Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Indiana Republicans are “ashamed of what they’re doing” on Thursday as he rallied opponents of a potential effort by GOP lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of next year’s midterm elections to add one or two US House seats more favorable to the party.
Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor, returned to his home state for an appearance at the Indiana Statehouse where he urged Republican state lawmakers who are being pressured by President Donald Trump’s administration to redistrict to “show some backbone before it’s too late.”
“Refraining from cheating is a low bar,” he said. “But you’ve got to start somewhere, because they are under so much pressure from Washington to do something wrong.”
Even as Buttigieg enters the fray, Indiana Democrats face a daunting political reality: They have no way of stopping Republican Gov. Mike Braun and the state’s supermajority Republican House and Senate from redrawing its congressional maps to try to tilt the GOP’s current 7-2 House seat advantage to 8-1 or 9-0.
Braun and GOP legislative leaders have not yet made a public argument in favor of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps. However, Braun told state reporters Tuesday that redistricting “probably will happen.”
“I want it to happen to where the leaders and the legislators feel comfortable with it,” he said.
Braun said in an interview on Fort Wayne’s WOWO radio this week, according to an Indiana Capital Chronicle report, that lawmakers could vote on new maps either at the beginning of next year’s legislative session in January, “probably more ideally sometime in November.”
Annette Groos holds a sign before the start of a rally for Indiana Democrats amid pressure from President Donald Trump for Republicans to redistrict congressional seats. – Michael Conroy/AP
That timeline hinted at a possible path to approving new maps without Braun calling a special session. Lawmakers typically gather each November for “organization day” — a largely ceremonial one-day start to the next year’s session in which newly elected lawmakers are sworn in and legislative leaders are chosen.
Indiana Republicans face a pressure campaign from Trump’s White House to add one or two more GOP-leaning districts to bolster the party’s chances of maintaining its narrow House majority in next November’s midterms.
Already, Texas Republicans have redrawn their state’s maps to add five more seats that favor GOP candidates, and California Democrats responded with new maps of their own intended to add five Democratic-leaning seats. The California maps must still be approved by voters this November. Missouri Republicans last week passed new maps aimed at handing the GOP one more House seat there.
Republican state Rep. Ed Clere told CNN that Missouri’s approval of new congressional maps last week “has only increased the pressure on Indiana, but for all the wrong reasons.”
“This is being driven by very raw and very cynical politics,” he said.
Clere has been one of the Indiana GOP’s most vocal opponents of mid-decade redistricting. He said doing so “establishes a dangerous precedent,” and said there is deep opposition within the party to redrawing the maps.
“There are Republicans who are more concerned with upholding principles than with cheating to win elections. And that’s what this is: It’s cheating,” he said. “This is about a lot more than a congressional map or an election. This is about who we are as a people, and whether we are willing to prioritize democracy over politics.”
Multiple Indiana Republican lawmakers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they expect Trump will eventually get his way.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun speaks during an event with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on June 10. – Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/File
The pressure on the GOP supermajority has ratcheted up with Vice President JD Vance traveling to the Statehouse on August 7 to meet privately with Braun, state House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray.
Indiana’s full seven-member Republican congressional delegation endorsed mid-decade redistricting in social media posts in August, on the same day state House Republicans were caucusing to discuss the prospect. The same month, the White House invited the state’s GOP legislators to Washington to further press their case.
The topic was prominently featured at Sen. Jim Banks’ Hoosier Leadership for America Summit last weekend, where state Rep. Andrew Ireland, a supporter of redistricting, said on X he’d spoken about it.
Braun, the first-term Republican governor, noted that some Republican state legislators had initially opposed mid-decade redistricting, but have since reversed their positions.
“You clearly saw certain legislators that had an ‘absolutely not interested’ to where they’re publicly out there changing their mind,” Braun told reporters this week.
One of those public GOP flips is state Rep. Jim Lucas, who in August repeatedly staked out his opposition to a mid-decade redistricting effort.
After visiting the White House, and in the hours after the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — who had waged a social media campaign to pressure Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional lines, vowing to support primary challenges against those who turned Trump down — Lucas said he’d changed his mind.
“I am now a rock solid HELL YES for redistricting!” he said on X.
Lucas argued in another post the next day that because a Democratic House would impede Trump’s agenda, redistricting “went from a state issue to a national issue.”
The reversal by Lucas prompted an unusual back-and-forth with another veteran Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Heath VanNatter, on Lucas’ Facebook page — throwing the kinds of discussions GOP lawmakers have had in caucus meetings, including House and Senate members gathering separately last week, into public view.
“I knew you would fold. Maybe you should keep your powder dry next time,” VanNatter said.
Lucas responded by citing Hoosier legislators’ trip to the White House last month and the assassination of Kirk.
“After going to DC and hearing solid information from the federal level of how every Hoosier would benefit by redistricting and now the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I have ZERO problem to publicly come out and explain my changed position,” he wrote.
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