Here are 5 Indiana ties to Joe Biden's decision to drop out of 2024 presidential race

Potential new nominee Kamala Harris slated to speak in Indianapolis days from now

During his announcement, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place as the Democratic nominee. Harris is currently scheduled to address members of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta in Indianapolis on Wednesday. If the engagement stands, it will draw even more attention than before.

A former Indiana mayor could find himself on the ticket

We won’t know whether Harris nabs the nomination until next month, when the Democratic National Committee holds its possibly chaotic convention in Chicago.

Delegates and party leaders will have to select a running mate, as well. And that could end up being former South Bend mayor and current U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, one of the most well-known members of Biden’s cabinet.

That possibility, though, seems remote. According to a Washington Post-ABC News Ipsos poll earlier this month, about 3% of Democrats named him as their choice to replace Biden should he step down. That put him well behind Harris, who nabbed 29%, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who came in at 7%.

Pundits have also mentioned Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear as a potential VP pick, even though he's never spoken publicly about it. Biden and Beshear toured tornado-ravaged Dawson Springs, Kentucky together together in 2021, and in a statement on Sunday, Beshear simultaneously lauded the president and his decision to step aside.

“(Biden's) leadership provided infrastructure investments that are bringing clean drinking water and high-speed internet to parts of Kentucky that for far too long had been overlooked and underserved,” he said in part.

The last time a president dropped out, an Indiana governor stepped in

Lyndon Johnson ended his 1968 campaign on March 31, 1968 – also a Sunday – as trouble around Vietnam and uprisings in his own party forced his hand.

That was about a month before Indiana’s May 7 primary. And despite his exit, Johnson wanted a stand-in in the race to push his policies. He chose none other than Indiana Gov. Roger Branigin, who ultimately finished a distant second to Robert F. Kennedy.

Less than a month later, an assassin fatally shot Kennedy at a hotel in Los Angeles.

An Evansville mayor tried to play a role the last time this happened

Speaking of chaotic conventions, none were more wild and awful than the 1968 DNC which, like this year's convention, took place in Chicago.

On the orders of Mayor Richard Daley, swarms of police ruthlessly beat anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders amassed outside the convention hall, sending the city careening into anarchy.

There was unrest inside, too – only without the blood and brutality.

Despite the pleas of other wings of the party, Democrats eventually nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey to run in Johnson’s place. One person who opposed that? Former Evansville Mayor Vance Hartke.

Hartke, who by that time had vaulted to the U.S. Senate, ripped Humphrey at the convention, telling reporters he’d be “a disaster for the entire Democratic ticket in Indiana.”

He supported the slain Robert Kennedy who, had he been alive, would have cruised to the nomination, Hartke said. Instead, they were left with a vacuum and a “tyranny of fear.”

“Policeman and other guards are in the hotels, hallways and along the streets,” he told reporters. “I don’t like to be involved in something like this. There’s a threat of anarchy and repression.”

Humphrey went on to lose to Richard Nixon.

An Indiana senator could have changed the whole look of this race

One of the reasons Biden dropped out was his increasingly narrowing road to victory over Donald Trump in key swing states. But if an Indiana senator would have had his way in the 1960s, swing states wouldn’t matter. Because the Electoral College wouldn’t exist.

Sen. Birch Bayh spent years trying to kill the Electoral College, which disenfranchises liberal voters in conservative states and conservative voters in liberal states and ultimately hurls the outcome of the election into the hands of a tiny slice of the populace.

Instead, he wanted the presidential election to operate like every other election: whoever gets the most votes wins.

According to Indiana Public Media, Birch launched the effort after Alabama Gov. George Wallace – a racist who nonetheless enjoyed support in several pockets of the U.S., including Indiana – won five states in 1968 as a third-party candidate. Bayh worried someone like Wallace could lead to a locked Electoral College and thereby throw the outcome to pit of the U.S. House of Representatives, who would then choose the winner.

He called for a constitutional amendment to end the Electoral College. And despite its passage in the Senate in 1969 and 80% of Americans supporting it, it ultimately died in Congress thanks to filibusters by southern Democrats. He never got another crack, and it persists to this day.