By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
May 28, 2026
The Indiana Democratic Party has announced its presumptive nominees for Indiana comptroller and Indiana treasurer, who will appear on the November ballot to the try to break the Republican Party’s decades-long grip on statewide offices.
Jessica Bailey, Porter County Circuit Court Clerk, has filed to run for comptroller and Coumba Kebe, a public health professional, has filed to run for treasurer. They are the only candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for those positions and are expected to win the delegates’ support at the Indiana Democratic Convention on June 6.
Bailey and Kebe will be running for elected offices in Indiana that Democrats have not held for at least 40 years. The state comptroller, formerly auditor, has been in Republican hands since Dec. 1, 1986, and the state treasurer has been under GOP leadership since Feb. 10, 1979.
The presumptive Democratic nominees will be the likely candidates facing the current Republican officeholders, comptroller Elise Nieshalla and treasurer Daniel Elliott, in November.
Nieshalla was appointed to the position by then-Gov. Eric Holcomb on Dec. 1, 2023, after the former comptroller, Tera Klutz, resigned. This will Nieshalla’s first time appearing on a general election ballot.
Elliott will be running for a second four-year term. He clinched the nomination for treasurer at the Republican state convention in 2022, besting three other opponents, including Nieshalla. He then trounced Democrat Jessica McClellan in the general election by winning 60.9% of the vote.
Indiana’s treasurer is the state’s chief investment officer and serves as chairperson of the Indiana Bond Bank, the Indiana Education Savings Authority among other roles. The state’s comptroller is in charge of the accounting and reporting of state funds, payment of state employees and vendors, and disbursement of state revenues to local governments.
Leading the Democrats’ effort to regain statewide offices will be the nominee for secretary of state. Convention delegates will choose either Beau Bayh, son of former Gov. Evan Bayh, or Blythe Potter, small business owner, to be the Democratic candidate for that office.
The last Democrat to serve as secretary of state was Joe Hogsett, who completed one term from January 1989 to December 1994, and is currently in his third term as mayor of Indianapolis.
Lauri Shillings is the secretary of state candidate for the Libertarian Party of Indiana. Shillings is a creative director at the University of Indianapolis and she owns her own company, Pirate Smile Media. In 2024, she ran as a Libertarian in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District race, finishing in last place with 2.7% of the vote.
Bailey, a native of northwest Indiana, served on the Portage Township School Board for six years before winning the 2018 race for county clerk. She was reelected in 2022 and was named clerk of the year by the Association of Indiana Counties in 2023 and Election Board member of the year in 2021.
During her tenure as clerk, Bailey has moved Porter County from voting precincts to vote centers, according to her bio. Also, she introduced VoteMobile, a mobile polling location that can also be used for voter registration drives and to transport equipment, and she worked to incorporate an app to alert voters to election day wait times and identify polling locations.
Bailey earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Purdue University Northwest and a Masters of Public Administration and Nonprofit Management from Walden University.
“As state comptroller, I will bring the same level of service and efficiency to the office as I do daily as Porter County Clerk,” Bailey said in a press release. “Hoosiers expect a government that is transparent, accountable, and focused on people.”
Kebe, a Hamilton County resident and first-generation American, ran in the 2026 Democratic primary for House District 29, and was part of the Indiana Rural Summit coalition, which supports candidates from rural and small towns who run for office. She lost to Devon Wellington, capturing 46.3% of the vote to Wellington’s 53.7%.
According to Kebe’s bio, she is an executive director in the health-care industry where she supports seniors and their families. Throughout her career, she has overseen health-care operations and managed multimillion-dollar budgets.
Kebe holds master of public health in health policy and management from the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.
“Hoosiers deserve to understand where their taxpayer dollars are going, how public money is being invested and how financial decisions impact their everyday lives,” Kebe said in a press release. “As treasurer, I want to help make our state government more transparent and accessible, so people feel empowered to hold government accountable.
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
