When Spencer Deery first decided to run for his state Senate seat in western Indiana four years ago, he knew he would face hard moments. Senator Deery admits, however, that he never expected anything like this past week, which has included attacks from leaders in his own party – such as the Indiana governor and President of the United States – and a swatting attack on his family’s home Thursday morning.
But as difficult as this past week has been, Mr. Deery says his vote that triggered it all was not.
After President Donald Trump called for Texas to redraw its congressional maps this summer to create a more advantageous map for the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm elections, focus quickly turned to Indiana in search of more GOP seats. Republicans saw an opportunity here, in a state that President Trump won by double digits in the past three elections. With a Republican governor and Republican supermajorities in both state legislative chambers, the party could pick up two House seats and create a 9-0 GOP district map.
Why We Wrote This
Republican state lawmakers from Indiana have rejected pressure from the White House to conduct a mid-cycle redrawing of their congressional maps. One state senator describes why his conservative values led him to oppose the effort.
The White House has spent significant political capital over the past few months to make that happen. Vice President JD Vance flew to Indiana twice to lobby legislative leaders, and Indiana lawmakers, including statehouse leaders, met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office in August. But last Friday, Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray announced there were not enough votes in his chamber to move forward on redistricting. With 19 Republicans joining the 10 Democrats, senators voted 29-19 to adjourn and not hold the December special session on redistricting as requested by Gov. Mike Braun – an unprecedented move in state history and a proxy vote for where senate Republicans stood on redistricting.
“To me, it really goes to what is the most basic principle in the Constitution? And that is the idea of popular sovereignty, or the idea that the people select their rulers. Anything that undermines that violates my oath of office,” says Mr. Deery, who was one of the first senators to come out against mid-cycle redistricting. He knows that gerrymandering already happens, but it’s “especially egregious,” he says, to do it “whenever we want” in fear of election results.
“I’m not taking this position because I’m opposing conservative values,” he says, pointing to his own conservative voting record and his 100% rating from right-leaning groups such as the Indiana Family Institute and Americans for Prosperity-Indiana. “I’m taking it because of my conservative values.”
At a time when Republican opposition to Mr. Trump’s wishes are rare and often futile, it’s state lawmakers in a ruby red state who have initiated one of the most notable intraparty pushbacks of the president’s second term, coming on the heels of the Congressional vote to release the Justice Department files on convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And while many of these GOP legislators say they share the president’s goals for a Republican majority in the U.S. House following the 2026 midterms, they worry that redistricting could undermine that effort and create rifts at a moment when the party should be united.
“I want us to be focused on winning the midterms,” says Mr. Deery, “and instead we are fracturing the party at just the wrong time.”
GOP redistricting caution emerges
Hoosier legislators aren’t the only ones to push back on mid-cycle redistricting. Republicans in Nebraska and Kansas, as well as Democrats in Maryland, have all declined to move on new maps, some of them citing similar reasons as their peers in Indiana.
“It looked like simply a party maneuver,” Republican state Sen. Merv Riepe of Nebraska told Politico. “I represent my district and I think that’s what democracy is supposed to be about.”
“I would rather just stand on principle and stand on my morals and ethics,” Republican state Rep. Brett Fairchild of Kansas told the New York Times. “That way I can actually look at myself in the mirror and sleep at night. It’s not all just about getting re-elected.”
But arguably no state legislators have faced more White House pressure than those in Indiana, who Mr. Trump has taken to publicly shaming on his Truth Social account over the past week. Between Monday and Tuesday, Mr. Trump posted about Indiana Republicans four times, calling Sen. Bray a “RINO,” or a Republican In Name Only, who would soon face a “Primary Problem” as would “any other politician who supports him in this stupidity.”
And on Tuesday, Mr. Deery got just that. Paula Copenhaver, chair of the Fountain County Republican Party and a government affairs director for Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, announced that she was launching a primary re-challenge (she ran against him in 2022). In her press release, Ms. Copenhaver said Hoosiers have “watched weak leadership in the state senate fail to deliver the redistricting plan.” The lieutenant governor has backed her campaign and endorsed the White House’s redistricting plans.
Gov. Braun said in a local television interview Wednesday that he would “definitely” support a change in senate leadership. “We can’t have a senate that’s constantly a wet blanket,” he added. The governor has warned of “long-term political consequences” for senate holdouts, and said he is exploring ways to “compel” them to act, while also condemning an earlier swatting attack on another senator. (So far this week there have been four swatting calls on GOP state senators, including Mr. Deery, with anonymous callers falsely reporting emergencies designed to bring a large police presence.)
Although the state House has also adjourned until January, Republican House Speaker Todd Huston has said his chamber has the votes necessary to redistrict and told his members to stay prepared for a special session in December.
“I’ve been a little taken aback because I just don’t see why this is not fair to do,” says James Bopp, a former deputy attorney general of Indiana who also served as the Republican National Committee vice chairman from 2008 to 2012. He says that senate Republicans in Indiana need to think about the national implications of a Democrat-controlled House in 2026.
“The consequences are so dire… We’re just a part of the puzzle of the whole nation,” says Mr. Bopp. “I would never ask any politician or any person to do something that is unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, or unethical. Gerrymandering is not any of those things. It’s politics.”
Could gerrymandering backfire?
Indiana’s pushback comes at a difficult moment for Republicans’ redistricting efforts, with the GOP facing setbacks in several states. Earlier this month, California passed a ballot measure that allows the state to redraw its congressional map and add as many as five Democrat-leaning districts, an effort to counteract the GOP in Texas. On Tuesday, however, a federal court blocked Texas from using its new plus-five Republican district map, ruling it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The state filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.
This follows an early November court ruling in Utah that threw out a GOP-favored map for one that adds a Democratic-leaning district. Now, after the GOP started a redistricting battle to bolster their efforts next year, Republicans have potentially added four seats nationwide compared to Democrats’ six.
This is one thing Mr. Deery has been worried about – that GOP mid-cycle redistricting efforts could “backfire.” He’s taken to posting videos on Facebook that show him talking to constituents, and during one recent walk in the woods he explained some of his redistricting concerns. By “changing the math and spreading Republican voters” across the two current Democratic-held districts, Republicans could make themselves vulnerable (a process known as “dummymandering”). “Without Trump on the ballot,” he says, “it’s not a clear win.”
Mr. Bray echoed these sentiments in an interview with Politico this week. Instead, both Mr. Bray and Mr. Deery say Republicans should focus on finding a qualified candidate to run in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, which Democrats have won the past two cycles by single digits.
Mr. Deery says “no small amount of money” was spent on robo calls and text messages to his Republican constituents, telling them to contact him and tell him to change his mind. But the majority of the voters who called him after these messages offered their support for his efforts instead.
“Most of the noise has not been coming from constituents,” he says. “It goes to Hoosier culture, which is that we are a state that has a strong sense of fairness.”
