Indianapolis
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Jean Leising spoke at a breakfast this fall at her eighth grade grandson’s college. Hours later, when she was set to give him a trip dwelling from basketball apply, he bashfully informed her that his whole workforce had acquired textual content messages about her that day — “and they were all bad.”
Recounting the second to NCS shortly after she joined 20 different Republican state senators in rejecting President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, Leising said she laughed the second off along with her grandson — however that it in the end led to her opposing the president.
“Boy, when I got home that night, that’s when I decided,” said Leising, a 76-year-old grandmother of eight, first elected to the Senate in 1988. “I was angry. So the next day, I said, ‘I’ve got to talk about this.’ Because this is over the top. This shouldn’t be the way it was.”
“But that was the beginning,” she added. “It only got worse from there.”
It was clear on Thursday {that a} pressure campaign waged by the White House and its allies had backfired. A state that Trump gained by practically 20 factors in 2024 gave him an enormous political black eye, rejecting a push to create two extra GOP-friendly US House seats that might have helped Republicans retain the House majority in subsequent yr’s midterms.
Several Republican senators famous on Thursday that constituents opposed a mid-decade redrawing of US House maps and that they questioned the knowledge or the precedent of becoming a member of the nationwide redistricting battle. But various Republicans, together with individuals who voted for the president three elections in a row, additionally gave deeply personal reasons during the last a number of weeks.
Sen. Mike Bohacek has a daughter with Down syndrome. He was offended by Trump’s use of a slur for folks with disabilities, in a Truth Social submit deriding Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and said that Trump’s “choices of words have consequences.”
Sen. Greg Walker, who represents former Vice President Mike Pence’s hometown of Columbus, said he was among the many senators targeted by swatting attempts within the weeks main up to Thursday’s vote. While legislation enforcement has not publicly linked the swatting or different threats to a political motive, Walker said he felt voting sure would reward wrongdoing and set a harmful precedent.
Sen. Greg Goode, whose city corridor in Terre Haute this fall revealed large public opposition to mid-decade redistricting, said the brand new maps would splinter communities with comparable pursuits. He additionally criticized “over-the-top pressure from inside the Statehouse and outside,” in addition to “threats of violence, acts of violence.”
“Whether we realize it or not, whether we accept it or not, the forces that define this vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrated the political affairs in Indiana,” he said in a speech earlier than the vote.
Trump posted repeatedly on social media about Indiana, naming particular person senators and threatening main challengers in opposition to anybody who voted no, whereas Vice President JD Vance went twice to Indiana to meet with lawmakers.
Trump’s political allies tried to flip Indiana’s vote right into a loyalty check, mobilizing supporters to strain holdout Republicans. The Club for Growth and a brand new group led by a handful of Trump presidential marketing campaign veterans aired adverts threatening to oust incumbent senators who voted in opposition to redistricting. Turning Point USA, the group based by Charlie Kirk, vowed to again these main challenges and hosted a small rally on the Indiana Statehouse final week.
Much of Trump’s ire was targeted on Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, the Martinsville Republican who had lengthy insisted the Senate didn’t have sufficient votes to move new maps. Bray introduced after the vote failed that underneath Indiana Senate guidelines, the chamber can’t take up the maps once more throughout its 2026 session.
Leising said she had voted for Trump thrice. But she was sad with the president’s efforts to strain Indiana into scrapping and changing its congressional maps as a part of a nationwide arms race forward of subsequent yr’s midterm elections.
“I wish that President Trump would change his tone. He needs to be more positive about what he needs to address for ’27 and ’28. Why does he need to have a Republican majority in ’27 and ’28? What is he going to do next?” Leising said.
She additionally said redistricting advocates’ efforts in the end backfired, hardening opposition within the Senate.
“You wouldn’t change minds by being mean. And the efforts were mean-spirited from the get-go,” she said. “If you were wanting to change votes, you would probably try to explain why we should be doing this, in a positive way. That never happened, so, you know, I think they get what they get.”
Sen. Sue Glick, a Republican who took workplace in 2010, echoed Leising’s feedback, citing the violent threats many senators confronted.
“Hoosiers are a hardy lot, and they don’t like to be threatened. They don’t like to be intimidated. They don’t like to be bullied in any fashion. And I think a lot of them responded with, ‘That isn’t going to work,’” Glick said. “And it didn’t.”
Glick said she’d spoken with each Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson about redistricting, and that each had been nice.
But, Glick said, “We don’t have to take orders from any other level of government or any other person in government. We’ll listen to cogent arguments about what’s going on. But I don’t think it swayed people to vote against their conscience.”
Leising, Glick and different Senate Republicans insisted Bray’s Senate management submit is secure. And they laughed off the discuss of main challenges in opposition to them.
“In Indiana, we’re not going to be intimidated,” Leising said. “We’re strong people.”