The top 10 Hoosier politics stories of 2023
From major political figures exiting stage left to a massive mayoral contest, here are the Hoosier politics stories that mattered.
Major political figures that defined a generation of Indiana politics stepped aside. A new diverse crop of historic candidates ascended to office. A massive field of Republican gubernatorial candidates blacked out the sun. Oh, and another Hoosier ran for president.
Once again, Indiana—a relatively small, barn-red state with seemingly little sway in national politics—punched above its political weight class, delivering a year full of news that made national waves.
Here, in an annual feature, I break down the top 10 stories that moved the needle in 2023, featuring some of my best work over the last year.
10. The Changing of Indiana’s old political guard…
The year started off with a fiery back and forth between the old Republican guard and the new, as then-outgoing Purdue University President Mitch Daniels very publicly weighed a run for U.S. Senate against Rep. Jim Banks, the brash and outspoken Republican who is a leading figure of the new Trumpian right. Indiana briefly became “ground zero” for a Republican civil war. Trump allies all the way up to Donald Trump Jr., called Daniels a “weak RINO,” “Mitt Romney 2.0,” and “Mitch Romney (RINO-IN).” Donald Trump himself was said to mock Daniels’ stature, calling him a “midget.” David McIntosh, the Hoosier president of the Club for Growth, took out ads against Daniels. “David perfected the art of losing elections in Indiana,” Daniels said of his one-time Reagan administration colleague and a former Indiana congressman who lost the 2000 gubernatorial election to Democrat Frank O’Bannon.
Daniels made a trip to D.C. to assess the job, but in the end, passed. “I conclude that it’s just not the job for me, not the town for me, and not the life I want to live at this point,” Daniels told me, ending a generation where he was massively influential at home and beyond the confines of Indiana. And he’s a “no” on a No Labels bid, too, we learned later this year after his name surfaced a possible third party candidate.
But Daniels wasn’t the only figure to exit stage left (right?) Joe Donnelly, Joe Biden’s man at the Vatican, also turned down a Senate bid after deeply wrestling with the possibility of a political comeback. "Joe enjoys and takes very seriously his service as an ambassador in Europe, where he has been deeply involved in the U.S. efforts to support Ukraine," Peter Hanscom, his former campaign manager and adviser, told POLITICO in a statement. "He loves Indiana, and his thoughts are never far from home, but he is committed to his current role and obligations at this pivotal moment in history. Joe will not be a candidate for Governor in 2024.” That also included ruling out a Senate comeback.
Closer to home, Kyle Hupfer, a longtime ally of term-limited Gov. Eric Holcomb who served six and a half years and four election cycles in the role of Indiana GOP chairman, stepped down. He had led the party to more than 90 percent of all county-elected offices across the state. But he wasn’t gone long: He joined the gubernatorial campaign of Brad Chambers, the billionaire former Indiana Economic Development Corporation topper, in an effort to keep the power center of the Daniels-Holcomb wing of the party alive.
9. …leads to diverse candidates on the rise
As longtime bold-faced names stepped aside, a new crop of diverse candidates in both parties rose to power. Marion, Indiana, the site of the last lynching north of the Mason-Dixon line, elected its first Black mayor in Ronald Morrell, Jr., who also became the first Black Republican mayor elected in Indiana history. Evansville elected its first Black and woman mayor in Democrat Stephanie Terry, who wrested control of the open office back from Republicans. Terre Haute elected as mayor 27-year-old Democrat Brandon Sakbun, its youngest mayor ever, who will be the first mayor of color in the city’s history.
8. Gaming investigation roils statehouse
2019’s pivotal gaming legislation is coming back to haunt Indiana, resulting in former state Rep. Sean Eberhart's corruption conviction amid a federal investigation. “I think this issue is going to come back and haunt us in the future," Rep. Ben Smaltz, said now infamously said before the 2019 legislation that made a raft of changes to gaming laws passed. Smaltz appears to have been more right than he could imagine
In what is likely to be a major story of an otherwise sleepy 2024 short session of the Indiana General Assembly, more dominoes—and political figures—could fall.
“[W]hen things start to heat up and the true nature and full breadth of the investigation becomes clear (and that will happen quickly,” writes longtime Statehouse watcher Ed Feigenbaum in his Legislative Insight newsletter, “we can confidently report that the Eberhart deal is simply a start, and nowhere near the end game), speculation will flow in the halls, in the mainstream media, and around the internet about just who might be involved, and, with big issues, it’s usually not difficult to recall who the key players are, and to discern from there who those wrapped up in the issue might be the ‘usual suspects.’”
7. Indiana Democrats make inroads in civic contests
It took him more than two years to rebuild the Democratic Party, but Mike Schmuhl, the Indiana Democratic Party chairman, can now claim some significant wins in his tenure. After November’s municipal elections, more than 317,966 Hoosiers who currently have a Republican mayor will have a Democratic one on Jan. 1. Compare that to Republicans, who flipped offices for just 200,869 Hoosiers. Democrats also flipped six of the largest 50 cities. But 2024 promises to be tough sledding for Indiana Democrats, with a beleaguered and depleted bench of candidates. His best shot might not be winning a statewide seat, but breaking the Republican legislative supermajority at the statehouse in 2024.
