By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
September 11, 2026<\/p>\n
At last, some signs of both sanity and integrity have returned to Indiana politics.<\/p>\n
The Indiana Supreme Court finally put an end to Indiana\u2019s closest and most divisive primary battle. The court ruled that state Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, won the May primary and will be on the November general election ballot, thus putting an end to a prolonged and unsavory political and legal battle.<\/p>\n
The May primary that Deery won by three\u2014yes, three\u2014votes was less an election campaign than it was a nasty, nasty Republican family feud.<\/p>\n
That feud began when President Donald Trump, fearing a massive Republican loss in the 2026 midterm elections that would cost the GOP the U.S. House of Representatives and allow Democrats to investigate his many questionable personal and political initiatives, decided to rewrite the rule book.<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of the American republic, congressional districts in the United States have been drawn following the census done at the end of each decade.<\/p>\n
Trump, though, decided to push for redistricting in the middle of the decade in states where he thought Republicans might be able to scoop up congressional seats by rejiggering the maps.<\/p>\n
Indiana was one of the states on the president\u2019s list.<\/p>\n
He ran into more opposition in Republican ranks than he expected, even though he had Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith and Attorney General Todd Rokita all pounding the drum for him.<\/p>\n
Polls showed that everyday Republicans in the state didn\u2019t like Trump\u2019s power play.<\/p>\n
It ran into a wall in the Indiana Senate. Deery and 20 other Indiana Republican senators\u2014more than half the Senate\u2019s GOP caucus\u2014joined 10 Democrats to vote down Trump\u2019s election steal plan by a decisive 31-19 margin.<\/p>\n
Trump and his Indiana allies\u2014none of whom will earn chapters in future editions of \u201cProfiles in Courage\u201d\u2014vowed retribution. They decided to target a handful of Hoosier Republican state senators for primary challenges.<\/p>\n
Deery was one of them.<\/p>\n
His challenger was Paula Copenhaver, a staff member in Beckwith\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Trump and company plunged millions of dollars\u2014the true number may never be known, but it was large\u2014into these Republican-versus-Republican battles.<\/p>\n
When the votes were counted and then recounted, Deery prevailed over Copenhaver by one of the narrowest margins in Indiana history.<\/p>\n
Egged on by the president and his brain trust, Copenhaver challenged the results.<\/p>\n
At first, she and her lawyers planned to argue that Deery\u2019s victory should be set aside because some Democrats may have voted for Deery. She dropped that argument, though, and then set her sights on disenfranchising voters.<\/p>\n
She contended that six ballots cast for Deery should be disqualified because they don\u2019t bear the proper signatures from election officials.<\/p>\n
The intentions and the interests of those voters figured nowhere in Copenhaver\u2019s pleadings\u2014as it rarely does with Trump and his acolytes.<\/p>\n
Only the people who agree with them matter or have rights, regardless of what the U.S. and Indiana constitutions say on such questions.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the state\u2019s Supreme Court justices\u2014or at least a majority of them\u2014disagreed.<\/p>\n
In the ruling, Chief Justice Loretta Rush reaffirmed that, absent clear evidence of corruption or abuse of the process, protecting the voter\u2019s right to cast a ballot should be of primary importance.<\/p>\n
In a self-governing society such as ours in which government at all levels draws its authority through the consent of the governed, that sounds as if it should be considered self-evident.<\/p>\n
But\u2014too often\u2014it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
In her remarks acknowledging the court\u2019s decision, Copenhaver talked with passion about the pressure on election officials and the need for election integrity\u2014particularly closed primaries, which have become an obsession among \u201cshrink-the-tent\u201d conservatives.<\/p>\n
She couldn\u2019t seem to summon up much enthusiasm, though, for the principle that people should have a right to vote and that their votes should not be disregarded because they irritate one faction or another.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the Indiana Supreme Court thought otherwise.<\/p>\n
A majority of the justices decided that the core beliefs that have animated both this country and this state since they were founded are still valid.<\/p>\n
And must be respected.<\/p>\n
In an era in which so many fundamental American principles are under assault by people who should know and behave better, that\u2019s a victory.<\/p>\n
A victory that matters.<\/p>\n