Indiana Republican primary 2026: Indiana Republicans defied Trump on gerrymandering. Today, they find out what it cost

Indiana Republicans who defied Donald Trump are fighting for their political lives Tuesday in a key measure of whether the president’s grip on his own party is starting to slip.

This Video Is Trending Right Now →

The contests for state Senate seats in Indiana’s part-time legislature would ordinarily draw little national attention. But after a December vote in which a bloc of Indiana Republicans resisted the White House’s pressure campaign and voted against gerrymandering the state’s two Democratic-held congressional districts out of existence, Trump set out to make examples of them.

On social media, Trump endorsed challengers against seven of the eight sitting GOP state senators who voted against the gerrymandering push: Jim Buck, Spencer Deery, Dan Dernulc, Greg Goode, Travis Holdman, Linda Rogers and Greg Walker. 

“There are eight Great Patriots running against long seated RINOS — Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday before polls closed, deploying a label — Republican In Name Only — that has become his standard brand for those who defy him regardless of their conservative bonafides.

For Trump, who has carried Indiana in each of his three presidential campaigns and faces no meaningful threat to his standing in the state, the primaries amount to a test of whether he can punish defectors inside his own party over an issue many voters have barely registered, in races usually decided by yard signs and county chairs rather than national politics.