President Donald Trump’s revenge tour to unseat Indiana Republicans who snubbed his push to redraw the state’s congressional districts could come to fruition on Tuesday during the state’s primary elections.
The Hoosier State will see 10 state Senate seats on the ballot in Tuesday’s election, with eight state Republicans who voted against gerrymandering the state map seeking reelection.
Trump has issued endorsements in seven of the eight races, with only state Sen. Rick Niemeyer escaping the president’s retribution effort, where he has followed through with endorsing incumbents’ primary challengers.
Dubbing them “Republicans in Name Only,” Trump endorsed against state Sens. Dan Dernulc, Linda Rogers, Greg Walker, Greg Goode, Jim Buck, Travis Holdman, and Spencer Deery.
The other two state Republicans who did not support the Trump-backed gerrymandering bill last year, Eric Bassler and Kyle Walker, are not seeking reelection.
Trump warned defectors in the lead-up to the state Senate vote that there would be consequences for those who didn’t support the redrawing of the state map, saying in a Truth Social post that “anybody that votes against Redistricting, and the SUCCESS of the Republican Party in D.C., will be, I am sure, met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring.”
In the end, 21 state Republicans joined the Democrats in the Indiana Senate to oppose the state House bill that would have given Republicans two more U.S. House seats if enacted. Indiana has nine congressional districts, seven of which are represented by Republicans.
Holdman, who is the state majority caucus chairman, claimed during a radio interview shared on social media on May 1 that he voted against redistricting because his constituents wanted him to, saying out of over 3,000 calls his office received on the issue, “90% of those were against redistricting.”
But Holdman also criticized how the redistricting was rolled out, saying the map “came to us without any changes that we were able to make to it. It was basically handed to us by a Washington bureaucrat and said, ‘Here, pass this map. This is what you got.’”
Holdman is facing a primary challenge from the Trump-backed Blake Fiechter, a Bluffton city councilman, to represent Indiana’s 19th state Senate district.
Jim Buck, the majority floor leader emeritus who represents Indiana’s 21st state Senate district, is facing Tipton County Commissioner Tracey Powell.
Trump reissued his primary endorsements on May 1, urging Indiana voters to get out to vote against the incumbent state senators, such as Holdman, who the president described as having “failed the amazing people of Indiana so badly.”
Indiana’s primary election will serve as a test of Trump’s strength, as the state’s refusal to pass new maps through the legislature marked a rare public display of Republicans refusing the president’s desires.
Trump’s push for Indiana to redistrict came after successfully pushing Texas’s legislature to redraw its state lines and igniting a nationwide gerrymandering effort on both sides of the aisle. California, Virginia, and Florida have issued new congressional maps in turn as Democrats and Republicans try to wrest control of the House in November.
But last week’s Supreme Court landmark ruling in Louisiana v. Callais is set to shake up the congressional maps even more. The striking down of race-based redistricting in Louisiana has opened the door for multiple southern red states, including Tennessee and Alabama, to move to redraw their own maps.
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is pushing for New York to redraw its map as well, asking House Administration Committee ranking member Joe Morelle (D-NY) to travel to New York on Tuesday to meet with state leaders “for the balance of the decade in response to the Callais decision and the recent action in Florida.”
“This is just the beginning,” Jeffries said. “Across the nation, we will sue, we will redraw, and we will win. House Democrats will not allow a MAGA majority to be built on rigged maps and the dilution of Black voting strength. Ultimately, this will end poorly for Republican extremists. It’s the American people who get to decide who wins the majority in Congress, not Donald Trump.”