, where six incumbent Republican state senators lost reelection bids in the May primaries as part of Trump’s retribution campaign, with Banks as a leading henchman. Morales joins the six senators, former Secretary of State Holli Sullivan and former Vice President Mike Pence on a growing list of Hoosier “RINOs.”
I asked Vigo County Republican Party Chair Randy Gentry if the GOP emerged from Fort Wayne united. “It’s simply too early to assess,” he said.
The question then becomes, will that GOP base turn out?
Hoosier voters are not happy with their leaders. A North Star Opinion poll this past October showed that 53% thought Indiana was on the wrong track, compared to 34% who believed it was on the right track. The RealClearPolitics right/wrong direction nationally stood at 34.6%/59.3%.
Trump’s RealClearPolitics composite approval/disapproval stood at 40.4%/ 57.7% on Wednesday, with a Sunday Reuters/Ipsos survey putting it at 34%/64%. The RealClearPolitics congressional generic composite favored Democrats 47.9% to Republicans 43%.
North Star’s favorable ratings in Indiana this past October were 47% for Trump, 32% for Braun, 9% for Morales and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, 27% for U.S. Sen. Todd Young and 21% for Banks.
Races in November often come into clearer focus in June, but too many wrinkles, wild cards and scenarios are still unfolding in this early post-convention period to reliably say whether this race favors Bayh, the Republicans or neither side.
Stay tuned. As with so much of Trump-era politics, we’ve never been here before.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Hoosier voters, we’ve never been here before | Opinion
Reporting by Brian Howey, Columnist / South Bend Tribune
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By Brian Howey, Columnist | USA TODAY Network
