Stage set on redistricting vote in Indiana Senate

Here’s a This and That look at how things line up. And how to watch.

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

The Indiana Senate is set to meet at 1:30 p.m. today/Thursday, scheduled to take a pivotal vote in a showdown over proposed, redrawn congressional maps in the state. The Trump administration, Gov. Mike Braun and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith have been all-in pressing for them, saying Indiana has to counter moves by California, Illinois and others to favor Democrats sent to Congress. The Indiana House voted 57-41 for them last week. The Indiana Senate hasn’t shown the same sort verve, with leaders saying for weeks that the votes aren’t there.

Here’s a This and That look at how things line up.

• For a solid overview of where things stand, including what it’s going to take to get to 26 votes needed to approve redistricting, Indiana Capital Chronicle reporters Casey Smith and Tom Davies had the basics and some solid context covered on House Bill 1032, including this: “Sixteen GOP senators have publicly supported the bill; 14 have said they oppose it; and 10 — including several who supported advancing the bill out of committee — have not revealed how they plan to vote on the chamber floor. Indiana’s Constitution requires a majority of the 50-member Senate to approve legislation, meaning the 40-seat Republican supermajority must muster at least 26 votes if all 10 Democrats vote no. GOP Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith can break a 25-25 tie if all members are present. But not all senators have been at the Statehouse this week. Several GOP senators were missing on Monday and Tuesday, and by Wednesday, Republican Sens. Jim Buck, Scott Alexander and Ryan Mishler remained absent.” For more, read here: “Indiana Senate sets up crucial Thursday vote on mid-cycle congressional redistricting bill. Democratic amendments fail as Republicans prepare for a tight, final vote on the contentious remap.”

• Indianapolis Star reporter Marissa Meador had this backgrounder, too: “Republicans blame California. Democrats blame Trump. What started Indiana’s redistricting push?”

• President Donald Trump continued to press the Indiana Senate to join the call on maps designed to give Republicans a chance to pick up all nine of the state’s U.S. House seats, promising primaries for General Assembly members who vote no and signaling the odds that this thing isn’t going to pass. He posted this on Truth Social Wednesday night, targeting Senate leadership, along with former Gov. Mitch Daniels – who has criticized mid-decade redistricting – and GOP strategist Cam Savage, among others he labeled as “suckers:”

  

I love the State of Indiana, and have won it, including Primaries, six times, all by MASSIVE Majorities. Importantly, it now has a chance to make a difference in Washington, D.C., in regard to the number of House seats we have that are necessary to hold the Majority against the Radical Left Democrats. Every other State has done Redistricting, willingly, openly, and easily. There was never a question in their mind that contributing to a WIN in the Midterms for the Republicans was a great thing to do for our Party, and for America itself. In all fairness, the Democrats have been doing Redistricting for years, and continue to do so. Unfortunately, Indiana Senate “Leader” Rod Bray enjoys being the only person in the United States of America who is against Republicans picking up extra seats, in Indiana’s case, two of them. He is putting every ounce of his limited strength into asking his soon to be very vulnerable friends to vote with him. By doing so, he is putting the Majority in the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., at risk and, at the same time, putting anybody in Indiana who votes against this Redistricting, likewise, at risk. The people of Indiana don’t want the Party of Sleepy Joe Biden, Kamala, Ilhan Omar, or the rest to succeed in Washington. Bray doesn’t care. He’s either a bad guy, or a very stupid one! In any event, he and a couple of his friends will partner with the Radical Left Democrats. They found some Republican “SUCKERS,” and they couldn’t be happier that they did! Guys like Failed Senate Candidate Mitch Daniels, who I opposed in his Race against Senator Jim Banks, and Cam Savage, whoever that is, are fighting against the Republican Party, all the way. Bray and his friends are the favorite Republicans of Hakeem Jeffries, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer. 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. If Republicans will not do what is necessary to save our Country, they will eventually lose everything to the Democrats. Rod Bray and his friends won’t be in Politics for long, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they will not hurt the Republican Party, and our Country, again. One of my favorite States, Indiana, will be the only State in the Union to turn the Republican Party down!

• Indianapolis Star reporter Kayla Dwyer focused here on the primary threats being tossed around and how those might play out in May 2026. That includes this line: “We will throw so much money and resources into this state that no amount of money coming from a leadership PAC will be able to offset it,” Brett Galaszewski, national enterprise director at Turning Point Action, said during a rally at the Statehouse on Dec. 5. “Complacency has set in in this state and has allowed this sequence of events to take place.” Read the rest here: “Redistricting groups promise ‘arms race’ in 2026 Indiana primaries.”

