GOP Voters Don’t Want Mike Pence’s Republican Party

Indiana Republican primary voters netted dramatic changes up and down ballots Tuesday, kicking out a wave of establishment-allied incumbents while reinforcing many incumbent conservatives against party-backed challengers from their left. The headlines focused on eight Republican state senators who faced primary challengers backed by President Donald Trump for failing to redistrict the state to combat Democrat-run states’ rampant gerrymandering of congressional districts.

At this writing, by large margins six of the eight Senate challengers have kicked out the anti-redistricting incumbents, including members of senior GOP state leadership. One of the remaining incumbents kept his seat, probably thanks in large part to a low-quality challenger, and the other race is too close to call with a margin of only a few votes, according to NBC, and probably headed to a recount.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, both vocal and in Banks’ case large financial supporters of the primary challengers, have called for state Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray to step down due to the electoral slaughter of his coalition. Indiana’s Republican Party, both at state and county levels, spent big to attack more conservative candidates, and most of that spending failed to protect their incumbents.

The Indiana Senate Majority Campaign Committee, run by Bray, lost two of its steering members to primary challengers Tuesday, including Majority Caucus Chair Travis Holdman. Its largest primary expenditure this year of $600,000, according to the Indiana Family Association’s Micah Clark, attempted to protect Sen. Spencer Deery, whose race is currently within three votes of a loss.

Its second-biggest spend, $492,000, went to Sen. Linda Rogers, whom Clark noted has a “fairly conservative voting record,” yet she lost by 18 points Tuesday. These two races alone sucked up nearly half the SMCC’s financial stockpile as of the end of 2025, when the Indiana Senate tanked redistricting efforts.

Yet that’s not all. The Indiana primaries were not solely about Trump as a figure, as corporate media in and out of state are framing the story, but about the kind of Republican Party its voters want.

You can see that down ballot. In other races that did not include the Trump factor, more conservative candidates also scored wins in the primaries, often while fighting against their own local and state Republican parties.

South Bend-area County Councilwoman Amy Drake won her primary against a Republican challenger who had access to huge amounts of money for a local race, spending what Drake says is some $200,000 to fly in out-of-state door-knockers and airplane banner ads. (Drake is an occasional contributor to The Federalist.) Drake sparked her challenger by not only voting against the unpopular expansion of taxpayer-subsidized data centers in her greater Chicagoland locale, but also by governing as a prudent conservative rather than a patsy for the usual corporate interests.

She first took office in the purple area opposing stringent Covid lockdown measures pushed by local health officials. While re-awarding Drake her Republican seat, local voters kicked out an incumbent Republican councilman who has for the last year caucused with Democrats with backing from … the local Republican Party. Trump endorsed nobody in these local races, and yet voters still kicked out party-backed Republicans in favor of Drake and her ally Jamie O’Brien.

“These victories represent the second set of primaries launched against Republicans on the council since 2024,” Drake wrote in her email newsletter Wednesday morning. “That we’ve managed to beat the perpetrators for a second time in a row is certainly satisfying. These primary attacks were of course launched by the same people who now control the St. Joe County Republican party — why many of us good Rs no longer participate in their functions.”

Over in Fort Wayne, the state’s second-largest city, a similar dynamic is underway, complicated by the surrounding county’s appalling inability this year to deliver election results on election night. The Republican primary race between Trump-endorsed state Sen. Liz Brown and Banks-backed challenger Darren Vogt is currently within a hundred votes and not fully counted as of this writing due to apparently poor election management.

Even if Vogt loses, the race is a clear indicator that for local voters, these primary results are not wholly about Trump. If that were the case, the incumbent Trump endorsed solely for her very prominent support for redistricting should have won with a large margin, like most of the other Trump-endorsed state senators have.

Instead, Brown got electorally spanked, even if she ekes out a narrow win, by defecting from base voters’ priorities through single-handedly blocking a robust state immigration enforcement bill for a year, blocking a constitutional carry bill, and voting against a bill to protect girls from competing with cross-dressing males in high school sports. It’s clear she’s gotten the message, as she reversed herself on all these issues. In addition, Brown has been a strong pro-life ally for years, which certainly earned her base voters’ loyalty, especially against a competitor her campaign says has used in-vitro fertilization.

The point being, Trump’s endorsement of Brown did not give her the massive victory margin other Trump-endorsed candidates achieved. This means a Trump endorsement has weight with Republican voters, but it’s not always enough to offbalance other things they care about. That means that yes, while these election results are definitely a win for Trump, Banks, Braun, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and Turning Point USA Action — all of whom were significant players in these primaries on the more conservative side — these major players are successful because they are delivering what Republican voters are desperate to get from their elected officials.

It’s not about Trump’s personality. It’s not about counter-culture MAGA hats to “own the libs.” It’s about what Trump delivers for voters. Drake and her ally O’Brien won big margins without a Trump endorsement, because voters trust they’ll do the same thing Trump does: deliver prudent, bold conservative policy wins.

These primaries were a proxy war between different wings of the state Republican Party. Trump, Banks, Rokita, Braun, TPUSA, and the Senate primary challengers represented its insurgent conservative wing. The primary losers represent the “establishment” that knifes conservative priorities like it’s their only reason for existing (besides getting kickbacks from big business). In short, the Indiana primaries were a wipeout for the Mike Pence wing of the Indiana Republican Party.

The part of the Republican Party that can’t deflect devastating changes to Virginia’s state constitution, pass the SAVE Act in Congress, deliver trustworthy elections at the state level, back mass deportations, rein in predatory big businesses, get its attention away from foreign wars that drive inflation, impeach corrupt judges, and enact mass firings of administrative state bureaucrats better take notice. Voters like Trump, not because of his hair or sometimes-embarrassing comments, but because he’s changing how the Republican Party does business.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist and the researcher and host for The Federalist’s forthcoming lawfare podcast series, “Overruled.” Her latest book with Regnery is “False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America.” A happy wife and the mother of six children, her ebooks include the NEW “300 Classic Books for Ages 9 to Adult,” and the bestselling “Classic Books For Young Children.” An 20-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media including Tucker Carlson, CNN, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Ben Shapiro, and Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Joy is also the cofounder of a high-performing Christian classical school and the author and coauthor of classical curricula. Her traditionally published books also include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.