Indiana Primaries Feature Trump Challenges to 7 GOP Senators

Indiana voters headed to the polls Tuesday for primary elections that include challenges backed by President Donald Trump against seven Republican state senators.

The targeted incumbents represent districts Trump won in the 2024 presidential election, often by margins exceeding 20 percentage points. They had opposed his 2025 effort to redraw the state's congressional maps in ways that would create additional Republican-leaning seats. More than half of Indiana's Republican state senators joined Democrats to block the plan, unlike in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, where similar proposals advanced. Eight of those senators faced reelection this year, with Trump endorsing challengers in Districts 1, 11, 19, 21, 23, 38 and 41.

Trump promoted the challengers through social media posts criticizing the incumbents. State Sen. Spencer Deery of District 23 won a crowded primary in 2022 with 31 percent of the vote, defeating a field that included Paula Copenhaver, whom Trump has again backed. State Sen. Greg Goode of District 38 was appointed to a vacancy in 2023 and has not faced a full districtwide vote.

Half of Indiana's 50 state Senate seats and all 100 state House seats are at...