This column was originally published for the Ball State University Center for Business and Economic Research Weekly Commentary blog.
By Michael J. Hicks
July 19, 2026
The Lincoln Party has taken a deeply consequential step. By collecting sufficient signatures to place former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard on the ballot for secretary of state, his team has created the foundation for an enduring political movement. How long it lasts depends on how quickly the national political realignment culminates and whether the GOP survives.
If Ballard picks up 2% of the votes in November’s statewide election, the Lincoln Party can seat a candidate for every elected office in Indiana in 2028. This stabilizes Indiana politics at a time when it is spinning out of orbit.
The Democratic and Republican national parties are in the midst of a grand realignment. This has happened before, with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s broadest of coalitions and then again with the GOP’s southern strategy of the 1960s, which absorbed the anti-Civil Rights Democrats.
Both of those shifts saw one party dominate politics for most of the next half-century.
The U.S. has long seesawed between progressive movements and whiggish conservative movements. American progressives experiment with public policy. Teddy Roosevelt, a GOP stalwart, was a progressive, as was his cousin FDR. American conservatives seek to preserve the ideals of our founding — individual rights and limited government — with less experimentation.
The GOP was founded by men with the then-radical idea that slavery violated the ideals of our founding. In so doing, they destroyed the Whigs and the “Know-Nothings,” a party that looks more like MAGA than anything else in U.S. history.
The current realignment is very much akin to the 1850s, 1930s and 1960s in size and shape.
Ronald Reagan pulled together a coalition of national security hawks, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. The Democratic Party tried to coalesce everyone else, with only occasional success, usually driven by a recession or major GOP mistake.
The Republican Party’s biggest mistake — Donald Trump — has killed the GOP coalition. He’s in the process of delivering the worst strategic defeat in U.S. history and has contributed to our national debt at the highest annualized rate of any modern president. Say goodbye to the national security and fiscal conservatives. The GOP might still entice the modern Know-Nothings to stay in his camp, but that’s not a coalition.
It increasingly appears the Democratic Party has an opportunity to create a lasting majority. But if there’s one thing the Dems are good at, it’s blowing an opportunity. They have let too many extremists give voice to their party.
The Lincoln Party confronts the unique challenges of Indiana politics in this time of national turmoil and does important things for both parties and for Hoosiers of all stripes.
The Indiana Democratic Party has struggled to remain relevant for almost two decades. Much of that is the party’s own fault. But, over the past two election cycles, it has nominated far more centrist candidates.
I think that if the last statewide elections were repeated today, Jennifer McCormick would be governor and Destiny Wells would be attorney general. The party has followed up with secretary of state candidate Beau Bayh, a centrist Democrat. As the Democrats move to the center of Hoosier politics, the GOP is fielding more extremists.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith uses white supremacist rhetoric, recycling language from the 1920s KKK newspaper “The Fiery Cross.” He is openly courting the most extreme elements of the GOP, just as Hoosiers are coming to learn that he isn’t hating only on Muslims or immigrants, but also Catholics. His hatred seems not to extend to powerful people accused of sexual misconduct, whom he refuses to criticize.
The May GOP legislative primaries advanced a slate of even more extremist candidates, in a move that seems likely to fracture party leadership in the coming session. The only nod to centrism was replacing Secretary of State Diego Morales with Max Engling on the November ballot.
Morales isn’t ideological. He’s just not that deep. He is dismally incompetent and corrupt. Still, GOP delegates accepted ineptitude and sleaze until they saw the internal polls showing a humiliating defeat.
The Lincoln Party caused this, making it the most important innovation in Hoosier politics since Mitch Daniels.
Most Hoosiers aren’t extremists. They don’t hate Muslims, Jews or Catholics. They don’t hate immigrants, though many may distrust immigration laws. Most Hoosiers like low taxes and good government services, though they may disagree on how much of each is best for them. And, critically, most Hoosiers want men and women of integrity to serve them in elected office.
These are the voters the Lincoln Party seeks to attract.
The extremists in both parties — but especially in today’s GOP — hate compromise, distrust the plain language of our Constitution and are animated by one or more of the ancient hatreds that most Americans left behind them in the old world. They conjure hate and tell lies to keep power. Once in power, they engage in corruption, both small and large.
It is those candidates the Lincoln Party seeks to beat in elections.
It is best to judge parties by what they do, and the Lincoln Party’s early days are an unparalleled success. It has demonstrated it can deliver votes with a statewide canvass. Ballard is a man of proven integrity who has spent a lifetime in public service, first as a Marine officer and later as mayor of the state’s largest city. He’s precisely the type of candidate Hoosiers want in public office.
The Lincoln Party has scared the GOP so badly that Republicans ditched their appallingly bad incumbent. Their replacement, Engling, is a better candidate, which is also true of every other Hoosier not presently incarcerated or serving as lieutenant governor.
This is an auspicious start for the Lincoln Party.
Michael J. Hicks is professor of economics and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University. He previously served on the faculty of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management and at research centers at Marshall University and the University of Tennessee. His research interest is in state and local public finance and the effect of public policy on the location, composition, and size of economic activity.
The views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not represent those of funders, associations, any entity of Ball State University, or its governing body. Also, the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
