President Trump’s effort to remove Indiana Republicans who opposed his redistricting plan largely succeeded in Tuesday’s primaries.
Five state senators who voted against last year’s congressional redistricting map lost their Republican primaries to Trump-endorsed challengers, The Associated Press projected. A sixth Trump-backed candidate won a GOP primary in an open seat where an anti-redistricting Republican did not seek reelection. One incumbent survived a Trump-backed challenge, and another race remained too close to call late Tuesday.
The campaign tested Mr. Trump’s influence in low-profile state legislative contests and underscored his interest in shaping congressional maps nationwide. Trump pushed a redistricting plan in Texas and aggressively courted Indiana Republicans. Gov. Mike Braun endorsed a map that would have favored Republicans in all nine of Indiana’s congressional districts, and the map passed the state House. But it failed in the state Senate after 21 Republicans — including Senate President Rodric Bray — voted against it despite a GOP supermajority.
Opponents said their objections were both moral (calling the map a bad precedent) and practical (warning Republicans might not win all nine seats in a difficult year). Ball State University professor Chad Kinsella said Hoosiers “don’t like gerrymandering” and lawmakers worried about constituent reactions. Bray said the caucus was “fairly evenly split” and that the proposed plan “wasn’t the right way for Indiana to move forward.”
Trump publicly attacked the defecting senators on Truth Social, calling them “pathetic,” “incompetent” and RINOs, and vowed retribution. He endorsed candidates in eight contested races, declined to endorse in one seat where the incumbent supported the map, and backed 11 incumbents who voted for it. Allied groups and out-of-state donors poured money into the contests; Bray estimated about $9 million came from outside Indiana. Tracking firm AdImpact tallied roughly $13.5 million in ad spending on the state Senate primaries this cycle, compared with about $300,000 in 2024.
Some senators who opposed the map reported being doxxed and harassed before the vote. Trump singled out Bray by name in January, warning: “We’re after you Bray, like no one has ever come after you before!” Bray, who is not up for reelection until 2028 because of staggered terms, said after the primary that he had “no regrets” and that “Indiana’s going to do things the way Indiana needs to do them.”
Indiana Republicans aligned with Trump celebrated the results. Gov. Braun called it a “historic night for Indiana,” and Sen. Jim Banks said he was proud to have helped elect more conservative Republicans to the state Senate.
One longtime incumbent defeated Tuesday was state Sen. Travis Holdman, majority caucus chair, who lost to Trump-endorsed Blake Fiechter. Fiechter thanked Holdman for 18 years of service and said he was ready to “turn the page” and represent the district. Holdman, who defended his vote against the map, said in an interview he was not bitter and noted that “revenge and retribution is not a Christian value.”