Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
It’s less than four weeks from Election Day, and Diego Morales, the Republican candidate for Indiana secretary of state, has found himself mired in a series of controversies, all of which have Democrats believing they have a fighting chance at winning their first statewide office since 2012.
The list of accusations against Morales includes embellishing his military record, denying the results of the 2020 presidential election (then changing his stance), purchasing a campaign car with $44,000 in campaign contributions and, most recently, sexual misconduct.
Destiny Wells, the Democratic candidate from Morgan County, so far has avoided any major dustups in what is her first campaign for elected office, giving her party hope that she can become the first Democrat to win the position since Joe Hogsett, now the mayor of Indianapolis, claimed victory in 1990.
“There are several reasons to think this race could be competitive when we look at the polling, the division in the Republican Party at the convention, and the bad press one of the candidates has been getting,” said Andrew Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics. “I think it is safe to predict the margin between the top two candidates will be narrower than in recent secretary of state elections.”
A recent snapshot shows a tightening race: An IndyPolitics poll of 600 likely voters conducted by Illinois-based ARW Strategies showed Wells leading the race with 36% of the vote, compared to 32% for Morales and 7% for Libertarian candidate Jeff Maurer. The remaining 25% of voters said they were undecided, and the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
But the poll’s sample was relatively small, and many voters don’t pay close attention to down-ballot races.
“Voters often have not known much about secretary of state candidates, and so each voter has voted for the candidate with the party label preferred by that voter,” Downs said. “This is why the secretary of state race has been used as a measure of party affiliation in the state.”
In the right scenario for Wells, Maurer could pull enough votes away from traditional Republican voters to give her a slight edge over Morales.
Maurer, a member of the Indiana Air National Guard, is campaigning on a pledge to conduct an independent audit of all 92 counties following each election.
Dogged campaigner
Morales, 43, grew up in Guatemala before emigrating to Clark County, just across the Ohio River from Louisville. He attended Silver Creek High School, then received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, his MBA from Purdue University and his master’s from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
In campaign messaging, Morales touts his military experience, but his detractors accuse him of exaggerating his service. Records show he spent three months and 18 days on active duty as part of his training period and separated from the Indiana National Guard three years before his eight-year commitment was over.
In 2018, Morales ran for the Republican nomination to represent the 4th Congressional District and placed third to eventual general-election winner, U.S. Rep. Jim Baird. During his campaign, Morales was criticized for embellishing parts of his resume, including his work as an aide for then-Gov. Mike Pence and his time in the Secretary of State’s Office.
Records show Morales was fired from that office in 2009 under then-Secretary Todd Rokita for failing to agree to a work-improvement plan. When he landed another job in the office in 2011 under then-Secretary Charlie White, he was disciplined for failing to complete work. He later told The Indianapolis Star the documents were part of a smear campaign by envious colleagues.
More recently, two women came forward to accuse Morales of unwanted sexual advances and inappropriate contact more than a decade ago.
Morales has denied the allegations, calling them “politically motivated.”
In an interview with IndyPolitics.org publisher Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, one woman described her experience working with Morales in 2009, saying Morales asked her to grab drinks and invited her to partake in “campaign sex.” After he forcibly kissed her and she rejected him, he stonewalled her at work for weeks, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
Another woman said Morales invited her to his apartment to pick up a gift from a congressman and repeatedly tried to kiss her, IndyPolitics reported.
Morales has been notably absent from public debates. He was a no-show at a League of Women Voters televised debate on Monday, and a chair reserved for him sat empty during an election law forum hosted last month by the Indiana chapter of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
In response, Morales has said he would rather focus his energy on traveling the state’s 92 counties, which he says he has done several times.
“I like to visit with voters one-on-one,” Morales said. “That’s what I will continue to do.”
Morales’ campaign has taken a decidedly grassroots approach. He is tireless on the campaign trail, routinely appearing at county GOP events throughout the state.
Morales is not the first Hispanic candidate to seek statewide office, but his allies still see his effort as important for the Hispanic community.
