By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
October 24, 2025
When Indiana Senate leadership confirmed publicly on Wednesday that the Republicans did not have enough votes to support mid-decade redistricting, Gov. Mike Braun and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith issued their own responses, clearly showing, according to political experts, that theirs was a forced marriage.
“They have essentially the same broad outlook but, boy, stylistically, they don’t mesh together quite as well as they could,” Robert Dion, associate professor of political science at the University of Evansville, said of Braun and Beckwith. “You would expect a governor and lieutenant governor to work together as a team.
“That’s what we are used to in Indiana,” he continued. “Whether it was Becky Skillman (lieutenant governor to former Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican) and Kathy Davis (lieutenant governor to former Gov. Joe Kernan, a Democrat), everybody understands who the Number Two is and the job of the Number Two is to support the guy who’s Number One.”
Braun and Beckwith both have said the state should redraw its congressional districts this year for the two seats in the Indiana delegation to the U.S. House that are currently held by Democrats. However, while Braun has demurred to the Indiana General Assembly, which would have to craft the new maps, Beckwith has adopted an aggressive tone, actively advocating for redistricting by saying reconfiguring the districts to favor the GOP will “make sure our elections more accurately represent the will of Hoosiers” and that Indiana must “push back on the cheating, corrupt blue states.”
After Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray’s office said on Wednesday that the Republican caucus in the upper chamber had not reached the consensus needed for a mid-decade redistricting, the contrasts between the messaging from Braun and Beckwith came into full public display.
Braun expressed optimism that redistricting would happen but, again, acknowledged the legislature’s key role in the process. “I am still having positive conversations with members of the legislature,” Braun posted on the social-media site X, following the announcement from Senate Republicans. “I am confident the majority of Indiana Statehouse Republicans will support efforts to ensure fair representation in Congress for every Hoosier.”
Beckwith issued a combative statement on the letterhead of the lieutenant governor’s office. He framed the redistricting effort as a fight to stop “radical Democrat Marxists” and said voters did not elect a Republican supermajority so the senators could “cower, compromise or collapse at the very moment courage is required.”
“Washington is being overrun by an anti-American agenda, and instead of joining President (Donald) Trump in reclaiming our voice, too many in our own Senate choose the path of weakness and political convenience,” Beckwith said in his statement. “I am calling on my Republican colleagues in the Indiana Senate to find your backbone, to remember who sent you here, and to reclaim Indiana’s rightful voice in Congress by drawing a 9-0 map.”
Some Republicans, especially those in the Indiana Senate, may be reluctant to vote for a rare, midcycle redistricting because recent town halls, political protests and polling show that it’s unpopular with many Hoosiers. GOP legislators in the state have been under increasing pressure recently from the Trump administration to redraw congressional maps to favor GOP candidates in an effort to head off a blue wave supporting Democrats in races for U.S. House seats in the 2026 mid-term election.
Both Dion and Chad Kinsella, associate professor of political science at Ball State University, noted the different stances between Braun and Beckwith are partly linked to their experiences in politics and their respective positions in state government. Moreover, the pair’s contrasting messaging style might be reflecting the fact that they did not choose to run together in the November 2024 election. Rather they were thrust together when Beckwith, mounting an outsider campaign, upset Braun’s handpicked candidate for lieutenant governor and secured the nomination for the No. 2 slot at the Indiana Republican Party convention in June 2024.
Braun has had a longer career than Beckwith in the public sector, having served in the Indiana House from 2014 to 2017, followed by a single, six-year term in the U.S. Senate before being elected governor last year. Particularly in the Senate, Kinsella said, Braun would have been part of a deliberative and collegial atmosphere, where the members worked slowly and methodically on legislation and confirmations.
In the redistricting debate, Braun is mimicking senatorial behavior by being patient and letting the Indiana Senate Republicans coalesce around drawing new maps, Kinsella said. Also, the governor may be conceding to the reality that in the Indiana Statehouse, the executive branch does not have as much power as the legislature.
