Indiana Republican Party delegates will decide the party’s nomination for secretary of state at a June 20 convention in Fort Wayne — exactly one month after Max Engling entered the race backed by U.S. Sen. Jim Banks.
Engling, 39, is a staffer for Banks, a former congressional candidate, a former aide to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a former member of The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful People in Washington, D.C. Banks’ influence within the party gives Engling frontrunner status.
Morales has faced intense criticism from delegates at recent Republican events and seen many of his campaign staff exit. At the same time, his allies have resorted to smearing Engling by resurfacing nearly two-decade-old charges related to an egg-throwing incident.
Engling was charged May 23, 2007, with “throwing eggs and/or egg cartons off the 146th Street overpass at passing vehicles traveling on U.S. Highway 31” in Carmel. It caused “a damaged air line and water hose on a 1995 GMC street sweeper.” He agreed to pay around $250 to fix the damage and the charges were dropped.
Now, it’s become a campaign issue. I spoke with Engling about those charges and his campaign. Here is a lightly edited excerpt.
Jacob Stewart: When did you first find out that someone had brought up this 20‑year‑old expunged charge on your record?
Max Engling: Really the same time as everybody else. I’m a delegate myself going to the convention and I received the same blast message.
Stewart: What was your first thought when you saw that?
Engling: They were throwing things at the wall to say, “Hey, what can we make him defend? Let’s go try and ruin someone’s reputation.”
To me, I’ve been running a race that is a clean race. If you look at anything that I’ve put out, it has been, I’m talking to delegates, I’m meeting with folks all across the state, north and south, every single minute of every single day, but talking to delegates directly because they’re the ones that make the decisions. They have to be the ones that say, “Hey, we know Max can run this office. Let’s lead it with integrity.”
But also, I’ve been in conservative politics for 20 years now. I’ve been working really hard on our side, on my side, on the Republican side to get good policy across the finish line. I’ve also been close enough to it to know, you know, people are going to say and do things in the political sphere. And that is what it is.
Stewart: When was the last time that you had heard about or thought about this expunged charge?
Engling: Probably three‑plus years ago when I had it formally expunged.
Was it a dumb thing when I was 19 or 20 years old? Yes, that was a bad decision. But I also went through the process, paid $250 of restitution, and the court said, “We’re dismissing these charges.” I owned that. It was a dumb decision. But it was a long time ago, and I’m doing many other things, moving forward on plenty of things.
Stewart: It’s been strange to me over the past year seeing so many incumbents utilize negative campaigning against primary challengers, especially ones like you who seem to not be as well known, at least according to Morales’ ads, in terms of name ID. Do you think that this negative campaigning points toward some level of desperation on the part of the Morales campaign?
Engling: I don’t want to project too much into his thoughts or campaign strategy, but just as a person looking at this, I think it does make sense that they’re trying to do anything they can to slow down momentum. And I know that there’s momentum. I’ve talked with hundreds, and now closing in on a couple thousand, delegates that see what I’m bringing, they see the vision of where I want to go with the office — that it’s not just administrative, it’s not just a button‑pushing office.
It is a statewide, constitutionally elected position that voters in Indiana will send to the Statehouse to link arms with their statewide partners to move our state in a conservative direction. And they see that vision that I’m bringing and they want to have these conversations. And I feel very good about where we’re headed because that’s the reason I’m in this in the first place. Delegates said, “We want you to run and we need someone that can win in the fall.”
Stewart: You mentioned conservative values. What do conservative values look like and mean to you? And does that run in contrast at all to how you see the secretary of state’s office being run now?
Engling: Well, there’s sort of two things when it comes to conservative values. There are internal, intrinsic values that guide you, and then there’s how that translates into policy.
And so, for me, what guides me is I’m a Christian. I’m a Bible‑believing Christian. That is my founding guidepost. Like, that is the No. 1 thing. I don’t have to be anything else. I’m a Christian and that is who I am. I’m a husband and father. How do we take that and use that understanding to create really good policy for the state of Indiana?
That equals closing the primaries. That equals making sure that it’s only citizens voting in our elections. That means, when we see business fraud like these Canadian carriers or shell trucking companies popping up, that you have to do something about those and lead to make sure that we’re stopping the business fraud, but also leading toward tighter elections so that we have more secure elections.
And part of that, too, another big piece of it, is limiting the excuse‑based absentee ballots. We see right now you can basically just check a box on paper that says, “Hey, I don’t think I can be there, I might not be able to make it, send me a paper ballot.” And I think we have to be much tighter on that. We send people to vote in person and make sure that we’re running the most secure elections we can.
So values is kind of what do you believe, what guides you, and then also how do you translate that into good policy for Hoosiers.
Stewart: Do you think that the current secretary of state’s office is lacking in some of that regard?
Engling: If I win in the fall … if (the secretary of state’s office is) going through the transition process, the most important time is going to be that almost two‑month window where you have to go in, work with the staff, everybody reapplies to their job, and you say, now we are going to run this office with integrity. We are leading with a conservative vision, but there’s an expectation that everybody in here is going to understand that the person with their name on the door will accept only the highest integrity moving forward.
And I do think there’s a challenge with that now, because folks inside and recently departed from the office have told me that. And I think there’s a reason why other statewides (elected officials) have said, “We are getting behind Max instead of the incumbent.” And so that window of time in the transition will be extremely important to set a new tone in the office and say we’re creating new processes. We will not let what we’ve seen in the past and some of these issues happen again, because this office is too important to let it flounder.
Stewart: Say you don’t win the convention and Morales ends up winning. Do you think he could win the general still, and would you support him?
Engling: Holding this office in conservative hands and Republican hands is the No. 1 priority. And what I do not want is what we’ve seen in Los Angeles here recently — a week of counting votes, who knows what’s happening with all these absentee ballots that they’re finding, you know, postmarked and bringing in later. I do not want that here.
But I also know that the four people running in this race are better than the Democrat. The challenge is going to be, how do you get across the finish line? And you have to have the statewide infrastructure. You have to have the fundraising capability. You have to be able to go toe‑to‑toe with who we now know is (Democrat) Beau Bayh, that will be the candidate, and be able to put up a fight that makes sure we can get across the finish line.
Contact Jacob Stewart at 317-444-4683 or jacob.stewart@indystar.com. Follow him on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Max Engling plans to clean up Diego Morales’ mess | Opinion
Reporting by Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