6. Attorney General Todd Rokita on the ropes
Rokita spent the year playing cleanup after his high-profile war with abortion doctor Caitlin Bernard, following a Fox News appearance in which he went after her before Indiana’s abortion special session and after the fall of Roe. Last month, he found himself on the business end of a reprimand from the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission over that appearance commenting on her performing an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim. Instead of letting the controversy recede, he issued a statement that didn’t acknowledge wrongdoing, and now he’s in hot water again. Now, Rokita faces further discipline and a challenge from Democrat Destiny Wells. This storyline, too, will continue well into 2024.
5. The primary battle for Indiana’s open Senate seat
At first, it seemed that Jim Banks had done the impossible. After dispatching Daniels from a potential primary, he appeared to the clear the field, avoiding the first GOP primary challenge for an open Senate seat since 1976.
But John Rust, a southern Indiana egg farmer, who would be the first openly gay Republican statewide candidate, put an end to that in recent days, winning a court battle that could allow him to be a candidate despite not having voted in two consecutive Republican primaries. The matter is tied up in an appeal.
On the Democratic side, outgoing Indianapolis City-County councilor Keith Potts dropped out of the race this week, leaving as the only candidate Marc Carmichael, the former Indiana state representative.
4. Massive mayoral spending amid the last gasps of Indianapolis Republicans
In many ways, Indiana Democrats’ efforts to win again statewide mirror those of Indianapolis Republicans’ efforts to win citywide. Increasing polarization and political self-sorting by geopgraphy have only accelerated that trend.
Indianapolis Republican Jefferson Shreve, the storage magnate, waged the most expensive campaign in the city’s history, spending eight figures to try and prevent Democrat Joe Hogsett from winning a third term. His loss shows just how difficult it has become for Republicans to perform in urban areas. His may be the last well-funded effort to do so here for a long time.
3. Todd Young spurns Trump
Indiana’s senior senator may have played soccer at the Naval Academy, but he took a baseball bat to Donald Trump’s bid to return to the presidency in 2024. A secret to only those not reading between the lines, Young’s dressing down of Trump in the halls of Congress earlier this year showed that there are some Republicans willing to question the GOP’s conventional wisdom—and do so aloud.
“As President Trump says, I prefer winners,” Young said in May. “He consistently loses.”
Young is not up again until 2028, meaning he’ll outlast Trump on the electoral stage, epsecially if he chooses to run for a third term—which isn’t guaranteed.
In many ways, Young was Indiana’s most ascendant politician in 2023. His work on the China Competitiveness Act led to the state landing three federal tech hubs—in microelectronics, hydrogen energy, and biotechnology—that will change the face of the state’s economy for decades. And despite opposition from some in his own delegation to the original bill, he got the entire delegation to sign off on the state’s bid.
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, he’ll have on the 2024 race. He has no immediate plans to endorse a candidate, an adviser said. “I'll be endorsing whomever I think might have an opportunity to defeat Donald J. Trump in the primary election,” Young told me in September.
2. Mike Pence’s failed presidential bid
If you were on an extended vacation or sabbatical from, say, early June to October, you might have missed the former vice president’s presidential campaign. For starters, he announced in Iowa and not Indiana in a bid to woo the caucuses reliable evangelical caucusgoers.
All told, Pence had spent much of his life angling for this moment, but he was either ahead of or behind his time, depending on your perspective. In many ways, his failed bid marked the end of Reaganism in Republican politics—and for that reason, it was important for what it didn’t accomplish: Wooing the party back to its-pre-Trumpian ideological roots.
As an exercise in revealing just how much there’s been a changing of the guard in Indiana politics, ask yourself: Who—and when— is the next Hoosier most likely to run for president?
But Pence could be among the most consequential Republicans in 2024, likely taking a star witness role in the government’s case against Donald Trump. And he will be seen as a party elder in what remains of the non-Trump wing of the GOP. It remains unclear whether he’ll try to run again in 2028, but his nonprofit Advancing American Freedom is an institution that will give him a platform to do so.
1. Five-way GOP gubernatorial primary
Call it Hoosier Hysteria. Call it a partisan free-for-all. Call it what you will, but the five-way GOP gubernatorial to be the heir apparent leading the state into what could be 24 years of a Republican governorship is historic, one not seen since Indiana adopted open primaries in 1976. As outgoing Sen. Mike Braun, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, former Indiana Economic Development Corporation toppers Brad Chambers and Eric Doden, and former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill vie to replace a term-limited Gov. Eric Holcomb, it promises to be a pitched political food fight.
So far, the contest has been a nationalized race to the right on fighting of the threats from China and immigration, with Doden and Chambers also carving out lanes to run on the future of Indiana’s economy. With Democrats running a former Republican in Jennifer McCormick, the erstwhile former superintendent of public instruction, it remains to be seen whether she will be able to mount a serious general election challenge.
For now, the action—and Indiana’s future—hangs in the balance among the Republicans.
NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN: What major stories did I miss? What stories would you rank higher than I did? Rank lower?