Morning Digest: Trump ousts half a dozen Indiana Republicans who defied him on gerrymandering

The successful offensive paves the way for a turbocharged GOP map in 2028

Credit: Donald Trump Facebook

Leading Off

IN State Senate

Republican primary voters in Indiana ejected at least six of the eight state senators who sought reelection this year after opposing Donald Trump’s calls to pass a new congressional gerrymander.

Only state Sen. Greg Goode overcame an expensive campaign from Trump and his allies to convincingly win renomination, while fellow state Sen. Spencer Deery holds a three-vote lead over opponent Paula Copenhaver as of early Wednesday.

Candidates backed by Trump, though, defeated five other members of the upper chamber. State Sen. Rick Niemeyer, who also voted against the redistricting plan, likewise lost to intraparty challenger Jay Starkey even though Trump declined to endorse Starkey.

(State Sen. Nick McKinley, who voted in favor of redrawing the map, lost as well; state Sen. Liz Brown, who also supported redistricting, holds a narrow lead in her primary as of Wednesday morning.)

Trump and his backers spent what Politico says was close to $10 million on this revenge tour, but they almost certainly won’t see a new map enacted in time for November’s elections. However, the results of Tuesday’s primaries make it much more likely that Republicans will do Trump’s bidding for 2028.

The gerrymander the Senate rejected last year sought to give the GOP control of all nine of Indiana’s House seats by overhauling Rep. Frank Mrvan’s 1st District and Rep. Andre Carson’s 7th. Republicans will likely push a similar map for the next election cycle, and this time, there may not be enough senators left who would be willing to oppose it.

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How Dems can fight back, post-VRA

Election Recaps

IN-04

Rep. Jim Baird fended off state Rep. Craig Haggard in the Republican primary for Indiana’s 4th District, a conservative constituency based in the west-central part of the state, though his 61-31 showing was unimpressive for an incumbent.

The contest between the 80-year-old congressman and his 57-year-old rival was an early test of whether Republican primary voters are as hungry to replace older members of Congress with younger challengers as so many Democrats are. The answer in this case was no. Baird, who had Trump’s endorsement, successfully argued that he remained an effective voice in Congress.

IN-05

Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz, who barely survived her last primary, turned in another desultory performance on Tuesday night against an opponent who apparently spent nothing on his bid.

Spartz held off Army veteran Scott King 60-40, a weak margin in a primary for most incumbents. Spartz, however, is not most incumbents. Last cycle, after announcing she would retire just a month after getting sworn in for her second term, she reversed course just five days before the candidate filing deadline.

Many of the candidates who’d spent a year preparing campaigns to succeed her were furious and remained in the race. One of them, then-state Rep. Chuck Goodrich, nearly unhorsed her, as Spartz survived with just a 39-33 win. Evidently, given King’s surprising showing, those bad feelings still linger.

IN-06

Freshman Rep. Jefferson Shreve underwent a near-death experience in Tuesday’s Republican primary for Indiana’s conservative 6th District as an unheralded challenger, homeschooling advocate Sarah Janisse Brown, held him to a narrow 53-47 win.

Shreve is worth almost $600 million, according to Quiver Quantitative, and spent more than $700,000 this cycle. Brown, who describes herself as the mother of 15 and the author of more than 360 books on her website, reported spending less than $14,000 as of April 15.

Last cycle, Shreve, who made his fortune in the self-storage business, won the GOP primary to succeed retiring Rep. Greg Pence with just 28% of the vote. Shreve spent over $6 million on that campaign, nearly all of it self-funded.

In that contest, Shreve was attacked by his rivals for the moderate stance on guns he adopted during an unsuccessful campaign for Indianapolis mayor in 2023. Brown highlighted that issue in an interview late last month with the Indianapolis Star and broadly took aim at the congressman’s conservative bona fides.

IN-07

Democratic Rep. Andre Carson defeated three primary opponents in the 7th District, a safely blue constituency in Indianapolis that Trump unsuccessfully pushed legislators to gerrymander last year. Carson, who outpaced Destiny Wells 62-23, will now have little trouble winning another term this fall.

OH-01

Air Force veteran Eric Conroy easily won the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman in Ohio’s 1st District, a Cincinnati-area constituency that moved to the right under the state’s new congressional map adopted last fall.

Conroy, who picked up Trump’s endorsement last month, is trying to flip a seat that Trump would have carried 51-48. Landsman, though, had almost $3 million banked in mid-April to defend himself.

OH-07, OH-10, OH-15

Ohio Democrats settled on nominees in a trio of Republican-held House seats that a major Democratic super PAC is hoping to put in play.

Brook Park City Councilman Brian Poindexter will take on GOP Rep. Max Miller in the 7th District, a constituency that includes Cleveland’s suburbs and communities to the south. A super PAC heavily funded by Miller’s father meddled in the primary to boost former Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, who badly lost the 2024 general election for governor, but Poindexter prevailed.

Air Force veteran Kristina Knickerbocker, meanwhile, won the Democratic nomination to oppose Republican Rep. Mike Turner in the 10th District in the Dayton area.

Finally, college professor Don Leonard will face Rep. Mike Carey in the 15th District in the Columbus area. Leonard scored an upset 53-47 win over former state Rep. Adam Miller, who lost the 2024 general election to Carey by double digits. Democrats, though, hope that Trump’s poor approval numbers will make this contest more interesting.

Despite the headwinds they face, none of these three Republican incumbents looked like they had anything to worry about before last month. Trump would have carried both Miller’s and Carey’s seats by a 55-44 margin in 2024 and Turner’s by a 53-46 spread, and none have had trouble winning recent elections.

