“Welcome to D.C. politics in Indiana because this means that’s what’s coming,” said Travis Holdman after losing a Republican State Senate primary shaped by President Donald Trump’s revenge campaign.
Holdman had voted against Trump’s failed Indiana redistricting push, and his defeat is another chapter in the familiar story that Trump still owns the GOP. But there’s another story unfolding, one without a happy ending for Trump’s Republicans.
Trump can still punish wayward Republicans in red places, especially when his allies pour money into obscure primaries. But hard-fought internal victories create false hope when bigger conclusions are drawn from them.
Trump’s Party Discipline
Trump-backed challengers won at least five of the seven Indiana Republican state Senate primaries in which the president targeted senators who opposed his mid-decade congressional redistricting plan. Senator Greg Goode retained his District 38 seat, while Senator Spencer Deery led by just three votes in a race that remained too close to call Tuesday night.
They and the defeated senators had helped block a map that would have moved Indiana from a 7-2 Republican House delegation toward a 9-0 GOP delegation. The December vote failed 31-19 after 21 Republicans joined all 10 Senate Democrats, making the May primary a delayed punishment exercise more than a referendum on competence in governing.
Republicans hold 40 of Indiana’s 50 Senate seats. Trump had endorsed challengers in Districts 1, 11, 19, 21, 23, 38 and 41.
These state Senate contests were largely in uncompetitive legislative districts that normally do not attract national attention. Every Trump-targeted senator represented a district Trump carried in 2024, mostly by at least 20 points.
A win inside that electorate shows Trump’s command over a Republican primary coalition, an important victory for him within his own party. But it does not prove that voters outside that coalition want more Trumpian politics organized around loyalty tests and map fights.
This was no broad vindication of one of modern U.S. history’s least popular presidents, nor a reason for him to be optimistic heading into what is likely to be a brutal midterm election.
The Money Math
The extraordinary spending on these state legislative primaries implied a kind of national significance beyond party infighting. Trump’s allies spent at least $8.3 million on advertising in Indiana races that rarely draw Washington’s eyes or money.
AdImpact data showed super PACs led by allies of Jim Banks and Mike Braun spent more than $2.2 million attacking Deery alone in this primary contest, showing the scale of the escalation.
Tellingly, Deery had spent about $142,000 across his 2022 primary and general election campaigns. This time, he was driven to spend $815,000. Advertising in Deery’s 2026 fight was roughly 21 times his entire prior campaign-ad baseline.
The outcome? Deery looked set to be just one of two Trump-defying incumbents to stave off challengers.
Even compared with Indiana Senate District 31, a much pricier 2022 race that Transparency USA put at $1.84 million in total expenditures, the Trump-aligned Indiana primary push was about four and a half times larger.
A rough floor is just as striking: dividing $8.3 million by 65,646 votes cast in six targeted Republican primaries with readily available public vote totals produces about $126 per primary vote, before the seventh targeted race is added to the denominator.
The comparison is imperfect, but illustrative: $126 per vote is far above the roughly $67.6 figure produced by dividing AdImpact’s $10.5 billion estimate for all 2024 election advertising by total presidential turnout.
Trump’s win in Indiana was hard-bought as much as hard-fought. It was an expensive campaign even on friendly turf. And it wasn’t a total victory either.
Ads Expose the Midterm Problem
The ads for Indiana were built to shape a Republican primary, not a persuadable November electorate. In fact, the kind of Republican politics on display in Indiana would be counterproductive nationally.
Hoosier Leadership for America ads accused targeted senators of opposing “President Trump’s plan to remove liberal Democrats from Congress,” and attacked them over gas taxes, property taxes, and foreign land ownership.
One ad said Deery “voted to let China own our farmland,” even though the cited 2024 bill passed the Indiana Senate unanimously and a 2026 follow-up bill expanded the prohibition statewide.
That sort of messaging can punish a lawmaker in a low-turnout primary. But it can also look to reasonable voters outside the base exactly like what it is: a party spending lavishly to discipline its own members over a failed gerrymander.
Who cares, you might ask?
Well, 71 percent of Americans told Economist/YouGov that states should not draw congressional districts to intentionally favor one party. The same poll found that 70 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans said partisan gerrymandering should not be allowed.
Meanwhile, Civiqs’ May 4 national tracking put Trump at 38 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval among registered voters. The same tracker showed independents at 33 percent approval and 59 percent disapproval.
All this adds up to a deeply unpopular president aggressively punishing dissenters within his own party who broke with him over naked gerrymandering about which the vast majority of voters firmly disapprove.
It doesn’t scream “winning”. The national midterm map is not Indiana.
Political Cynicism
Trump’s defenders would argue that primaries are accountability mechanisms and lawmakers who defy their party’s central objective should expect consequences. This president is also particularly good at it.
Republicans also argue that Democratic states have used aggressive maps too, such as California, and that GOP legislatures should not fight with one hand tied. (You might push back fairly that it was Trump who sparked the latest redistricting wars).
Control of the House is at stake, so these arguments aren’t trivial. But the Indiana lesson is still uncomfortable for Republicans. A party can become very good at enforcing internal loyalty while becoming less attractive to voters who are tired of both parties’ procedural arms races.
Trump’s Indiana wins proved that Republican incumbents in Trump districts can be made examples of. But swing voters don’t want a politics organized around vengeance, gerrymanders, and nationalized local vendettas. Most loathe that style of political cynicism.
A major victory within the confines of a party can give a kind of false sense of support and momentum. If Republicans take Indiana as proof of broad strength, they may mistake strength inside the party for persuasion and momentum outside it.
The midterm test isn’t about Trump’s ability to keep a grip on Republican legislators at all levels of government.
It’s whether voters beyond the GOP primary electorate see a party focused on governing and solving their problems—especially on key issues like the cost of living, health care, and crime—rather than preserving power by punishing dissenters and redrawing the rules.
Read the full article here