• That lines up with a conversation Beckwith had with BiL shortly after Paula Copenhaver, the Fountain County Republican Party chair and a member of the lieutenant governor’s staff, announced in November that she’d challenge state Sen. Spencer Deery, a West Lafayette Republican in the sprawling District 23. Copenhaver, who finished third in a four-candidate field for the seat in the 2022 Republican primary, said her bid centered on Deery’s hard no on mid-decade redistricting. Beckwith said then: “I’m on a mission now. … I’m going after senators. I’m going to help anyone who wants to primary these weak senators. (Turning Point) USA is on board. I’ve been talking with them. The White House is on board. We’ve got influencers like Scott Presler coming over to Indiana that are going to drive massive turnout for these primaries. I wasn’t going to do it. I was trying to play nice. The governor and I have been very, very kind. We’ve been extending olive branches. But over the last year, those olive branches just keep getting slapped back at us. Enough.”

Beckwith on new, redistricting-driven Deery-Copenhaver primary: ‘I’m on a mission now’

• Heading into Thursday’s vote, the two senators who represent parts of Tippecanoe County were split. Deery hasn’t moved from his initial position, set over the summer, saying that “normalizing mid-cycle gerrymandering empowers mapmakers to eliminate primary challengers” and pick their voters, rather than voters picking their lawmakers. Ron Alting, a Lafayette Republican who already faces a primary from Republican Richard Bagsby, announced last month that he backed the special session and redistricting. After the Indiana House vote Saturday, Alting told BiL: “I remain troubled that these maps split apart long-standing communities in Tippecanoe County that share schools, employers and daily life. I will support advancing the bill when it comes to the Senate, but nothing I’ve seen suggests the votes exist to make it law.”

Indiana House passes new congressional district maps; how your representative voted

• Locally, the proposed mid-decade redistricting maps splits Tippecanoe County into two districts, with often jagged lines cutting up Lafayette and West Lafayette in indecipherable ways – beyond the admission that it was done to divvy up voters to get to get Republicans from a 7-2 advantage in Indiana’s congressional delegation to 9-0. The map would split Tippecanoe County between U.S. House District 4 – which currently covers the entire county and its neighboring counties and is represented by Republican Jim Baird – and House District 5, represented by Republican Victoria Spartz. Among its features: splitting Lafayette in half, dividing up Purdue’s campus; leaving Lafayette, Tippecanoe and West Lafayette school districts with schools in different congressional districts; and splitting some neighborhoods. Here’s a closer look at how that would work:

Redistricting’s jagged lines in Lafayette/West Lafayette

• The Tippecanoe County elections office has been raising flags about how those lines could leave local officials scrambling to get things right in the May 2026 primary. Last week, Mike Smith, a longtime staff member with the Tippecanoe County Election Board who coordinates voting sites, flagged a number of concerns with the maps in a letter to members of the local delegation to the General Assembly. “Aside from the fact the bill splits Tippecanoe County between two congressional districts bringing all the incumbent election administration burdens resultant from such a situation,” Smith wrote, the maps ignore that the county Election Board recently amended precinct lines in Wabash Township, which went into effect Nov. 21. He wrote that the bill being voted on this week doesn’t correspond. “From my four decades of working in elections, I can say every redistricting of any kind creates an administrative load, and the more fractured the dictate from the General Assembly, the more exponentially troublesome it is to insure elections are administered accurately, fairly, smoothly, and efficiently,” Smith wrote. “Please direct your attention to working out a solution that does not create more of a workload and that would open the door for issues that stem from using erroneous or outdated definitions and from the use of micro-units like census blocks.”

• New York Times reporter Mitch Smith took an outside-in deep dive recapping how the Indiana General Assembly got to this spot. It leads off this way: “On paper, at least, Indiana seems an unlikely place for an all-out battle between Republicans over President Trump’s redistricting campaign. The president carried Indiana in a 19-point rout last year, and his party has huge majorities in the state legislature. But as Republicans in other states have redrawn political maps to gain congressional seats and please the president, a critical mass of Indiana lawmakers has resisted. The fate of Mr. Trump’s preferred map, which passed the Indiana House of Representatives on Friday, remains in doubt ahead of key votes this week in the State Senate, where Republicans hold 40 of the 50 seats. Opposition by some Republicans has lingered even after Mr. Trump called out individual senators on social media, branding some as RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, and promising to endorse primary challengers against those who buck him. As the fight over a new map in Indiana intensified in recent weeks, it took on significance beyond the fate of a couple of congressional seats. It has also become a high-pressure test of the president’s ability to bend Republican politicians to his will.” Read the rest here: “Republicans Are Fighting With One Another in Deep-Red Indiana. Here’s Why.”

How to watch: Livestream the Indiana Senate session here at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.