COLUMBUS, Ind. (AP) — A majority of Republican Indiana state senators whose opponents were endorsed by President Donald Trump lost on Tuesday, a display of the president's enduring influence over his party after lawmakers rejected his redistricting plan five months ago.
Of the seven challengers endorsed by Trump, at least five won.
“Big night for MAGA in Indiana,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks wrote on social media, adding that he was “proud to have helped elect
more conservative Republicans to the Indiana State Senate.”
The president’s allies spent at least $8.3 million on races that rarely get much attention from Washington. It’s been a costly and unprecedented intraparty battle that has exacerbated tensions among Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
State Sen. Travis Holdman, one of the incumbents to lose his primary, said he was at peace with his defeat. He voted against redistricting and faced more than $1.3 million in attack advertising funded by organizations tied to Banks and Gov. Mike Braun.
“I did what my constituents asked me to do and it cost me my job,” he says. “But that’s OK.”
Holdman warned that a more aggressive style of campaigning was arriving in his state.
“Welcome to D.C. politics in Indiana because this means that’s what’s coming,” he said.
Trump began leaning on Republican-led states last year to redraw their congressional maps to make it easier for his party to hold its thin majority in the U.S. House. Although redistricting is normally done once a decade, after a new census, Trump wanted to abandon tradition to gain a political edge.
Texas was the first to follow through, and the White House pressured Indiana to go along too. Vice President JD Vance met with state politicians in Washington and Indianapolis, and Trump weighed in by conference call.
However, Indiana senators rebuffed the effort, one of the president’s first significant political defeats of his second term.
The redistricting fight divided Republicans in Indiana, a state Trump won three times by no less than 16 points. Braun, Banks and organizations such as Turning Point Action have worked alongside Trump to unseat the incumbents.
Jim Bopp, a prominent Indiana attorney who leads a political action committee aligned with Braun, predicted that Trump’s support would carry the day for the challengers.
“Republican voters overwhelmingly support Trump and when they find out Trump has endorsed a particular Senate candidate, they swing their support behind them,” he said.
In Columbus, Ronda Millig voted for Trump-backed Michelle Davis over redistricting opponent Sen. Greg Walker. Davis won.
“I really believed some of the things I had heard about him,” said Millig, a retiree. “It didn’t seem like he was someone I wanted in office.”
But Milling did not say that Trump’s endorsement was the deciding factor.
“That doesn’t always mean anything,” she said.
Madison Long, who is 28 and a lawyer, who also voted for Walker, criticizing Davis for her ties to Trump.
“She doesn’t have any promises of her own or any agenda of her own. Her goal is to just follow Trump,” Long said. “I find that extremely concerning given the nature of the nationwide politics.”
Former Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who had stepped away from politics after leaving the governorship in 2015, reemerged to help raise money for targeted incumbents.
The state senators who broke with Trump said they were listening to their constituents who were overwhelmingly against his redistricting proposal. Some said they didn’t like Trump’s aggressive tone in pushing the plan.
“We hate to be told what to do,” said Mike Murphy, a former Republican state representative. “We’re very independent thinking people. So when Donald Trump and his goons come in and try to tell us that we need to redistrict to help his political future, that’s the worst thing you can do.”
Bopp, who supported the Trump-backed challengers, said the primary was a chance for Indiana Republicans to express how important it is to redraw the congressional lines there.
“It’s not a matter of Trump’s power,” Bopp said. “It’s about Republican primary voters who support his agenda and don’t want a Democratic House that will be hugely destructive to the Trump presidency and the country.”
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An earlier version of this story was corrected to show a candidate’s last name is Fiechter, not Fletcher.
