Hoosiers Fire Pence-Endorsed RINOs in Brutal Primary Rejection
In December 2025, I ripped into Indiana Senate Republicans for their jaw-dropping act of political malpractice: killing a Trump-backed mid-decade redistricting plan that would have turned a solid 7-2 House edge into a locked-down 9-0 dominance in one of the reddest states in America. Twenty-one GOP senators teamed up with Democrats to block it, cowering behind “norms,” “collegiality,” and the usual fear of media scolds instead of seizing a generational opportunity to secure power. I called it cowardice: a self-inflicted wound that handed Democrats breathing room they never would have granted us. Last night, May 5-6, 2026, Hoosier voters sent the bill due. And they didn’t just pay it: they delivered a brutal reckoning.
Trump-endorsed challengers wiped out at least five (and as many as six) of the targeted incumbents who voted no. Senate Majority Caucus Chair Travis Holdman went down hard, crushed 61-39 by Blake Fiechter. Others like Greg Walker, Dan Dernulc, Linda Rogers, and Rick Niemeyer got the same treatment. These weren’t close calls in sleepy races: the base turned out to clean house.
This wasn’t blind cult-of-personality stuff, as the usual suspects on the left are spinning it. As Megan Basham correctly observed:
Wrong lesson. Republican voters chose Trump because they were tired of feeling like their leadership had no interest in beating the Democrats. They were tired of feeling like even when they won, they lost.
This shellacking tonight didn’t happen because of Trump. His candidates… https://t.co/wBab6rMtsF
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) May 6, 2026
His candidates have lost before. It happened because the base is tired of settling for representation content with losing slowly.
David Marcus at Fox News and voices like Ed Morrissey at Hot Air have hammered the same point for months: Democrats play ruthless hardball with maps in states they control, while too many red-state Republicans opt for the high-road shrug that leaves seats on the table. Indiana just proved the voters get it.
A Direct Repudiation of the Mike Pence Wing
The results carried an even clearer message. In Senate District 21, longtime incumbent Jim Buck—explicitly endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence—was routed by Trump-backed challenger Tracey Powell. Buck had been in the legislature since the 1990s, embodying the cautious, institutional, decorum-first Republicanism of the Pence/Daniels era. Pence’s very public break with Trump to back him turned this into a proxy fight in Pence’s own backyard of Bartholomew County. The voters chose the fighter over the institutionalist. Trump won that round decisively.
This is bigger than one race. It’s the base rejecting the pre-2016 model of polite incrementalism and managed expectations: the wing that always seems more worried about “fairness” and media approval than maximizing conservative gains. Hoosiers didn’t hand supermajorities to Republicans so they could punt on locking in safe seats while Democrats gerrymander with impunity elsewhere. They want results, not rituals.
The rejected map would have cracked deep-blue urban pockets—like André Carson’s Indianapolis 7th and Frank Mrvan’s northwest 1st—by pairing them with overwhelming rural red counties. Standard, legal, aggressive politics that blue states execute without a second thought. Indiana’s old guard chose comfort and “collegiality” instead. The base just reminded them that safe seats aren’t a birthright when you fumble opportunities like this.
The Broader Pattern Holds
This fits the recurring story since the Tea Party: voters are exhausted with leadership content to lose slowly, even after big wins. Trump’s endorsements channeled that fury, but the frustration runs deeper. With national House margins always razor-thin, those two extra safe Indiana seats could have been firewalls in tough cycles. Instead, the holdouts risked it all for institutional inertia.
To the new senators and the survivors: you now have an explicit mandate. Govern like it. Secure the border, restrain spending, advance pro-life and pro-growth priorities without endless apologies or unilateral disarmament. Revert to the old slow-walk, and the cycle will repeat.
The cowards were primaried. The Pence-style institutionalists took a direct hit in their home turf. Indiana voters just spoke: loud, clear, and unapologetic. The Establishment types in the party had better listen.
Play to win, or get out of the way. The reckoning is here.