“It’s a perfect role model for others who are seeking office in lower races throughout the county and townships,” said Victoria Gresham, state chair for the Indiana chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, who described Morales as friendly, approachable and open-minded. “Given his immigrant status and becoming naturalized here, for us, he is a walking American dream.”
Morales said he hopes his victory opens doors for other minority communities “so they can see that someone like me is able to become a secretary of state in Indiana.”
Some of his critics push back against the notion that a Morales victory equals an achievement for the Hispanic community.
Vanessa Cruz Nichols, professor of political science at Indiana University, said Morales doesn’t lean into his Latino roots. His campaign ad is voiced by a third-party narrator with a flat, Midwestern accent, which she assumes is part of an effort to shield him from biases due to his accent.
“He uses a classic whitewashing strategy that some minority candidates use to reduce their otherness when appealing to a white electorate,” Nichols said.
If elected, Morales has said, he would increase voter confidence by strengthening voter ID laws. To increase voter turnout, he would roll out public campaigns to educate Hoosiers about the voting process.
“I’m going to go back to the minority communities so they can get engaged in this process,” he said.
Despite his alleged shortcomings, Morales has earned the backing of several high-profile Republicans, including Rokita, former Secretary of State Ed Simcox and former Vice President Mike Pence, who hosted a fundraiser in Carmel for Morales this week.
‘Came back as a Democrat’
Wells, 38, grew up working on the family farm in a conservative household in rural Morgan County. The first in her family to go to college, she attended Indiana University, where she majored in political science. At 19 years old, she joined Army ROTC and was commissioned into the Indiana National Guard when she graduated.
Like many in her age group, Wells said she began identifying with the Democratic Party during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“I traveled around the world a few times and came back as a Democrat,” she said.
Matt Mehan, who served in the Guard with Wells in Texas, said she was always eager to debate with her cohorts.
“She’s very knowledgeable about things. She likes to point out the flaws, obviously in an attempt to make things better,” Mehan said.
After earning her law degree from the University of Texas, she briefly practiced law in her hometown of Martinsville and founded a legal tech startup before getting deployed to Afghanistan in 2016, an experience that helped her earn the rank of U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel.
While overseas, Wells paid attention to what was happening back home, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, which came just a few weeks after her tour began. She was bothered by some of Trump’s early actions as president, including the decision to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military, an executive order that was later lifted by President Joe Biden.
“When I got home, I felt like I needed to do more,” Wells said. “There’s this notion of democracy abroad, and at the same time, you’re watching stuff happen back home.”
Upon her return to Indiana, Wells began volunteering for Democratic campaigns and using her law bona fides to earn stints as associate corporation counsel for the city of Indianapolis and Marion County and deputy attorney general for Indiana under Curtis Hill.
Her campaign for secretary of state officially launched on Jan. 6, 2022, one year after the insurrection at the Capitol.
Wells is critical of her opponent, pointing to his earlier position that the 2020 election was a “scam.”
“I feel very passionate about this—what I perceive as a mission—in defending this office from an election denier,” Wells said. “But I’m also confident that no one has my skill set that can run for this office at this point in time for the Democratic Party.”
Indiana consistently ranks in the bottom 20% of states in voter turnout, which Wells pointed to when making the argument that Indiana “is a purple state with a turnout problem.”
To alleviate this problem, Wells said, she would advocate for removing restrictions on absentee mail-in voting. Currently, Hoosiers must provide one of 11 excuses when requesting a mail-in ballot, which can include senior citizen status, military service or being sick or disabled.
Wells recently earned the endorsement of ReCenter Indiana, a bipartisan group with the goal of shifting politics away from extremes and motivating more Hoosiers to vote.
Chief of elections
The United States has enjoyed free and fair elections for much of its history, but the GOP’s public campaign against voter fraud and Trump’s claims of a rigged 2020 election have helped cement doubts in the public consciousness about the election process despite scant evidence of widespread voter fraud or ballot-tampering.
Recent polls show about 70% of Republicans don’t think Biden is the legitimate presidential winner of the 2020 election, and that includes some secretary of state candidates in the midterm elections.
