Republicans in the Indiana Senate on Thursday rebuked President Donald Trump and spurned his demand for mid-decade redistricting to boost the GOP’s chances of holding its House majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Despite holding a supermajority, 21 Republican state senators voted with the chamber’s 10 Democrats to reject the new congressional map, which the Indiana House approved last week. The final vote was 31-19.
The vote marks the first major defeat for Trump’s redistricting push, which kicked off in Texas over the summer. The president and his allies exerted enormous pressure on the Indiana legislators to pass the redrawn map, which targeted the state’s two Democrat-held seats. Vice President JD Vance visited the state a handful of times, and Speaker Mike Johnson made calls urging them to back the redraw.
Trump was personally invested in the process and singled out Indiana Senate leader Rodric Bray for particular scorn. On Wednesday night, the president took to his Truth Social platform and threatened to back primary challengers to Bray and other Republicans who vote no.
“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,’’ Trump wrote. “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.”
Bray had previously said there weren’t enough votes to pass the new map in the state Senate but agreed to call the chamber back into session after the Indiana House announced it would take up the redistricting effort.
Bray, an attorney, was first elected to the legislature in 2012. His current term doesn’t expire until 2028. Roughly a dozen elected Indiana Republicans have been targets of swatting incidents since the state Senate’s initial decision to forgo mid-decade redistricting and amid repeated attacks and threats from Trump.
They included GOP state Sen. Jean Leising, who said last month that her house was the target of a pipe bomb.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun said Thursday he was “disappointed” with the map’s rejection, calling his fellow Republicans who rejected the plan “misguided.”
“I will be working with the President to challenge these people who do not represent the best interests of Hoosiers,” Braun said on social media.
Under the proposed Indiana map, which passed the state House by a vote of 57-41, Democratic Rep. Frank J. Mrvan would see his 1st District in the state’s northwestern corner shift from a battleground seat to one that Trump would have carried by 12 points, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.
Rep. André Carson’s Indianapolis-centered 7th District would have been dismantled, with the Democratic stronghold of Marion County split among four seats. The 7th District, which backed Kamala Harris by more than 41 points last year, would have shifted to one that would have supported Trump by 38 points.
In all, Trump would have carried every Indiana seat by double digits under the redrawn map, according to Inside Elections.
So far this year, Republicans have redrawn congressional maps to favor their party in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, while California Democrats responded to Texas’ move by approving friendlier congressional lines via a ballot measure. Ohio and Utah also have new maps, but neither were drawn by their state legislatures. Efforts are underway to try to craft new maps in GOP-led Florida and Democratic-controlled Virginia. Republicans in Kansas weren’t able to secure the necessary support to call a special session on redistricting this fall, but they’re expected to renew the push for a new map next year.
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