Knocking on doors in West Lafayette, Indiana, state Sen. Spencer Deery is campaigning for his political life. He zips through a subdivision on an electric scooter, leaves glossy flyers with his cell number and tries to persuade voters one by one that he is not the “RINO” portrayed in television ads.
Deery is one of seven incumbent Republican state senators who voted late last year against President Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push in Indiana. That vote drew a rare rebuke from Trump, who posted on Truth Social that those Republicans “should be ashamed” and that “every one of these people should be primaried.”
What followed was heavy outside intervention. A Trump-aligned dark money group funneled $1.5 million to an organization running TV ads against the incumbents. AdImpact’s tally shows nearly $7 million has been spent on TV ads this year in Indiana state senate races, most of it aimed at defeating the Republicans who opposed the redrawn congressional maps. The Club for Growth, led by former Congressman David McIntosh, is spending roughly $2 million more, mostly on mailers.
“It’s an all-in campaign to support the challengers to give them, I think a very good chance of winning and being the new senators,” McIntosh said. Marty Obst, a longtime Republican consultant who led the redistricting push, called it a “top political priority of President Trump’s” and said, “the bottom line is there’s consequences and accountability to those actions.”
Several outside groups aligned with the president worked with Trump’s political team to recruit challengers and marshal resources. Paula Copenhaver, who is challenging Deery, said she received a call from a presidential political advisor in January and, by March, had posed for photos in the Oval Office with Trump. “To meet him, to shake his hand… it is truly humbling,” Copenhaver said after the White House visit.
For longtime legislators who opposed the redistricting effort, the infusion of outside cash and national attention has been jarring. Jim Buck, who served in the Indiana Senate for 18 years, said he has “never had Washington meddle into our elections like they have this time.” Buck recalled being warned that outside groups would “try to destroy your name, destroy your reputation and they’re going to bring money you wouldn’t imagine.” He said he faced more than $1 million in spending against him in his race, compared with $150,000 he previously described as big money.
Campaigning outside an early voting site, Deery said many voters now recognize him from negative ads. Some approach him with cold stares; others praise him for opposing the redistricting push. “I’ve never voted for a Republican, except one time, but I went and voted for you because of all the negative ads against you,” voter Bharat Bhargava told Deery.
Deery says the contest has shifted from local issues—he lists affordability as the top concern—to a broader fight over power and federal influence on state decisions. “What is being set up here is the potential model for any party to raise ridiculous amounts of money in DC and then to use that to try to control the states,” he said, arguing that such interventions “undermine the 10th Amendment and the ability of states to make their own decisions.”
Critics on the right have also questioned the approach. Former Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who opposed the redistricting push early on, called the national intervention “dumb” and said, “They’re spending all this money just to feel better that they whacked somebody that didn’t kowtow.”
A political advisor to Trump, speaking off the record, predicted the incumbents were headed to their “political slaughter” and framed the effort as part of a broader plan to send a message in Indiana and to help defend Republican majorities in Congress this fall.
For challengers like Copenhaver, the race is about more than retribution, she says. “By not redistricting… when we have an opportunity to do good and we don’t, then that is a grave concern for me,” she told local media.
The primary has become a test of Trump’s capacity for political retribution and of whether large sums of out-of-state money and national political muscle can reshape state legislative bodies. With millions poured into TV ads and mail campaigns and presidential endorsements on the line, the contests will offer a measure of how nationalized and costly intraparty fights have become—and what that means for state control over local decisions.
