Indiana GOP lawmakers defied Trump on redistricting. Now GOP voters may thwart his push for revenge
By Eric Bradner, CNN
Rockville, Indiana (CNN) — Five months ago, Indiana Republican legislators withstood pressure from President Donald Trump and rejected his urgent political demands. Now there are signs here on the ground that GOP voters may be poised to do the same.
Trump and his allies are out for revenge in the Hoosier state’s May 5 primary after the Republican supermajority in the state Senate voted down his demand to redraw Indiana’s congressional map to help the GOP win two more seats in November’s midterm elections.
The president endorsed challengers to seven incumbent Republican state senators who voted against the redistricting measure. The outcome of those Senate primaries will test Trump’s grip on the Republican Party, as voters decide whether to give their party’s state lawmakers room to break with the president — or opt to oust those he sees as disloyal and damaging to his second-term agenda.
Across several political events in Indiana in recent days, a significant share of Republican voters said they are willing to break with Trump.
At a recent candidate forum in Rockville, 75-year-old retiree Jack Butler said he’d long been a Trump supporter — but the redistricting fight changed his message to the president.
“Now, it’s ‘leave us alone,’” he said of his opinion about Trump. “You go do your thing, that’s fine. But stay out of Hoosier politics.”
Derailing Trump’s plans
Trump’s decision last year to lobby Republican-controlled states to redraw their congressional maps and boost the party’s chances of retaining its narrow House majority has turned into a headache for the GOP. The Indiana Senate’s vote in December — despite months of lobbying from Trump, including an invitation to the White House, two visits to Indiana by Vice President JD Vance and a pressure campaign waged by Trump’s political allies — offered an early indication that the national redistricting effort was not going according to plan for the president.
What started with a new Texas map intended to help the party win five more seats has also been met with a series of Democratic countermoves, including California’s passage of new maps intended to cancel out Republicans’ gains in Texas and Virginia voters’ approval this week of a redistricting effort that could net Democrats multiple seats.
Republicans have had full control of Indiana’s government since 2011, and hold supermajorities in the state House and Senate — so the state’s most important political splits are those within the GOP, where an old guard that was in power long before Trump entered the political scene and an insurgent crop of newer figures elected within the last decade often agree on policy matters but are at odds on political tactics.
That schism has made the state an important test case for the durability of Trump’s brand of politics as he approaches the final two years of his second term.
The electorates deciding each race could be as small as 10,000 voters — about the number that historically votes in competitive state Senate primaries in Indiana. And those voters might not all be die-hard Republicans: Indiana has open primaries, which means voters are free to choose which party’s ballot they want.
The slate of competitive races has resulted in a deluge of advertising spending in ordinarily lower-profile contests, with the state Senate GOP’s campaign arm already spending $1.8 million between the start of 2026 and the April 10 pre-primary filing deadline. Hoosier Leadership for America — which is aligned with Sen. Jim Banks, a close Trump ally — has led the way for the pro-Trump forces, spending $4 million on television advertising this election cycle, per AdImpact data. Six of the competitive state Senate races have eclipsed $1 million in TV ad spending.
What would a successful outcome for the Trump-aligned forces look like?
At least three wins in those state Senate races, said Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, a pastor and Trump supporter who narrowly won an upset victory at a state party convention in 2024 to become the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor.
“That’ll be a good night. That would be, we made a good statement,” Beckwith said. “Five will be a great night — we now are taking back the Senate, essentially. If we win more than five, man, that’s just even better.”
‘You can’t just avoid conflict’
Perhaps the clearest window into a divided party, and the figures who lead it, comes in Indiana’s sprawling state Senate District 23, which stretches from West Lafayette to the Illinois border well to its south and west.
First-term state Sen. Spencer Deery worked for the state’s most influential political figure of a generation, former Gov. Mitch Daniels, at Purdue University — where Daniels was president and Deery was his deputy chief of staff.
His challenger, the Trump-endorsed Paula Copenhaver, chairs the Fountain County GOP and is a staffer for another Indiana political figure: Beckwith, the lieutenant governor. Copenhaver declined two in-person requests for an interview.
Beckwith, who presides over the Senate in a largely ceremonial role but often clashes with its GOP leadership, was the first statewide elected official to endorse Trump’s call for redistricting, and has campaigned with the Republicans challenging Senate incumbents.
In an interview, Beckwith described the stakes of the state Senate primaries this way: “Is it going to be the party of the Bushes, or is it the Make America Great Again, America First agenda party?”
“I do think the Republican Party is having sort of an identity moment, right — who are we, what do we believe, and also, what will we fight for?” Beckwith said. “And I think that’s what President Trump has done so well, in my opinion, is he’s taught us how to fight.”
He argued that most Republicans — whether they’re members of its old guard or a pro-Trump new guard, moderate or conservative — agree on most principles. But the “identity crisis that’s going on in the Republican Party,” he said, is over the question of “how do you defend it.”