But the landscape shifted unexpectedly last month when the House Majority PAC reserved millions in fall ad time that could be used to target the three Republicans. All told, HMP has booked close to $6 million in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton media markets, a massive vote of confidence in the chances of the Democrats’ newly minted nominees.

OH-09

Former state Rep. Derek Merrin will once again face Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th District following his decisive victory over four other Republican candidates.

Kaptur narrowly beat Merrin 48.3 to 47.6 in 2024 as Trump carried the last incarnation of this northwestern Ohio constituency 53-46. The new map extends Trump’s margin of victory to 55-44, but Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, is betting that her long record and a favorable political climate will help her claim a 23rd term.

The congresswoman, who claimed renomination without opposition, also has $3 million banked to defend herself in what may still prove to be the toughest campaign of her long career.

OH-13

Former radio host Carey Coleman easily won the five-way Republican primary to take on Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes, but the incumbent has an easier road to reelection than she likely expected last year.

While Kamala Harris only carried the previous version of Sykes’ constituency around Akron and Canton by just 183 votes—a result that made the 13th District the most closely divided House district in the country at the presidential level—the new map expanded her margin of victory to 51-48.

Former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin, who narrowly lost to Sykes in 2024, abruptly ended his bid for a rematch just days after the new boundaries were adopted, and none of the Republicans running in his place raised much money.

OH Treasurer

In an Ohio proxy war that pitted JD Vance against Vivek Ramaswamy, former state Rep. Jay Edwards defeated state Sen. Kristina Roegner 53-47 in the Republican primary for state treasurer.

Edwards had the backing of Trump’s no. 2 while Roegner was supported by Ramaswamy, who easily won the GOP nomination for the state’s open governorship on Tuesday. In November, he’ll face Democrat Seth Walsh, a member of the Cincinnati City Council, for a post that’s open because Republican incumbent Robert Sprague is term-limited.

MI State Senate

Democrats easily retained their narrow majority in the Michigan State Senate in a pivotal special election on Tuesday night as Saginaw fire captain Chedrick Greene defeated his Republican rival, attorney Jason Tunney, by a 59-39 margin to hold the vacant 35th District.

The seat, which had been vacant for 16 months following Democratic Kristen McDonald Rivet’s election to Congress in 2024, gave Kamala Harris a slender 50-49 win in 2024, according to calculations from The Downballot.

That gave Republicans reason to think they could flip it, and had they done so, they would have forced a 19-all tie in the chamber and potentially been able to grind all work to a halt. But Green dashed those hopes with a 19-point overperformance that restores Democrats to the 20-18 advantage they first notched in the 2022 elections.

Everything, however, will be up for grabs again in November, when all seats in both the Senate and the GOP-controlled House will be on the ballot. Greene and Tunney are also very likely to face off in a rematch for a full four-year term, as both face little or no opposition in the August primaries.

Governors

VT-Gov

Attorney General Charity Clark announced Monday that she would run for reelection rather than seek the Democratic nomination in the race for Vermont’s governorship.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott has not announced his own plans ahead of the May 28 candidate filing deadline, but the news site Seven Days wrote last month that he’s “widely considered to be running” for a sixth two-year term.

House

FL-08, FL-06

Democrat Jennifer Jenkins, a former member of the Brevard County school board, announced Tuesday that she would challenge Republican Rep. Mike Haridopolos in Florida’s new 8th District rather than continue her campaign against GOP Rep. Randy Fine in the 6th.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new gerrymander makes Haridopolos’ constituency, which includes much of the region known as the Space Coast as well as communities closer to Orlando, a few points bluer to strengthen Republicans elsewhere, but it’s still challenging turf. Donald Trump would have carried the revamped 8th 57-41 in 2024, compared to 61-38 under the old lines.

Jenkins, for her part, began running for the U.S. Senate last year, but she dropped out in January before challenging Fine. She ended March with a little over $250,000 in her campaign coffers that she can use for her new race.

Haridopolos, meanwhile, had more than $840,000 on hand to defend the seat he won two years ago without a fight. Rep. Bill Posey arranged a handoff by ending his bid for reelection immediately after Haridopolos filed paperwork right at the deadline. The two did not deny colluding, and Haridopolos, as planned, easily won both the GOP primary and general election.

Judges

WI Supreme Court

State Court of Appeals Judge Pedro Colon publicized an endorsement from Rep. Gwen Moore on Tuesday, which came the week after he received the backing of Rep. Mark Pocan, Wisconsin’s other Democratic member of the U.S. House. Colon also has the support of Justice-elect Chris Taylor, who flipped a conservative seat on the court last month in a massive landslide.

Colon faces Clark County Circuit Court Judge Lyndsey Brunette, a fellow progressive, in next year’s officially nonpartisan race for an open seat on the state Supreme Court. Conservatives have yet to land their first candidate to replace retiring conservative Justice Annette Ziegler.

Poll Pile

• TX-Sen (R): University of Houston:

  • Ken Paxton: 48, John Cornyn (inc): 45.

• NY-Gov: Siena College:

  • Kathy Hochul (D-inc): 49, Bruce Blakeman (R): 33. (March: 47-34 Hochul.)

• NY-17 (D): Data for Progress for Effie Phillips-Staley:

  • Beth Davidson: 26, Cait Conley: 15, Effie Phillips-Staley: 8.

• TX-AG (R): UH:

  • Mayes Middleton: 48, Chip Roy: 39.

• TX Railroad Commissioner (R): UH:

  • Jim Wright (inc): 35, Bo French: 28, undecided: 37.