In Arizona, the GOP is backing election denier Mark Finchem, who defeated his Republican opponents in the primary by stoking fears of a stolen election. Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee in Nevada, has been a leader in the “Stop the Steal” movement.
Indiana’s secretary of state race hasn’t gotten as much attention as races in battleground states, in part because the office is seen as safely Republican in a decidedly red state.
The election for secretary of state has historically not drawn much attention. The position is largely bureaucratic; in addition to overseeing state elections, the office is responsible for registering new businesses and trademarks, regulating the securities industry, and licensing vehicle dealerships.
But the Supreme Court will soon decide whether to grant state legislatures authority over federal elections, part of a legal argument known as the independent state legislature theory. Democrats fear that a favorable ruling would give state lawmakers the power to override popular votes in presidential elections by refusing to certify results.
“We are living in highly partisan times, and there is a lack of faith in ‘the other party’ to administer elections fairly,” Downs, the political analyst, told IBJ. “Each party is using this as a method to rally their base and hoping their message will bring independent and swing voters to their side.”
When Morales earned his party’s nomination at the Indiana Republican Convention in June, it was seen as a direct rebuke against Gov. Eric Holcomb and more moderate members of his party, including Holli Sullivan, the current secretary of state and a Holcomb appointee.
Some in the party might now be wondering if Morales was the right choice.
“The GOP should be nervous about their odds in this race,” said Nichols, the political science professor. “The only thing helping them is that this smaller seat and campaign tends to fly under the radar.”
Former GOP Rep. Mike Murphy wondered whether the criticisms against Morales have negated the natural advantage he had as a Republican candidate in a down-ballot race.
“One thing I’ve learned in all my years in politics is, the voters are always right,” Murphy said. “You may disagree with them, but it’s their decision to make, and there’s no crying after that. They will decide, and that’s who our new secretary of state will be.”•
Correction: This story originally said that Diego Morales is believed to be the first Hispanic candidate for statewide office in Indiana. That is not the case. There have been several Hispanic candidates. Most recently, John Aguilera was the Democratic nominee for Indiana treasurer in 2018.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Everything wrong with the GOP on the ballot with crony corporatist warmonger Todd Young and this lying fool Morales.
I applaud the IBJ’s bias. Well done.
So it’s bias to point out the numerous flaws in an awful candidate. The media should just ignore them because …he’s got an R after his name on the ballot?
Would you hire a teacher to run a school district if they’d twice been fired for incompetence?
I’ve yet to find one Republican who can tell me why Diego Morales is a better candidate than Holli Sullivan. I don’t think Republicans will lose this seat unless Morales says or does something stupid before Election Day (ducking the debate was a good choice since he can’t handle that situation either), but if they do, it’s their own fault for nominating an awful candidate.
Who’s an awful candid is for the readers/electorate to decide.
In most respects, Prosecutor Ryan Mears is an awful candidate, if we use the objective metric of crime in the city. Homicide rates just keep climbing and breaking all new records. And he thinks it’s his job, like the wokie that he is, to address “root causes”. Not a prosecutor’s job, Ryan. In fact, it’s no one’s job. The root causes are infinitely complicated and outside the expertise of any one government agency.
With Marion County Prosecutor, IBJ focused on issues and avoided loaded language in their headlines, in a way that they didn’t here.
The media ignores virtually EVERY malfeasance by a certain party because it’s got a D after it’s name. Granted, this is a major factor as to why the donkey party is so inordinately violent (the Republicans would be just as violent if the had as little accountability), but at least it’s usually D-on-D violence. Good. More people can see how dysfunctional a party becomes when the Fourth Estate becomes little more than an extension of that party, and enables their bad behavior by not reporting it.
Which is why I asked a Republican to explain why a sane person would vote for Diego and your best defense of Diego was to blame the media for not telling them what by they want to hear and move on to talking about another race.
Which is probably the exact thing the candidate himself would do.
Thanks for making my point for me. Destiny Wells is the only candidate to vote for if you value service and loyalty to the United States of America, honesty, and competency.
