GOP Voters Don’t Want Mike Pence’s Republican Party: Framing the Indiana Primary Victories as ‘retribution’ from President Trump is All Wrong. Voters Side with Trump When He Sides with Us

WHITE HOUSE / PUBLIC DOMAIN

GOP Voters Don’t Want Mike Pence’s Republican Party

Framing the Indiana primary victories as ‘retribution’ from President Trump is all wrong. Voters side with Trump when he sides with us.

Indiana Republican primary voters netted dramatic changes up and down ballots Tuesday, kicking out a wave of establishment-allied incumbents while reinforcing many incumbent conservatives against party-backed challengers from their left. The headlines focused on eight Republican state senators who faced primary challengers backed by President Donald Trump for failing to redistrict the state to combat Democrat-run states’ rampant gerrymandering of congressional districts.

At this writing, by large margins six of the eight Senate challengers have kicked out the anti-redistricting incumbents, including members of senior GOP state leadership. One of the remaining incumbents kept his seat, probably thanks in large part to a low-quality challenger, and the other race is too close to call with a margin of only a few votes, according to NBC, and probably headed to a recount.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, both vocal and in Banks’ case large financial supporters of the primary challengers, have called for state Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray to step down due to the electoral slaughter of his coalition. Indiana’s Republican Party, both at state and county levels, spent big to attack more conservative candidates, and most of that spending failed to protect their incumbents.

The Indiana Senate Majority Campaign Committee, run by Bray, lost two of its steering members to primary challengers Tuesday, including Majority Caucus Chair Travis Holdman. Its largest primary expenditure this year of $600,000, according to the Indiana Family Association’s Micah Clark, attempted to protect Sen. Spencer Deery, whose race is currently within three votes of a loss.

Its second-biggest spend, $492,000, went to Sen. Linda Rogers, whom Clark noted has a “fairly conservative voting record,” yet she lost by 18 points Tuesday. These two races alone sucked up nearly half the SMCC’s financial stockpile as of the end of 2025, when the Indiana Senate tanked redistricting efforts.

Yet that’s not all. The Indiana primaries were not solely about Trump as a figure, as corporate media in and out of state are framing the story, but about the kind of Republican Party its voters want.

Wrong lesson. Republican voters chose Trump because they were tired of feeling like their leadership had no interest in beating the Democrats. They were tired of feeling like even when they won, they lost.

This shellacking tonight didn’t happen because of Trump. His candidates… https://t.co/wBab6rMtsF

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) May 6, 2026

You can see that down ballot. In other races that did not include the Trump factor, more conservative candidates also scored wins in the primaries, often while fighting against their own local and state Republican parties.

South Bend-area County Councilwoman Amy Drake won her primary against a Republican challenger who had access to huge amounts of money for a local race, spending what Drake says is some $200,000 to fly in out-of-state door-knockers and airplane banner ads. (Drake is an occasional contributor to The Federalist.) Drake sparked her challenger by not only voting against the unpopular expansion of taxpayer-subsidized data centers in her greater Chicagoland locale, but also by governing as a prudent conservative rather than a patsy for the usual corporate interests.

She first took office in the purple area opposing stringent Covid lockdown measures pushed by local health officials. While re-awarding Drake her Republican seat, local voters kicked out an incumbent Republican councilman who has for the last year caucused with Democrats with backing from … the local Republican Party. Trump endorsed nobody in these local races, and yet voters still kicked out party-backed Republicans in favor of Drake and her ally Jamie O’Brien.

“These victories represent the second set of primaries launched against Republicans on the council since 2024,” Drake wrote in her email newsletter Wednesday morning. “That we’ve managed to beat the perpetrators for a second time in a row is certainly satisfying. These primary attacks were of course launched by the same people who now control the St. Joe County Republican party — why many of us good Rs no longer participate in their functions.” --->READ MORE HERE

If you like what you see, please "Like" and/or Follow us on FACEBOOK here, GETTR here, and TWITTER here.