Scott Presler told a crowd in a West Lafayette park in April that he had come to Indiana to hold accountable any Republican state senator who was not being a true conservative voice, and he said he had kept that promise.
Presler joined a rally of roughly 20 Hoosiers for Paula Copenhaver, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Spencer Deery in one of the Indiana Republican state senate primaries now being pulled into a national fight over President Donald Trump’s agenda. Presler said Indiana has Republican control of the House, Senate and governorship, but its state Senate is not acting like true conservatives and cannot deliver Gov. Mike Braun’s agenda.
The race comes after Indiana Senate Republicans voted against Trump’s redistricting plan in December, and after lawmakers rejected new maps last year that could have given Republicans additional seats in Congress. Trump vowed to primary everyone who opposed him, and Turning Point USA is also trying to unseat Indiana Republicans who voted against him. The pressure has turned a local contest into a test of whether the party’s most loyal voters will punish lawmakers who broke with the president.
Copenhaver argued that the failed redistricting push could carry national consequences. She said it could affect whether Republicans keep a majority in Washington, D.C., and warned that failing to use political power when they have it helps the other side. She also said Deery has not done a good job representing rural concerns.
Copenhaver and Deery met before in 2022 in the same district. This time, she arrived with a louder megaphone after being invited to the White House earlier this year to meet with Trump. Copenhaver said he was direct about the issue and told her they had his support and that they were going to win.
Laura Merrifield Wilson, a political science professor, said it is highly unusual for a U.S. president to get involved in state Senate races in a state where he has no personal or meaningful connection. She said Trump’s push for redistricting is unpopular with Republicans and Democrats across the country. That leaves Indiana Republicans fighting not just for a seat in West Lafayette, but over whether defiance of Trump will be treated as disloyalty everywhere else he has influence.
The answer, for now, is that the national machinery has already arrived. What happens in the Indiana Republican state senate primaries will show whether Trump’s allies can turn a break with him into a primary defeat.
