How Indiana’s Gop Gubernatorial Primary Became A ‘campaign About Nothing’

INDIANAPOLIS — The GOP gubernatorial primary in the heavily Republican, traditionally congenial state of Indiana has become so divisive that Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, who is running in a crowded field to succeed Gov. Eric Holcomb, says that she has only spoken to him once in the last six months.

The governor doesn't see Crouch as his natural successor, and his own installed GOP state party chair accused her of creating a “toxic” dynamic in the party. She and five other candidates have altogether sunk a record-breaking $40 million into the contest.

But what may be most surprising is not the money or the vitriol, but the focus of the campaign itself. The run-up to the Tuesday primary has been litigated almost entirely on national issues — Sen. Mike Braun’s now-recanted support for Black Lives Matter, where the candidates stand on China, and immigration — a stark example of the nationalization of politics at every level in the era of Donald Trump.

In a state that for decades saw its politics hew to humdrum statewide concerns like shortening wait times at the DMV, adopting daylight saving time and fixing property taxes, Indiana is hardly a factor at all.

“It's kind of comical to see people running for governor like they're gonna roll back the Chinese and defend the border,” former Gov. Mitch Daniels said. “I mean, who are they kidding? The job will ultimately be about other things.”

While national flashpoints have long resonated in local elections, the extent to which they are transforming politics in this deep-red state is unusual. It’s part of the reason

Holcomb and Daniels both say they are withholding endorsements in the race. And it’s changing the tenor of the debate, too.

“If this campaign about nothing is about anything, it’s about all the candidates’ flaws and the suffocating nature of national politics,” said Pete Seat, a former Indiana GOP and George W. Bush White House spokesperson.

He added: “Candidates have allowed themselves to succumb to the vixen of national politics and filled the airwaves with increasingly hyperbolic ads about combating China and building a wall all to connect with the most likely primary voters.”

In a state under Republican rule at the top of the ticket for nearly two decades — and one known for orderly and genteel succession at the hands of a strong state party — it’s unfamiliar territory following the sunny Republicanism of Daniels and former Gov. Mike Pence, both of whom swore off negative campaigning in Indiana.

Holcomb, who has governed as a relative moderate in the style of his own mentor Daniels, took to social media earlier this year to chide the field on their “slogans” and “empty campaign promises.”

“I think that's a trend that's unfortunate in many respects, and it may be inevitable in federal elections,” said Daniels, who weighed gubernatorial and senatorial bids of his own following his exit from Purdue University, where he served as president for more than a decade. “If it starts to dominate state and local elections, it'll crowd out things that people could do something about, while talking about things they really can't.”

Democrats have not won a statewide race here since 2012. The winner of the Republican primary is highly favored to win in November against Jennifer McCormick, a Democrat who won statewide in 2016 as a Republican state schools chief but switched parties in the Trump era.

For Republicans, the great irony of the race is that the historically large field that is focusing so exclusively on national issues formed, in part, because few of the candidates wanted to run for Braun’s senate seat, citing a disinterest in dealing with dysfunction in Washington.

The contest began forming nearly three years ago, when Fort Wayne developer Eric Doden launched a listening tour. It became increasingly crowded in December of 2022, when Crouch and Braun launched their candidacies within days of one another. Rather than vie to attend to D.C. gridlock, a generationally large GOP bench chose to try to succeed Holcomb.

Braun, who with Trump’s endorsement is firmly ensconced as the field’s front-runner, is expected to run away with the Tuesday contest.

“He started out as the frontrunner. He has name ID. He's got good money, and he has the Trump endorsement, so I'm having a hard time seeing how he doesn't win this,” said Christine Matthews, the GOP pollster who worked for Daniels, of Braun’s candidacy.

By January of this year, both Doden and state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers, the two more socially moderate candidates in the race, were plotting ways to muscle the other out of the field. Doden’s parents, wealthy from a turn in the steel business, dumped millions into his bid. But his campaign went dark over the holidays, leaving Chambers’ camp weighing whether to write Doden’s father a memo offering him a “seat at the table” in a Chambers administration in exchange for his son dropping out of the race, according to two people familiar with the plans and granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s strategy in the closing days of the primary. But that never materialized.

Privately, Doden’s camp said for months that Chambers entered the race too late to make a difference, and should have dropped out earlier to prevent Braun from dividing the field, according to a Doden adviser.

But the baddest blood surfaced between Crouch and Holcomb. Crouch, seeking to distance herself from Holcomb’s path of moderate management during the pandemic — ordering some non-essential businesses to shutter operations — that she gave him a “C” for his performance amid the pandemic in a debate.

“She wants all the positives for being Eric's lieutenant governor, so anything good that she wants to take credit for, but anything that at all seems negative, or that she can create a wedge when she wants to do that and try to get the positives from that,” said Kyle Hupfer, the GOP party chair. “I don't think it's a very honorable approach.”

Crouch, through a spokesperson, declined to punch back, saying her campaign is “about the future of Indiana.”

She said her lack of communication with Holcomb was about wanting “to have their freedom to run my own campaign.”

“It doesn't take a political scientist to see what she wants,” Hupfer said. “She wants her cake and to eat it, too.”