Joe: I was willing to concede that Wells is at least more reasonable…
…until I saw that she was “bothered” by the view toward transgenders in the military. What a bizarre thing for an Indiana Democrat to hang her hat on. Rallying behind a segment of the population that clearly deserves sympathy because of the mental illness that is gender dysphoria, but is still something that afflicts far less than .5% of the population (probably even lower in the military) and was obviously used as a tool for some transgenders to get taxpayer funded surgery and hormone treatment by serving the military. Their involvement is undeniably more complicated than gays in the military, with far lower support given how cult-like the transmafia has started behaving in the last year. Yet Wells thinks this is a righteous cause in Indiana. Weird.
More importantly, though, she wants universal mail-in voting (that’s what “removing restrictions” means). As much as the Democrats slobber all over themselves for us to be like Europe, one thing they don’t want is to reduce mail-in voting (which operates nowhere in Europe to the degree that it does here). It’s a recipe for fraud. But, since the 2020 election was obviously rigged, it’s natural that the party of Jim Crow would need new tactics to ensure they can still win as they venture ever-farther off the leftward cliff. And the best way we know the election was a scam is because the establishment seeks to punish people who say it…utterly baffling behavior for a party that insists “free and fair elections”. It was perfectly reasonable to question Russian interference in 2016–a Mueller hearing cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions. If a neckbeard vlogger makes a video questioning 2020 results, down down they go. When will the Democrats actually start acting like 2020 was indisputably a “free and fair election”? I’m not holding my breath, any more than I’m waiting for them to listen to Tara Reade, the only woman whose #MeToo accusations they don’t believe. Funny that.
Thankfully, I don’t “value service and loyalty to the United States of America, honesty, and competency” because I know we get none of those from the neo-Dixiecrats. As proven for the last 2 years. And I still dislike Mike Pence. And I’d still vote Bernie Sanders over Mitt Romney, if ever the two geezers should duke it out.
From Money Magazine, Mueller investigation cost – $32-35M. From the same article – “Beyond the principles at work and the need to unearth the truth about what happened during the 2016 presidential campaign and afterward, the Mueller investigation yielded substantial fines and settlements that have arguably made the probe more than worth the money it cost. The Mueller investigation charged 37 people and entities overall, including guilty pleas from Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
While it’s unclear exactly how much money the Mueller investigation has brought back to the U.S. government, the probe may wind up breaking even or maybe even a profit. A month ago, USA Today estimated that the special counsel’s investigation had collected settlements worth $28.6 million — the vast majority of it from Manafort, who is being forced to give up millions of dollars worth of New York City real estate.”
https://money.com/mueller-report-cost-waste-of-money-fines/
From MIT study in 2020: “”Vote fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare, with mailed ballots and otherwise. Over the past 20 years, about 250 million votes have been cast by a mail ballot nationally. The Heritage Foundation maintains an online database of election fraud cases in the United States and reports that there have been just over 1,200 cases of vote fraud of all forms, resulting in 1,100 criminal convictions, over the past 20 years. Of these, 204 involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots; 143 resulted in criminal convictions.
Let’s put that data in perspective.
One hundred forty-three cases of fraud using mailed ballots over the course of 20 years comes out to seven to eight cases per year, nationally. It also means that across the 50 states, there has been an average of three cases per state over the 20-year span. That is just one case per state every six or seven years. We are talking about an occurrence that translates to about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast.
Oregon is the state that started mailing ballots to all voters in 2000 and has worked diligently to put in place stringent security measures, as well as strict punishments for those who would tamper with a mailed ballot. For that state, the following numbers apply: With well over 50 million ballots cast, there have been only two fraud cases verifiable enough to result in convictions for mail-ballot fraud in 20 years. That is 0.000004 percent — about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States.”
Of course you don’t. You’re as anti-American as they come, just like all the other election deniers. “Obviously rigged”. Sigh. Sure. Whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the day.
Considering that Trump said the 2016 election was rigged before it took place, put together a panel to look into it, and didn’t find any … should have served as warning to all sane folks that “Hey, Trump has no idea what he’s talking about with election fraud”. But, no, he repeated the entire charade in 2020 and took American democracy along with it. Fortunately for you, Mitch McConnell is dumb enough to think that he still controls the Republican Party and he didn’t take Trump out when he had the chance. History will judge him poorly for that move, among others.