“I think what President Trump has shown us is that you can’t just avoid conflict,” he said. “That’s not an option.”
Deery, meanwhile, made the case that what’s at stake is a much different issue: “It’s about our federal system and … how much control is Washington going to have over the states.”
He pointed to the deluge of advertising spending that has flooded Indiana, including digital ads by Hoosier Leadership for America attacking Deery on multiple issues.
Deery said Indiana’s primaries will test whether the federal government can “meddle in the states” politically, or whether voters will reject such pressure tactics.
“If we can prove that there’s significant backlash from voters to do that, then it’s not going to be a model that works,” he said.
Trump ‘did better the first time’
The battle over the future of the Republican Party was being waged on a recent weeknight at the candidate forum in Rockville — a rural town in western Indiana’s Parke County, the self-proclaimed “Covered Bridge Capital of the World.”
First, though, Deery, Copenhaver and other local candidates lined up to address a far more pressing matter on the minds of the approximately three dozen voters who had gathered at Parke Heritage High School: Rezoning to bring a second Dollar General to the county.
Redistricting never came up at all on stage.
When CNN asked many of the voters who attended the event about the state Senate race, most said they planned to back Deery. A few said they were undecided. And none raised the issue of redistricting on their own.
Asked about the importance of the redistricting debate and Trump’s role in the state’s Senate races, many of the Republican primary voters who attended the forum rolled their eyes.
Some brought up concerns about the makeup of their own districts. Eric Thompson, 53, said he worried he’d be drawn into a more competitive congressional district that Democrats might ultimately win. He said his vote is “for me to know,” but implied he’d back Deery.
“I’ve gotten a lot of junk mail, mainly Copenhaver. Probably 10 times more of that. And I’ve actually talked to Spencer,” he said.
Beyond voters’ fatigue, several said they resented Trump’s efforts to sway Indiana politics.
Katharine Marsolf, a 70-year-old retiree, said she plans to vote in the Republican primary, but hasn’t decided who to vote for.
“I don’t like redistricting. I’m not in favor of it,” she said. “It’s not broke. Don’t fix it. It’s like you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
As for Trump, Marsolf said: “I think he did better the first time than he’s doing this time.”
The disappearing redistricting fight
One pattern across virtually all campaign events in the lead-up to Indiana’s primary: Though Trump is at the forefront of the contested Senate races, the issue that sparked these battles — redistricting — has entirely receded.
Television, digital and mail advertisements by pro-Trump groups have often used much broader language, accusing the targeted incumbents of failing to support “conservative policies” or “the president’s agenda.”
Even Trump-endorsed challengers aren’t mentioning it.
The shrunken role of the redistricting battle in the Senate primaries was on display last weekend in Franklin, where about 50 people attended a Turning Point USA rally featuring conservative activist Scott Presler — the largest crowd of the three events those groups had hosted on Saturday. Months after Turning Point USA’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed, supporting Trump’s bid for revenge in the Indiana primary has been one of the organization’s major focuses, and the outcome of the slate of state Senate races is a significant test of its influence and organizing abilities.
The rally was held in District 41, which stretches from the suburbs just south of Indianapolis to former Vice President Mike Pence’s hometown of Columbus. There, state Rep. Michelle Davis, a Republican endorsed by Trump, is running against anti-redistricting Sen. Greg Walker.
Daniel Halfacre, a Trump supporter who lives in Johnson County and attended the rally, said he’d come because he wanted to see Presler.
“I mean, I understood the concept behind redistricting and why,” he said. But he said he “hadn’t really researched” the Senate candidates.
Brett Gentry, an actuary who attended the rally with his young daughter and planned to vote for Davis, said redistricting is “a part of” why he’ll vote for her. But it wasn’t the only issue.
“She seems like really common sense. You know, no girls in boy sports, and that’s kind of important to me. We got our daughter who’s coming up, and just want that all sorted out before she gets in school,” he said of Davis.
Davis said she hears very little about redistricting on the campaign trail.
“As I’m door knocking and talking to people, redistricting does not come up,” Davis said. “It’s not a conversation piece. Now I know why it’s a conversation piece at the national level with President Trump, of course. But when I’m door knocking, people talk to me about property taxes, and they talk to me about their kids.”
Redistricting, she said, is “just not a topic that is that anyone’s talking about.”
Brenda Wilson, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenging Sen. Greg Goode in his Terre Haute-based District 38 who drove to Franklin for the rally, said it’s “very fair” to say redistricting isn’t at the forefront of voters’ minds.
More salient, she said, are concerns about utility costs and property taxes, particularly after Indiana lawmakers approved a law in 2025 aimed at reducing property taxes that has had little effect.
She said she has also encountered many voters who know she’s endorsed by Trump and tell her a version of: “That’s all I need to know. If he’s for you, then so am I.”
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CNN’s David Wright contributed to this report.