“He’s got to work with them,” Kinsella said of Braun and the state lawmakers. “I think if he pushes too hard, too fast and makes public statements against his own Senate, his own partisans, it’s not going to be helpful.”
Beckwith, on the other hand, got into office through an unorthodox campaign and is maintaining that “outsider” status by conducting himself like “a bull in a china shop,” Kinsella said. Lieutenant governors, generally, do not have much power, but if Beckwith is looking to run for higher office, he might see his statements on redistricting as helping to define himself in a future Republican primary, Kinsella said.
“This is part of his continuing campaign, I guess, for whatever’s next,” Kinsella said. “I don’t think he’s probably worried too much about how much he ruffles feathers in the State Senate.”
On social media, Beckwith, who is a pastor and says he is a Christian nationalist, has claimed he was “the first elected official in Indiana to publicly support redistricting,” and has pushed GOP legislators to act by saying new congressional districts will “keep violent criminals off our streets” and will oppose “public schools pushing their woke agenda on our children.” When conservative activist Scott Presler posted on X that he would come to Indiana and work to defeat any Republican state lawmaker who did not support redistricting, Beckwith replied, “My door is always open to you, Scott, and I’m ready to make redistricting happen.”
Comparatively, Braun has been much more low-key. In fact, after Vice President JD Vance first met with Braun and Republican legislative leaders at the Statehouse in August, the governor did not even mention redistricting in his post on X. “We discussed a number of issues and I was pleased to highlight some of the great things happening in Indiana,” Braun said.
Also, Braun has not been publicly bullying lawmakers or applying pressure by continually talking about redistricting. In September, he told WOWO radio, “I want it to be where it wasn’t forced upon our legislature, have our leaders talk to their own caucus members. … I’m going to give them time. I think eventually we’ll get there.”
Dion said Braun appears to be playing the long game. The governor has more items on his agenda that he wants to accomplish during the next three and a half years and he may run for reelection, Dion said, so Braun has to be respectful and maintain a working relationship with the legislators in order to get things done.
Beckwith’s approach comes with risks, Dion said. He noted the lieutenant governor might be eyeing the 2026 or 2028 election and maybe, Dion speculated, Beckwith thinks any attention and publicity he can get is beneficial in building his name recognition and appeal to voters. Even though Beckwith is “second fiddle to Mike Braun” and “runs a few agencies,” Dion said he should be careful because he needs to have a good relationship with the legislature.
“Being difficult in that way can eventually make you, I don’t want to say irrelevant, but it can really damage your ability to be productive,” Dion said. “If Braun doesn’t want to deal with him and the legislature doesn’t want to deal with him, then he’s a man without a country. He’s got to have something. He can’t sit in the lieutenant governor’s office and tweet for four years and then run a statewide campaign and get the votes to get into office.”
Kinsella wondered if Braun and Beckwith are actually coordinating their messages, employing a “good cop bad cop” strategy to get the General Assembly to redistrict. The two may be collaborating on the different roles they would play with the governor being nice and collegial to get some legislators to agree to draw new maps, while the lieutenant governor is the attack dog, making inflammatory comments to pressure other legislators.
“We may not even get an answer from them at all,” Kinsella said. “That’s kind of the key thing, are they working together on this or are they stylistically kind of doing their own thing and playing this the way that they want to play it without working with (each) other?”
Dion was skeptical that Braun and Beckwith are doing “some kind of elaborate ‘good cop bad cop’ head fake.” Braun, Dion said, does not need to team up with his lieutenant governor to move the legislature along.
Regardless of whether they are working together or separately, Dion said the contrasting messages coming from Braun and Beckwith about redistricting do “nothing but sow confusion” among Hoosiers. The executive branch should have a unified message, so the citizens can understand the leaders’ position and be able to hold them accountable, he said.
“When the executive position is muddled and they’re stepping on themselves, that’s not productive,” Dion said. “It just shows confusion. It makes people think that leadership can’t get it together.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
