What Happened in Indiana Wasn’t a Win for Trump. It Was a Win for the People.
On Tuesday night, Indiana held primary races for some of its state Senate seats. That isn’t normally an occurrence meriting national attention, but this time it was.
This year’s primaries were a test, one that the legacy corporate media completely failed to understand. And though the results were unmistakable, they’re still being fundamentally misinterpreted.
Seven of the Republican state senators who had voted with the Democrats to defeat a congressional redistricting plan that would have taken deep-red Indiana from a 7-2 map — meaning seven Republican House members to two Democrats — to a 9-0 map were up for reelection.
As of this writing, at least five, and quite possibly six, of the seven were beaten on Tuesday night.
Most quite badly, in fact:
The victories by Trump-backed candidates were decisive.
Trevor De Vries topped Indiana state Sen. Dan Dernulc by a 75%-24% margin; Tracey Powell beat state Sen. Jim Buck in a 65%-35% race; and Brian Schmutzler and Michelle Davis defeated state Sens. Linda Rogers and Greg Walker, respectively, by 18-point margins.
The first incumbent taken out by Trump was longtime Indiana state Sen. Travis Holdman, who has been in office since 2008 and is a member of Indiana Senate leadership.
Holdman was bested by Blake Fiechter by a 61%-39% margin.
At press time, Indiana state Sen. Greg Goode was the only incumbent opposed to redistricting who was able to fend off a Trump-backed primary challenge.
Goode defeated Brenda Wilson in the state’s District 38 primary, where a third Republican candidate in the race, Alexandra Wilson, received about 10% of the vote.
The White House had pressured Alexandra Wilson to get out of the race ahead of Tuesday’s primary, reportedly over concerns her candidacy would confuse voters attempting to cast ballots for Brenda Wilson.
I have no inside knowledge, but I can just about guarantee that Alexandra Wilson is a stooge for Greg Goode. That’s how establishment/Bush Republican politics works. These guys are absolutely brutal infighters who suddenly have zero interest in the rough-and-tumble when it’s Democrats in the opposite corner rather than conservatives.
But even the New York Post had this wrong. The headline of their writeup on Tuesday’s elections? “Trump-backed candidates take out GOP incumbents in Indiana, dominate Ohio primary in big night for president.”
It’s not that this isn’t a factual interpretation of what happened in Indiana. It’s that it’s far too shallow.
The press release quotes from Indiana’s conservative GOP politicians helped with the Post’s narratives, to be sure. Sen. Jim Banks gave a quote that wrote the article all by itself: “Everyone in Indiana politics should have learned an important lesson today: President Trump is the single most popular Republican among Hoosier voters,” Banks said. “Indiana is a conservative state, and we deserve conservatives in our State Senate who have a pulse on Republican voters.”
And Mike Braun, the Republican governor who had pushed the 9-0 map only to be thwarted by the state-senate RINOs, called the repudiation “a historic night for Indiana.”
Historic night for Indiana as Republicans stood with me and President Trump to nominate some great America First conservatives. I look forward to winning big in November and serving Hoosiers with this team in the statehouse! ???????? https://t.co/fPt5DaElVU
— Mike Braun (@braun4indiana) May 6, 2026
It’s easy to just say “This was a win for Trump.” And it’s certainly true that PACs affiliated with Team Trump went to work, putting close to $20 million into those races by one estimate.
But to pin this on the president or to credit him is to miss something fundamental. It’s to miss why Donald Trump is even around at all.
Those state senators in Indiana were told by the people who voted them into office, some of whom four or five times before Tuesday night, that if the Democrats were going to become a predatory political party attacking the basic cultural, economic, and political foundations of the country on lots of different fronts and especially including hardcore gerrymandering such as that practiced by California and Virginia and contemplated in other states — next-door Illinois being a perfect example — there must be a response.
The voters weren’t quiet about that. The 9-0 redistricting map sailed through the state House of Representatives, and voters burned up the phone lines of those state senators demanding they pass the new map.
They chose to side with Democrat politicians over the people who voted them into office, and so those became the people who voted them out of office.
And there was no reason not to go 9-0 with the map in Indiana.
I’m not an absolutist on this issue in saying that, by the way. I’m for Louisiana drawing a 5-1 map rather than a 6-0 map, because I don’t think you can reliably get to 6-0; the city of New Orleans is 90 percent blue and its population covers about half of a congressional district. I don’t think there’s a way to distribute Orleans Parish (which is the city proper) into a congressional district or two without turning them purple — especially with the way the Democrat fundraising/Chinese-money-laundering infrastructure would be turned on in an effort to take down Steve Scalise, for example.
But you don’t have an Orleans Parish in Indiana. The blue pockets in that state aren’t blue enough, and they aren’t big enough, that Indiana puts anything essential at risk in a 9-0 map. Just like Tennessee and Mississippi should go all red.
Republican voters have watched the Democrat Party morph from something acceptably bad to something unacceptably worse, and during the four years of Joe Biden’s White House regency, it was made quite clear to us that the Democrats are a real and mortal threat to our way of life and the future of the country as founded.
It wasn’t just the E. Jean Carroll trial or the Mar-a-Lago raid. It was SWAT raids on anti-abortion activists. It was the FBI staking out Catholics at the Latin Mass. It was TSA lists for conservative activists. IRS audits. Federally enforced social media banishments. COVID medical tyrannies. And a whole host of other unacceptable affronts and overreaches. When Biden declared half the country to be enemies in that shameful speech in Philadelphia, it wasn’t Trump who was the target — it was us.
And the least we should be able to expect is for the politicians we elect to defend us against that party is that they actually do it.
When Virginia grasps at a 10-1 map, Indiana, which is a lot redder than Virginia is blue, should damn well go to 9-0. Or at least 8-1.
And pretending, when you spit out the bit rather than doing your job, that you aren’t going to be ordered around by Donald Trump won’t cut it.
One of the entitled RINOs who was turned out of office by 20 points Tuesday is someone named Travis Holdman. Here was his totally non-bitter reaction to the drubbing his own poor decisions earned him:
Soon-to-be former Indiana State Senator Travis Holdman, who was one of the deciding Republican votes that blocked redistricting in the state, says he only lost because he was “retaliated against.”
No, you lost because when we tell you to jump, you should be asking how high. pic.twitter.com/c3eTE68G6v
— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) May 6, 2026
Holdman thought he was smarter than the people who elected him. That’s a common failing of Republican politicians, who get into the corridors of power and forget why they’re there. Maybe, with this newfound free time, he can contemplate the fact that he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, and that his problem isn’t Donald Trump but rather the people who made Trump president.
Those were Holdman’s people too, at some point. Until he broke faith with them. Which is not about Donald Trump. It’s about something a lot larger than that; Trump is only a symptom of it.
And the GOP has very, very many Travis Holdmans. In Indiana, the people signaled very loudly that’s unacceptable.
Hopefully, this message will be received in Washington as well.
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