Oh yeah, mail in voting. Funny how all that mail-in fraud got found. The Trump voters at the Villages were doing a ton of it. But it all got caught. Fraud at the scale you allege simple doesn’t exist, much like the idea of litter boxes in classrooms across America.
I just don’t understand why you want to live in Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary. They don’t really have anything going for them.
You’re such a cutie Joe! Are you still worried that I might dox you? Do you know what doxxing means? Given that your cult are the ones initiating 95% of it, it’s understandable that you wouldn’t. I know your name because you used to use it all the time on Disqus, and I checked the history of my old friend who loaned me his Disqus account. But I have no idea where you live and don’t care to know. Not that I would doxx anyone anyway; it’s what leftists do. Right-wingers would face legal consequence if they did it.
If I were as beholden to your silly dying, legacy news sources, I’m sure I’d be as convinced as you are that we had “safe and secure elections”. Even the beloved Time Magazine used the term “fortified”–that’s as good of a word as any. Almost as hilarious as the notion that we’re a democracy–which, in your eyes, means the uniparty controlled by a “public-private partnership” of big government granting legal favors to big business, who are their biggest donors. All to keep the dissidents at bay, which includes political adversaries as much emergent business competitors. Awfully similar to mid-century Germany, which we all know was fundamentally 85% Marxist yet gets called “right-wing” because of the other 15%.
Fraud: when one party is ahead by a sizable margin, at 5pm, then “hold on!” as votes are recounted overnight, and hours or sometimes days later, the victor comes from the other party. And it’s always happening in one direction. Team Blue losing at 5pm, yet Team Blue nearly always are the ones who get those after-hours votes. Why doesn’t it ever happen the other direction? Easy–cause the media calls it a Blue victory at 4pm.
We need a Civil War badly, don’t we Joe? Thankfully it’ll probably be WWIII more than anything, since every Western country in the world is facing the exact problems, yet the deluded swamp-lovers blame it all on orange-man. Fine by me–WWIII is probably just what the globe needs about now.
Yawn. Lots of complaints, no solutions, just blow it all up because if I can’t have what I want, no one gets anything. Give me the money and power because I hate the same people you do, and I think you’re dumb enough to not realize that … the swamp will never go away, you’re just putting different people at the trough. So Bannon-esque.
Amazing how people keep voting for the party awash on dark money super PAC’s yet the problem is big business, and how people keep voting for the same incumbents yet the problem is the government. Make up your minds. Either ban money in politics entirely or stop complaining about the Koch’s or the Soros’.
Meanwhile, the best reason you’ve given me to vote for Diego Morales is that Destiny Wells doesn’t hate the transgendered as much as she should. Given her job responsibilities for the office she’s running for, that’s akin to voting on which Major League Baseball team she likes the most.
Also, as much as you dislike mail-in voting, a Secretary of State will just execute laws, not write them, so she can only execute voting based on what the Indiana Legislature allows. (Secretary of State Todd Rokita wanted an independent commission to redistrict Indiana in 2009. The legislature told him to pound sand.) Given the Legislature took the education system away from Glenda Ritz, then abolished her office, don’t worry, a Secretary of State Wells likely wouldn’t even be allowed to count the votes, much less send mail-in ballots to anyone with first asking the Legislature for postage.
So, basically, there’s no reason not to vote for Destiny Wells. Glad we are clear.
The funny thing is, Joe, I merely told you my personal reasons why I won’t be voting for Destiny Wells. Being libertarian minded at core, I wouldn’t begrudge you or anyone else for a minute of voting the candidate of your choice.
So, why oh why, are you using the language that we who don’t agree with you are “as anti-American as they come”? Why are you so against people displaying their love of country in different ways? Some people burn flags and wear women’s genitals on their heads; others prefer the old stars and stripes and are called “traitors”. But if you can’t even tolerate other people preferring the opposite candidate and call them “anti-American”. “There’s no reason not to vote Destiny Wells?” Perhaps you are the slavish political fundamentalist?
