There was a while late last year when the Republican lawmakers in Indiana who were resisting President Trump’s push to redraw the state’s congressional map lived with the pervasive risk of physical violence. “We had firebomb threats,” State Senator Jim Buck told me in a recent interview. “All kinds of threats!”
Several anti-redistricting Republicans were swatted — armed police swarmed their homes in response to fraudulent emergency calls. “I had to have a conversation with my kids about what happens if police kick down our door and why that’s happening and what to do,” recalled State Senator Spencer Deery.
More than three months after 21 Republicans helped vote down Mr. Trump’s redistricting scheme in the Indiana Senate, the danger of physical attacks appears to have dimmed. But for the eight members of that group pursuing re-election this year — Mr. Buck, Mr. Deery, Greg Goode, Travis Holdman, Greg Walker, Linda Rogers, Dan Dernulc and Rick Niemeyer — the political peril remains. And these senators’ fortunes in the state’s May 5 primary, in which early voting starts next week, have national implications.
Indiana was not the only red state where Mr. Trump, desperate to retain his party’s control of the U.S. House in the coming midterms, pressed state legislators to rig the game by pursuing mid-decade redistricting aimed at juicing the G.O.P.’s electoral odds. It was, however, the rare case where state Republicans thwarted him.
Now hellbent on unseating the holdouts, the president and a collection of allies have encouraged primary challengers and are expected to pour millions of dollars into these down-ballot races. Mr. Trump’s minions are candid, even boastful, about their retributive goal. “I want this to be talked about in political science textbooks for decades to come as a cautionary tale of deviating away from the conservative platform,” Brett Galaszewski, a leader with Turning Point Action, a conservative activist group, told Politico.
The Indiana senators are on the front lines of the MAGA movement’s fight to establish itself as a force that will endure beyond Mr. Trump’s reign, a process that involves stamping out competing power centers and glimmers of independent thinking in the Republican Party. Small-d democratic fundamentals, such as the idea that state lawmakers are autonomous operators with priorities distinct from the White House’s, have no place in the loyalty-based system Mr. Trump has built.
A policy of enforcing submission may delight Trumpists. But it is no way to run a democracy. Indiana Republican voters now have the chance to show the rest of the country what they’re made of, by standing by elected leaders who stood on principle, despite the outside money, political pressure and physical threats meant first to persuade and later to punish them for refusing to subvert the public interest to the whims of an out-of-control president.
Politics these days give us few profiles in courage. These senators have done their part. Now it’s the voters’ turn. And who knows? A Hoosier pushback might even encourage Republicans elsewhere to show a little more backbone.
The Indiana Republicans who bucked Mr. Trump on gerrymandering understood what was on the line. “My first reaction was just simply a matter of principle,” said Mr. Deery of opposing mid-decade redistricting. “Anytime you have redistricting, there’s always shenanigans that happen, but at least they are limited to once every 10 years, and that allows the electorate to catch up and adapt.” Plus, as the debate geared up, Mr. Deery’s constituents made clear “that they didn’t want it.”
Recalling a caucus meeting on redistricting with Vice President JD Vance and a conference call with Mr. Trump last year, Mr. Deery said that the gist of the White House’s message was: “‘Just do it. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine.’ But I tell people all the time: I don’t work for D.C.”
Mr. Deery, a first-term senator, also feared that the plan would blow up in Republicans’ faces. The process could have gotten dragged out in the courts, it could have further energized Democratic voters, it could have split districts in ways that wound up aiding Democrats, he said. “It was a matter of principle, but also a matter of politics.”
Mr. Buck said his constituents “overwhelmingly” disapproved. “Many told me straight up that it feels like a form of cheating. I don’t know how well you know Hoosiers, but we don’t like cheaters.”
“I’ve always been a strong believer in federalism or states’ rights,” he said. “Man, if we allow the federal government to tell us how to vote, these laboratories of democracy will soon fade away. State legislators will start looking over shoulders, saying, ‘Washington’s wanting me to vote different than my district does,’” and they’d constantly be worrying about the fallout.
Characteristically, Mr. Trump has publicly berated the Republicans who defied him. He has endorsed primary challengers against many of those on this year’s ballot and hosted his chosen challengers at the White House. Groups such as Turning Point USA, Fair Maps Indiana and the Club for Growth have vowed to join the fray. Hoosier Leadership for America, a dark-money political group affiliated with U.S. Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, already has attack ads running.
The targeted senators and their allies are hopeful that the national assault will backfire. “Being ordered around, pressured, bullied, cussed out by people out of state rubbed some of the senators wrong back at the time of the debate,” said Mitch Daniels, a former Republican governor of Indiana. “And I think, if understood, it’ll rub a lot of their constituents wrong also.”
Not a fan of the redistricting scheme, Mr. Daniels is now supporting the Republicans under siege — appearing at their events, donating to their campaigns and urging others to do so, too.
Mr. Buck told me he is pulling in some larger than usual contributions this cycle from people and groups who “don’t like Washington telling Indiana how to vote.” He posited that certain interests around the state are “recognizing the demise of their political influence if Washington is going to be behaving this way.”
The retribution crusade is “a little weird,” said Mr. Daniels. With the G.O.P.’s House majority “in such desperate straits, you would think they would want to spend their millions on that as opposed to recruiting and bankrolling puppet candidates in a few state legislative districts.”
The flood of national money warps these low-level contests. Mr. Deery estimated that in a recent three-week span, more than $300,000 was spent “either attacking me or promoting my opponent”— more than twice what his campaign spent in total in his previous race.
All that outside money is focused on districts that will “see maybe 10- or 12,000 votes cast,” noted Mr. Daniels. “So small numbers at the margin could make a big difference.”
Of course, the same goes for voters looking to stand up to an increasingly invasive, heavy-handed president.
“This is a test,” said Mr. Buck. “Is Indiana going to lose sight of states’ rights?” Will its officials be “forever under the thumb of Washington?”
Crucial questions. And Hoosiers aren’t the only ones with a stake in the answers.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Hoosiers Hate Cheaters, and Other Reasons a Trump Revenge Campaign Might Fail appeared first on New York Times.
