EVANSVILLE — The loudest voices complaining about Indiana's Republican push for redistricting are Democrats whose party has ruthlessly gerrymandered congressional districts elsewhere for years, Gov. Mike Braun said in Evansville Tuesday.
Talking to reporters after the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership (E-REP)'s annual "Lunch with the Governor" event in Old National Events Plaza, Republican Braun said large and heavily Democratic states have used their Democratic legislative majorities over time to gerrymander congressional district lines within an inch of their lives.
That has left those states with very few Republican members of Congress, he said.
"If Republicans don’t (redistrict), we are then ceding territory to (Democrats) on policies a lot of people don’t like," Braun said.
More: Indiana lawmakers set date to decide redistricting. Here's when they will meet
Republicans in Indiana are trying to "level the playing field" with a mid-decade redistricting initiative in a state where most voters support conservative values, Braun said. Republican President Donald Trump carried the state in last year's presidential election with 59% of the vote.
How does the Republican push for redistricting help Hoosier voters?, one reporter asked.
"Because we’ll have fairer representation in D.C.," said Braun, a former U.S. senator.
The legislative session Braun called to consider the redistricting push by Trump and tweaks to the tax code to align with the president's One Big Beautiful Bill will be held during the first two weeks of December.
There's plenty of action in other states
Republicans already have a 7-2 advantage in Indiana's nine-member U.S. House of Representatives delegation, but Republicans say that's because voters in the state are essentially conservative.
It's a similar argument offered by Democrats in Massachusetts, a reliably Democratic state Braun has cited.
"You take our closest direct comparison — Massachusetts, same population,” Braun said Monday in New Albany. “They’ve gerrymandered that into where there hasn’t been a Republican congressional holder in a long, long time."
It's true that Massachusetts hasn't sent a Republican to the House in decades. It's nine-member House delegation is 9-0 Democrat. The state's two U.S. senators, elected statewide, also are Democrats. Republican Trump won 36% of the vote in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts State Senate President Pro Tempore Will Brownsberger, a Democrat and one of primary architects of the state's current congressional district map, told GBH News in October that, "it’s impossible to draw a Republican district in Massachusetts."
"There are plenty of Republicans in Massachusetts and there’s plenty of people who voted for Donald Trump, but they are a minority overall in the state and they’re distributed more or less evenly across the state,” Brownsberger said. “Not absolutely evenly, but evenly enough that any district that’s big enough to be a congressional district, it is going to be majority Democratic-leaning."
Braun didn't name any of the heavily Democratic states in Evansville on Tuesday, but he did say they are northeastern states. New York has 28 Electoral College votes — Indiana has 11 — and New Jersey has 14.
New York's 26-member U.S. House delegation has a 19-7 Democratic advantage. New Jersey's 12-member delegation goes 9-3 in favor of Democrats.
As Braun spoke in Evansville Tuesday, California voters were deciding on a ballot initiative that would radically change how the Golden State's congressional boundaries are drawn.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is responsible for this rare off-cycle political campaign, setting it up as a heavyweight counterpunch to Trump, who has pushed Republican-led legislatures from Texas to Indiana to Missouri to redo their own maps ahead of next year’s all-important midterms.
California's 52-member House delegation already has a 43-9 Democratic advantage, a fact Braun claims is due to earlier Democratic gerrymandering in the state. Now, he says, Democrats there are at it again.
Democrat Newsom's redistricting push is especially egregious, Braun said in Evansville, because the Democratic-backed ballot initiative would override a nonpartisan commission California voters established via a 2010 ballot initiative that draws those district boundaries.
"Everything we're (Republicans) doing is catching up," Braun said.
A hard no
Indianapolis-based political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz reported Friday that "sources" were telling him Trump is calling Indiana Senate Republicans who are undecided on or opposed to redistricting, "threatening them saying if they don't vote (for redistricting) he will cut off virtually every federal program" in Indiana.
Republican Sen. Jim Tomes, who represents Posey County and parts of Vanderburgh County, did not return messages about the matter. Republican Sen. Vaneta Becker, who represents Warrick County and parts of Vanderburgh, was not so shy.
Becker is a hard "no" vote on the Republican redistricting proposal, she said. So much so that its advocates have essentially ceased trying to sway her. So she hasn't received any political threats.
"I just told them (in an early White House-arranged zoom call), I said, 'You know, I've served 42 years (in the Legislature), you're not going to change my vote,'" Becker told the Courier & Press.
"I have heard that speculation as far as threats. My opinion on that is, let him (Trump). He's going to be gone in three years, and we'll survive. To threaten people is not the way to get things done, in my opinion."
Becker conceded she didn't know for sure that Trump had issued any political threats.
"I do know he called one (Republican) senator who has a (2026 party) primary opponent and said if he didn't change his vote, he would endorse and fund his primary opponent," she said. "I said, 'I'll help you raise money, and I'll give you money, but don't succumb to that kind of stuff. That's crap.'"
Becker said the senator, who she wouldn't name, related the story to her directly.
Looking ahead
Indiana's Senate Republicans haven’t stated a position either way on the question of redrawing the map outside census time to give Republicans more favorable districts ahead of 2026 midterm elections. Most have been silent entirely. The Senate Republicans’ spokesperson continues to say the chamber doesn’t have the votes, but Braun, who called the legislative session, has reiterated his confidence that they’ll come around.
The notion that Senate Republicans don't have the votes for redistricting is being pushed by Democrats who hope that's true, Braun has said.
In Evansville on Tuesday, the governor said he hasn't heard about any political arm-twisting of the sort Shabazz and Becker mentioned.
"I have been purposefully, 'Take your time, listen to reason, do it,'" he told the Courier & Press.
Senators have "started flipping" to support the push for redistricting, Braun claimed.
"I think by the time they discuss it and do it publicly, we’ll get there," he said. "But arm twisting like that, I’ve not heard that."
Becker said she can't be certain how Tomes will vote on the redistricting plan supported by Trump and Braun.
"I think he's a 'no' (vote), but I don't know what he'll do if it goes to the floor and he has to put a vote up on the board," she said.
So Tomes could vote yes in the end?
"Yeah," Becker said.
"Because he likes Trump," she added with a chuckle.
Indianapolis Star reporter Kayla Dwyer contributed to this story.