I’m even compelled to donate to the Morales campaign. And I do appreciate being compared to Bannon. Though I’m sure you meant it as an insult, he’s obviously one of the smartest political minds working right now. That’s why they’re after him. He can read them like a dime-store romance novel. They’re not deep. And he has them completely figured out, and they’re terrified. Same reason they hate Keri Lake in AZ. I don’t really trust her, she’s still a politician, but she knows their lingo having swum with the sharks for 25 years.
Invoking Glenda Ritz, the stooge of the teachers unions? Haven’t thought of her name in awhile. Given that teachers unions are a major factor as to why public education is such a joke, are you invoking her name defensively because you have unionized teacher family members?
I can at least agree with you on one thing: ban money in politics entirely. But, given that the modern GOP is the party of illiterate cousin-bumbling toothless hillbilly racists, how is it ALSO the party “awash on dark money super PACs”? I mean, outside of Dan Kathy, the surviving Koch brother, and the prez of Goya Foods, who ARE these MAGA-loving big-business figures? Won’t YOU make up your mind?
If Vanessa Cruz Nichols is as big of a race-baiter as she proves herself to be in these predictably hyperpartisan sound bites, we can only imagine the sort of id-pol garbage she’s teaching her students at IU.
Lastly, Joe, since you’re obviously millions of IQ points smarter than me, if “the swamp will never go away, you’re just putting different people at the trough”, then why do they keep going after certain people so aggressively? If it’s just like-for-like, why not just accept that Lake and DeSantis or even Rand Paul will be the face of the GOP long after the orange buffoon is dead and buried? Why go after Tulsi Gabbard so hard? Or Joe Manchin, who still pulls through for the Dems about 80% of the time? Is it healthy to be a giant uniform bloc?
Why has the word “misinformation” increased its use ten-thousandfold in the last 4 years, when it was a rarity before then? Why go after Joe Rogan or Scott Jones so hard, when they’re not even MAGA fanboys? Why not just take someone like Alex Jones for the chucklehead that he is instead of trying to destroy an industry that they’ve already banned from all the mainstream Big Tech platforms? Since he did nothing illegal and they’re trying to turn this into the biggest defamation suit in history? It’s because they’re trying to make a warn to every peon in the world, “We’re in charge. Know your place and shut up, or you’re next.”
Democracy LOL.
When I let you run long enough, you do a fine job of explaining why your thoughts are anti-American as they come and those who you think are smart are incompatible with the American democratic system, much like the Republican Party, and why the party needs to suffer electoral losses until they finally realize theirs is a road to nowhere.
You see glory in your vision. I see the folks who signed up for Putin’s Russia, sent off to the front as cannon fodder, for a war they didn’t want nor do they care about. They signed up for the winning, not the dying.
Libertarian to the core? Given that party’s rapid drift from sanity, you might not want to say that out loud.
How many pictures of people not running for SOS can we squeeze into this article? No headshot of Jeff Maurer? C’mon… 2-party bias here.
The 2020 election denialism is so incredible given the fact that Republicans did quite well down ballot, the very same ballot that Donald Trump was on. So, if the election was rigged, it was rigged in favor of Republicans. Pesky facts.
Precisely why people know the 2020 election was rigged Robert. Over 90% of bellwether counties got 2020 wrong, and we’re presuming millions of people in districts who otherwise lean red came out and voted exclusively for Biden and left the rest of their ballots blank. Yeah sure.
Time Magazine admitted to the term “fortification”. A convenient euphemism. The election was rigged, and the “election deniers” of the GOP keep winning. We’re not even halfway through the book yet.
Robert, it’s pointless. Because, obviously, the concept that people would vote Republican but they’d had enough Trump? Impossible. Trump won by just about the same thin margin in 2016 … that he lost by in 2020.
Don’t even ask Lauren to show how that conclusion – that the election was rigged – was reached. Because for someone who thinks they are are the smartest person in the room, they sure … never manage to show their work. All of your evidence is trash, but Lauren’s invisible evidence? Can’t be refuted.
Lauren just longs for a full on sprint into the “warm hug” of authoritarianism.