Abdul-Hakim Shabazz: What $13M and a presidential endorsement buys you

Here is what happens when you spend $13.5 million in dark money in an Indiana primary, deploy a sitting president, a governor, both U.S. senators, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, and a national political operation built to enforce loyalty: you win five seats.

Well. Technically three.

Two of the five Republican incumbents the Trump operation defeated Tuesday — Jim Buck and Greg Walker — had already announced they were leaving the Indiana Senate before the redistricting fight ever happened.

They reversed course only because they decided the redistricting vote required them to. They came back not as career politicians clinging to power but as men who had loaded the U-Haul, then carried boxes back into the house.

The voters of Senate Districts 21 and 41 watched and politely declined to help with the unpacking.

So, if you’re scoring the Trump campaign honestly: three sitting senators who actually wanted their jobs (Travis Holdman, Dan Dernulc, Linda Rogers) and two retirement reversers. The retirement reversers were not exactly heavy lifts. The headline says five. The math says three.

The most colorful detail of the night belongs to Blake Fiechter, the real estate agent who beat Holdman after dropping out of the race in February for lack of money, then taking a meeting at the White House in March and rediscovering his appetite for public service shortly thereafter. The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways. So do super PACs.

Three. For $13.5 million. That is $4.5 million a seat.

Now consider what that $13.5 million did not buy. It did not buy Sen. Ron Alting, the longest-serving member of the Indiana Senate. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith spent a year personally calling him a fake Republican; Alting will be back. It did not buy Sen. Greg Goode in Terre Haute. As of late Tuesday, it had not bought Sen. Spencer Deery either, who appears to have survived the most-attacked state legislative race in Indiana history despite being the first Republican senator to publicly oppose redistricting. Sen. Liz Brown’s Fort Wayne race remained uncalled as of this writing.

And it did not buy — please pay attention to this part — what it was sold to buy, which was the head of Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray.

The math on Bray is brutally simple and almost no one is doing it. There are 40 Republicans in the Indiana Senate. Bray lost five Tuesday. That leaves 35 returning senators who already worked under him, the bulk of whom voted with him against redistricting in December and were rewarded for it on Tuesday by not getting primaried, or by winning the primary they got.

The five Trump-endorsed newcomers, assuming they all win in November and decide their first act in office should be a coup attempt against the pro tem, would need 18 of those 35 to flip. They will not find 18. They may not find five. Bray’s gavel was never on the ballot. The marketing material just said it was.

Indiana voters, it turns out, are still capable of evaluating a senator they have known for 20 years against a senator they met in a TV ad last week, and the senator they know wins.

The other thing worth noting, because no one else will: Secretary of State Diego Morales and his wife, Sidonia, both ran for one of six precinct delegate slots Tuesday. Both finished out of the money.

Indiana’s chief elections officer is now unable to vote for himself at the June convention.

Some days these columns write themselves.• 

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Shabazz is an attorney, radio talk show host and political commentator, college professor
and stand-up comedian. Send comments to [email protected].

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