Trump promised primaries over failed redistricting, one lands for Spencer Deery in Senate District 23
Paula Copenhaver, once known as the ‘maskless clerk’ in Fountain County, announces a run against state Sen. Spencer Deery. Trump's demand for redistricting takes center stage in a 2022 rematch.
President Donald Trump’s promise of Republican challengers in the 2026 primary for state senators who declined to back his plan to redistrict Indiana’s nine congressional seats landed swiftly Tuesday in Senate District 23.
Paula Copenhaver – a former Fountain County clerk, chair of the Fountain County Republican Party and a governmental affairs director for Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith – announced Tuesday that she will challenge state Sen. Spencer Deery, a West Lafayette Republican, in a sprawling district that spreads from West Lafayette to Vermillion County to the southwest.
Copenhaver, a Covington resident, made redistricting – something Deery rejected – at the front.
“For months, Hoosiers have watched weak leadership in the state senate fail to deliver the redistricting plan needed to keep America on a path that will deliver affordability to American families,” Copenhaver said in a release Tuesday morning. “District 23 deserves a senator who is unapologetically willing to take on the radical Democrats’ socialist agenda. I’ll be a fighter for Hoosiers and a defender of the Indiana and America First Agenda. … Our state senator should put people first, defend an Indiana and America First agenda, and stand up to the influence of the political insiders who bankroll Statehouse politics.”
Whether her campaign would have direct support from Trump wasn’t immediately clear.
Deery on Monday announced his re-election bid for the four-year seat.
Deery and Copenhaver faced each other in the 2022 Republican primary in Indiana Senate District 23. In a four-person race, Deery won with 30.8% of the vote; Copenhaver finished third with 22.9%.
Copenhaver made a statewide name for herself as county clerks during the 2020 elections when she declined to wear a mask at early polling places in a county deemed a COVID-19 hot spot, despite a pandemic-era mandate from Gov. Eric Holcomb and frustrated pleas from Secretary of State Connie Lawson. Her stance at the time earned her wide derision across the state and cheers in her home county and among those balking at pandemic-era mandates.
Copenhaver grew up in Remington and graduated from Tri-County High School. In the 2022 primary, she campaigned as a rural, pro-life, Second Amendment conservative.
This time, redistricting and positioning on Trump’s agenda in Washington, D.C., is expected to be a backdrop.
Trump has been promising to back primary challengers after Rodric Bray, Indiana Senate leader, announced that the chamber wouldn’t meet in December in special session because the votes weren’t there to create new maps designed to pick up the two Democratic seats among Indiana’s nine congressional districts.
On Monday, Trump posted on social media: “Lines are forming to run against RINO Indiana Senator Rod Bray, and those few other Senators who support him, in the upcoming Primaries. Every one of them will lose, in Record Numbers. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!”
Beckwith also had been warning that primaries would be coming for those who didn’t back the redistricting plan.
Asked Tuesday whether he was backing Copenhaver, Beckwith told BiL: “Absolutely I am.”
Deery told BiL on Monday, after his campaign announcement, that he understood his stance against redistricting could bring a Republican challenge in the May 2026 primary. He was among the earliest in the Indiana Senate to reject the redistricting idea and had been among eight who publicly said they wouldn’t vote for it in a special session called for by Gov. Mike Braun by the time Bray made his announcement last week.
“To be honest, I’ve expected a primary ever since I came out against mid-cycle gerrymandering,” Deery said Monday evening. “But I ran on not becoming a politician, and I’m trying to teach my kids to do what’s right, no matter the consequences — so there was never really another option. I genuinely believe that in today’s environment of nasty politics and childish behavior from so many elected officials, there’s an appetite for my brand of public service that will earn me another term.”
Senate District 23 covers the western half of Tippecanoe County, along with all or parts of Vermillion, Parke, Fountain, Warren and Montgomery counties.
Tuesday’s announcement means Republicans across Tippecanoe County will see Republican primaries in the two senate seats that include parts of the county. State Sen. Ron Alting is being challenged by Richard Bagsby in Senate District 22, which covers Lafayette, the eastern part of Tippecanoe County and all of Carroll County.
The official candidate filing period ahead of the May 2026 primary starts Jan. 7.
More on this one later …
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I’m not a big fan of some of Deery’s views but mention of Beckwith in connection with a candidate is an automatic disqualification on my ballot.
Thank you for timely coverage. No surprise. Micah Beckwith and cohorts need to address his ongoing support of pedophiles and abusers going back to Micah’s days as youth pastor at Northview megachurch in Carmel covering for a colleague and NOT reporting what he knew to police. Now we see what has happened again with son of another pastor colleague at Life church being charged with.... Beckwith is also a grifter and self proclaimed White Christian Nationalist.
BTW “Pro-life” people are never about actual lives.