Primary challengers backed by President Donald Trump will beat at least five of the seven Indiana state senators who defied the president last year on redistricting, according to the Associated Press, making it an almost-clean sweep for both the president and for his allied groups that pumped millions into the normally-sleepy races.
The seven incumbents facing primary challengers had been among 21 Republican state senators who joined Democrats in voting against a mid-decade redistricting bill last year, which would have redrawn the state’s congressional map to favor Republicans.
Trump had threatened even before the vote to support primary challengers to anyone who voted against it.
One incumbent, state Sen. Greg Goode, won in his primary against a Trump-endorsed primary challenger, while another, state Sen. Spencer Deery, was still locked in a tight race against his Trump-endorsed opponent Paula Copenhaver as of late Tuesday night.
Indiana state Senate races are a test of Trump's endorsements over voting against redistrictingAnother candidate endorsed by Trump, who ran in a district represented by a state senator who opposed redistricting but did not run for reelection, was also projected to win.
Trump celebrated the wins with a series of posts on his social media account late Tuesday night showing pictures of him juxtaposed with images of the winning candidates.
While the results could put the wind in the president’s sails, both candidates and observers alike had warned that many local factors were in play as well. The sheer deluge of outside spending drowned the incumbents in money that these sorts of races do not usually see, and they had nothing comparable to help them.
A tally of ad spending in the race by AdImpact, which found more than $13 million spent on ads in the primaries -- more than 4,000 times more spent than during the previous cycle -- showed that at least $8 million of the ad spending was from groups that opposed the incumbents.
Groups allied with the president such as Turning Point and Club for Growth had spent millions on campaigning and advertisements, and the races had become to many a test of Trump’s sway and the power of his endorsement.
The state Senate primaries also pitted Trump, to an extent, against his former vice president, Mike Pence. Pence, who also served as Indiana governor, had endorsed state Sen. Jim Buck in one of the races, according to the Indianapolis Star – breaking with the president he served under, who endorsed challenger Tracey Powell. Powell triumphed over Buck on Tuesday.
