TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Rileigh Simon, a Turning Point Action field representative, flew into Indiana one week before the state’s primaries to, as he put it, “unleash the true power of the force.”
This particular “force” is fueled by President Donald Trump’s desire for revenge. Simon and his Turning Point colleagues came to Terre Haute to make good on Trump’s pledge to oust the Republican state senators who voted against redistricting last December.
On Wednesday, the Turning Point team, which included one local field representative, was setting up a get-out-the-vote operation for Brenda Wilson, the Trump-backed primary challenger to state Sen. Greg Goode. They had lawn signs and fliers. A Spotify playlist titled “Trump Rally” blared on a speaker at the outdoor Fairbanks Park amphitheater on the banks of the Wabash River.
Four people showed up, three of whom were part of the same family.
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(Other Turning Point Action events appear to have drawn larger crowds.)
Trump’s attempt to rebuke the red-state Republicans who rebuked him first has animated normally quiet state Senate races into litmus tests of the presidency. It’s left some wondering if the White House and the wider MAGA infrastructure have overplayed their hand, especially during what is widely expected to be a difficult midterm year for Republicans.
“This is not an ideological battle, it’s about allegiance to Trump,” said Marc Short, a Republican adviser who served as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff. “It’s a lot of carnage for very low return.”
Eight of the 21 Republican state senators who voted against redistricting are up for reelection. Seven of them are facing primary challengers backed by Trump on Tuesday, May 5. Outside spending has poured in to back the president’s picks. Club for Growth Action, for example, told NOTUS it’s spending $2 million across eight races, targeting incumbents in seven of them.
The challengers have driven up the costs of campaigning in Indiana. The Senate Majority Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm for incumbent state Senate Republicans, has spent more than $2.4 million in 2026 — more than they spent during the entire campaign season in 2022, per the Indiana Capital Chronicle.
“These aren’t local elections anymore,” said Republican state Sen. Sue Glick, who voted against redistricting but is not up for reelection this year. Come Tuesday, she said, “We’ll find out if money talks.”
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When Trump declared his desire to oust the “RINOs” who prevented a new congressional map that could have yielded two more Republican seats, major national groups like Turning Point and Club for Growth immediately said they would join the fight. The two groups pledged to spend millions to unseat the anti-redistricting Republicans.
Gov. Mike Braun, Sen. Jim Banks, and the pro-redistricting super PAC Fair Maps Indiana Action run by the former Mike Pence adviser Marty Obst all said they planned to spend six or more figures on the races.
On the ground, State Sen. Travis Holdman, one of the Republicans who voted against redistricting and a county GOP chair in Holdman’s district, said Braun struggled to recruit challengers. Another Republican insider in the state not affiliated with Holdman’s campaign told NOTUS the same. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
When Trump endorsed a candidate to primary Holdman — realtor and first-term Bluffton, Indiana, city councilman Blake Fiechter — Fiechter hadn’t yet filed his paperwork.
“They’re trying to force your hand,” Fiechter recalled his wife telling him of Trump’s endorsement. At the time, he’d already taken a few calls from the White House. He decided to run, but soon dropped out after becoming overwhelmed by campaigning. After visiting the White House where he met Trump, he jumped back into the race.
Now three months into campaigning, uncertainty hangs over the final days of the primary as to whether MAGA’s full-scale retribution campaign will work, even in Trump country.
Trump’s national approval rating sits at just 37% as gas prices rise and the economy worsens because of the war in Iran, though his approval rating is around 49% in Indiana. Of the districts with Trump-backed challengers, Holdman’s is one of the Trumpiest. The president won all four counties that are entirely in his district by more than 70% in 2024.
Fiechter thinks Trump’s endorsement boosted his name recognition and earned him favor among MAGA loyalists. What he doesn’t know is whether that’s actually helping him.
Club for Growth Action and Win It Back PAC have sent a barrage of mailers and flooded television screens with the message that Holdman abandoned Trump on redistricting and the president stands with Fiechter. It’s made it hard to make his campaign about anything else, he said.
“I do feel like I’ve been lumped with a Trump endorsement and redistricting,” Fiechter said. “I don’t have the ability or the funds to really push out the ‘Blake Fiechter message’ of why I’m really, actually very passionate about northeast Indiana and Indiana as a whole.”
He briefly worked with a campaign consultant but parted ways. “This person didn’t live in D.C., but they were a campaign manager that I realized very quickly was D.C.,” Fiechter said. Plus, he couldn’t afford it.
Still, Fiechter gives the national groups the benefit of the doubt. “They are doing their messaging based on probably things that they are seeing, or they know that I probably have no clue about,” he said.
In front of about 20 people at a Rotary Club lunch in Bluffton, Fiechter had to answer for the national attention on his candidacy.
“Most of us here are just so sick of the negative,” an older man in the room told him. “Whoever’s behind your money started it.”
Fiechter responded with a brief lesson on campaign finance laws. These groups are 501(c)(4)s, which are not required to disclose their donors and cannot coordinate with candidates.
“I have no knowledge of when or what they’re sending out,” he reiterated to NOTUS. “I find out when I open my mailbox.”
Fiechter said he’s become persona non grata at events with old-school party figures. He said repeatedly that he was exhausted. His phone buzzes constantly. He’s looking forward to slowing down this summer. The campaign has become all-consuming.
