What to watch for in today’s election
What to watch for in today’s election
Primary results can tell us a lot, especially in these three key races: Congress (IN-3), U.S. Senate, and President
It’s finally Election Day in Indiana. Here are three key races worth keeping your eye on, and what the results in each could mean.
1. U.S. Congress (3rd District) – Republican
With Mike Braun a clear leader for the Republican nomination for governor, the marquee contest of the night will be the race to replace Jim Banks as Northeast Indiana’s representative in Congress. (Banks will secure the GOP nomination for Braun’s U.S. Senate seat as he is unopposed on today’s primary ballot.)
There are eight Republican candidates in the running, but three appear to have the best chance to win: former Allen County Circuit Judge Wendy Davis, former Congressman Marlin Stutzman, and Lasting Change CEO Tim Smith.
Davis is Banks’ hand-picked candidate. In 2023, he reached out to her personally and asked her to run to succeed him. (I was told that she didn’t realize Indiana law required her to resign her position as Allen County Circuit Judge in order to campaign for a partisan office until just days before announcing her candidacy.)
It’s interesting, then, that Banks has been noticeably silent publicly when it comes to whether or not he’s supporting Davis’ campaign, although recent history suggests him speaking out in favor of her candidacy may not help her.
In the 2022 Republican primary, Banks’ officially endorsed longtime state representative Dan Leonard and East Allen County School Board member Ron Turpin in their races for state representative and state senate, respectively. Both were soundly defeated by political newcomers.
If Davis loses today, her public positions — including telling WPTA last week that she ran for office “because I was too conservative to maintain the neutrality [being a judge] requires” — may make it difficult for her to return to a nonpartisan position on the bench after the election.
Stutzman has been getting hammered by two Super PACs that have dumped millions into trying to stop him from winning back the 3rd District House seat he held from 2010 to 2016. He gave it up to pursue an ill-fated U.S. Senate run, losing to then-Congressman Todd Young in the 2016 GOP primary.
At the time Stutzman left Congress, he was the subject of an open Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that he improperly used campaign funds to pay for an August 2015 family trip to California. WOWO host Pat Miller — who is publicly supporting Stutzman in his current bid — joined him for at least part of the trip.
Stutzman’s wife Christy was a candidate in the 2022 Republican caucus to replace Congresswoman Jackie Walorski in Indiana’s 2nd Congressional district following Walorski’s death in a car accident that year. The crash occurred just five miles north of The Barns at Nappanee, a tourist attraction owned by the Stutzmans.
In 2019, Smith lost the Fort Wayne mayor’s race to Tom Henry by a 22 point margin. At that time, he was senior vice president of operations and technology at MedPro, a leading provider of medical malpractice insurance.
Today, he is CEO of Lasting Change — also known as Lifeline Youth and Family Services — and his efforts to deal with a series of sexual abuse cases at their Pierceton Woods Academy may be his biggest hurdle in winning a seat in Congress.
Over the past few weeks, Club for Grown Action has been airing ads featuring Smith’s testimony last year before an Indiana Senate committee. They were considering a bill that would have given Lasting Change immunity from lawsuits filed by abuse victims and their families. After the IndyStar wrote about sexual abuse allegations at Pierceton Woods — including a lawsuit Lasting Change settled in 2022 — the bill’s sponsor withdrew the immunity provision from that legislation.
According to GOP insiders I’ve spoken with, Davis, Stutzman, and Smith all believe they’re in good position heading into today’s election. With no public polling available, it’s tough to identify a favorite right now.
In a race with so many candidates and no incumbent, it might take just 25% of the vote to win. And with low turnout expected — based on early voting data, we may be lucky to hit 20% — every single ballot cast will matter.
Also worth watching in the Congressional race: how do Jon Kenworthy and Grant Bucher perform?
Kenworthy is the only candidate who has publicly said he would have voted for Ukrainian aid package that Congress recently passed. Bucher has run an explicitly faith-based campaign, telling WOWO’s Miller last week that he “sensed a very specific spiritual calling” urging him to run for office.
Neither candidate is going to win, but their numbers might tell us something about what type of person the current GOP primary electorate in Northeast Indiana prefers.
2. U.S. Senate – Democratic
Most people are ignoring the race between former State Representative Marc Carmichael and clinical psychologist Valerie McCray for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat, and probably with good reason.
Indiana has become a reliably red state and neither candidate is likely to come within striking distance of Jim Banks in the fall. (In 2022, Democratic nominee Tom McDermott only got 38% of the vote in his Senate contest with Todd Young.)
But the winner of the Senate primary could — emphasis on could — play a key role in helping the Democratic Party break the Republican super majority in the Indiana House of Representatives this fall.
Democrats only need to flip four seats in order to make that happen, and several challengers in the Indianapolis suburbs have a chance to defeat GOP incumbents. They’ll need help, though, and that’s where their party’s Senate nominee comes in.
Carmichael once served in the Indiana House of Representatives, but that was more than 30 years ago. After his time in the General Assembly, he worked as a lobbyist in the statehouse for the fossil fuel and alcohol industries. Now retired, he’s said publicly that last summer he was about to begin repairing his speedboat when he decided to jump in the Senate race.
McCray is more of an outsider. She tried to mount an independent campaign for president in 2020, then downshifted to U.S. Senate (as a Democrat) in 2022 but was unable to get the 4,500 signatures required by Indiana law to get on the primary ballot.
This year, she was ready. Without much help from the Democratic Party, McCray leaned on a statewide network she built — primarily black churches and community leaders — and easily surpassed the signature requirement with time to spare.
Carmichael had a much different experience. Spencer Valentine, the staffer he’d hired to run his signature drive, quit three weeks before the deadline, and Carmichael’s team had to scramble in the final days to qualify for the ballot.
Carmichael is an older white guy in the vein of Joe Biden. It’s hard to see him exciting a lot of Democratic voters in Indiana to show up in November.
If, however, McCray manages to win the nomination — which would be an upset — and the Democratic Party gets behind her, she could significantly boost turnout among black voters statewide in the general election and potentially tip close statehouse races into the Democratic column.
Most people won’t pay much attention to whether McCray manages to beat Carmichael today, but if she does — and can turn out enough voters to threaten the GOP supermajority in the state’s House of Representatives — that will be very big news in November.
3. U.S. President – Republican
While Donald Trump sits in a Manhattan courtroom, he should easily pick up Indiana’s 58 presidential primary delegates in today’s winner-take-all election.
It’s a moot point, of course; he effectively clinched the nomination on March 6 when former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley became the last of his challengers to drop out of the race.
Haley’s name, however, is still on the ballot in Indiana. That might be a surprise to people who follow Jim Banks on Twitter. On January 31, he tweeted that only Trump would be on our primary ballots this spring:
Donald J. Trump is the only candidate who qualified for the Indiana GOP presidential primary. Nikki Haley didn’t get enough signatures. It’s over. She needs to do what’s best for America and call it quits.
Banks was wrong. The deadline for Haley’s campaign to submit verified signatures to the Indiana Secretary of State was February 9, a full week and a half after he sent out his tweet.
Haley met the deadline and is on the primary ballot. There’s nothing stopping Republican primary voters from choosing her instead of Trump when they enter the voting booth. How many will do so? That’s what I’ll be looking to see.
It will take a miracle for Biden to beat Trump in Indiana in November, but the percentage of votes Haley takes from the former president in today’s primary could tell us whether his popularity in the Hoosier state is waxing or waning.