The Indiana Democrat steering his town through disaster

Plus: Pence inches closer to announcing his bid.

Days until Indiana’s primary: 9

Clint Lamb knows how to survive tornadoes of both the meteorological and political varieties.

The three-term Democratic mayor of Sullivan, Indiana, is leading his town through recovery after an early April EF-3 tornado touched down, cutting a path a quarter-of-a-mile wide and traversing nearly 10 miles of the rural county. It left three people dead. President Joe Biden approved disaster relief for Sullivan earlier this month.

Lamb has only the highest praise for how the state’s Republican leaders have responded, from Gov. Eric Holcomb to the state’s senators.

“Our community might be small in physical size, but boy, it’s mighty in heart,” Sullivan told me in an interview recently. “I’ve known that. The people of Sullivan have known that, but the resilience…we’re in full recovery mode. I knew how special Sullivan was. And now the rest of the world is seeing it on display.”

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about Lamb, though, is his ability to survive an electoral tornado. He is, by far, the most impressive Democratic official in Indiana governing in a deep-red part of the state. Consider this: In 2019, a year before Donald Trump would win the state by 16 points, Lamb would win his red-leaning county by 57 points. There, he would outperform Biden, who lost Sullivan County by more than 50 points to Trump in 2020, by more than 50 points just a year earlier—and he even outperformed Trump in the county by four points.

If the Indiana Democratic Party will ever again reach parity with their Republican counterparts, they will need a whole bunch of Clint Lambs. What, I wondered, was his secret?