“I would go to bed, I would dream about the campaign,” he said. “I would physically wake up, but I would already be mentally exhausted, like before my feet hit the ground.”
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Holdman, the stoic former prosecutor and 18-year veteran of the state Senate defending his seat from Fiechter, said he sleeps well at night.
“I go to the gym three or four days a week and get a good workout in, and I take two Tylenol PMs every night,” Holdman said.
He sees these races as a national referendum on Trump. He doesn’t think all eight incumbents will lose. And even if the races are close, he thinks it will “send a message that [Trump] may not be as influential as what he once was.”
“I think the shine is wearing off a little bit,” he said.
Holdman’s campaign bills itself as pro-life, pro-Second Amendment rights, pro-family, pro-small business, pro-low taxation and pro-cutting government spending. In other words, he’s a conservative Republican. Trump has called him a RINO and an “American Last politician.”
“I didn’t know I was an enemy of the president,” Holdman said. “I’ve supported him. I sent money to his campaign.”
He said he doesn’t donate to Trump anymore. Holdman said the state Senate Republican Campaign Committee has spent $60,000 to $70,000 on his reelection bid. He’d outraised Fiechter by more than $180,000 as of April 17, per financial disclosures. Holdman reported several more large contributions in the days leading up to the election.
National leaders’ involvement at the state level was a “step too far,” Holdman said. “It’s revenge and retribution for not voting the way somebody wanted us to vote,” he said. And it isn’t working as a political strategy, he added. “I think people are able to see through it.”
“If you’re pro-life, pro-gun, it makes no sense that a person like that would be considered a RINO,” a campaign volunteer for another incumbent senator facing a Trump-backed challenger said. “It’s a whole redefinition of what it means to be a Republican.”
There’s a lot of opposition among establishment Republicans in the state to the nationalization of Indiana’s primaries.
“We don’t want D.C. dictating what we do in Indiana,” said Preston Wright, the Wells County GOP chair. “They’re just bringing in all these national talking points into Indiana to try to get these people elected.”
In a statement, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said the group was “proud to stand with Indiana voters who are demanding more from their elected officials.” Turning Point Action did not respond to a request for comment.
“All these races are going to be close,” said the campaign volunteer, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about the races. “You can’t have all that spending and not have potential defeats.”
Steve Shine, the chair of the Allen County GOP and longest-serving county chair in the state who doesn’t live in Holdman’s district, has decorated his Fort Wayne office with photos of him and America’s most powerful politicians: House Speaker Mike Johnson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Banks and Trump.
He does recognize the harm that can come when those same leaders in Washington meddle in local elections.
“It removes, to some degree, local authority, and by nationalizing it, there is less ability to connect with the local voters,” Shine said. “When you have one blanket message, it wipes that localism out.”
He doesn’t criticize Trump for taking sides in the primary. “It’s his prerogative.” And he doesn’t consider the outside spending to be a waste. “It’s a use of money to broaden your base of support.”
Still, the attack ads from the groups are getting old.
“I am just looking forward to waking up a week from today and having survived a bad dream,” Shine said in his office last week.
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At an Adams County GOP dinner about a week before primary day, chairman Steve Justus tried to bring some humor to the situation in front of a crowd of Republican state legislators, donors, candidates and party members.
“The governor’s office heard about this, and I got a call to see if it’d be possible they could do a revote on the redistricting,” he joked.
He got a few nervous laughs. One person booed.
There’s no question that Trump has changed the Republican Party. In Indiana, the battle over redistricting has perhaps cemented the Trumpification of what it means to be a Republican. It’s bringing new faces to the state — and pushing others out.
State Rep. Ed Clere, who opposed redistricting, decided not to seek reelection as a Republican because of the rancor. He is running for mayor in New Albany, Indiana as an independent instead.
“I’ve never seen the statehouse more divided and dysfunctional than it is now, and that is a direct reflection of the divisive and dysfunctional politics of Washington, D.C., making their way into Indiana,” Clere said.
“In the previous era, the Republican leadership would have figured it out rather than allowing a divisive and expensive contest to continue.”
An Indiana Republican insider said he’s noticing a new generation of MAGA acolytes finding a foothold in the party.
“I see this weird split right now in our party, where we have people buying into these 18- to 25-year-old kids who have just popped up on the scene,” the insider said. “And then there’s these candidates buying into it. People like myself and others who have been doing this a long time — and have worked our butts off to get to where we are today — see our party falling apart a little bit.”
Those following Trump’s lead say the party is at greater risk of falling apart if it doesn’t pay attention to national trends. Republicans and Democrats are in an all-out redistricting war, from Virginia to Louisiana — a battle now reinvigorated by the Supreme Court.
“With his no vote on redistricting, [Goode] disenfranchised Hoosier voices at the national level,” said Isaac Wright, a car salesman in Terre Haute who was one of the four people who showed up to the Turning Point Action event the week before the primary. “I mean, that vote very well could cause us to lose the House.”
Back in Bluffton, Fiechter said he wasn’t sure where he stood on redistricting when the state legislature first took it up. Now, he cares deeply.
“If the Democrats gain control, we’re just going to see two years of political chaos,” he said.
But is all the publicity from national groups around his campaign worthwhile?
Fiechter shrugged.
“We’ll see. I don’t know.”
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