By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
August 11, 2025
An early prediction of the Indiana Secretary of State’s 2026 race has the seat remaining in Republican hands and embattled incumbent Diego Morales winning reelection.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball from The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia recently handicapped the 26 secretary of state races across the country. The analysis determined nine secretary of state’s seats are “Safe Republican” and eight are “Safe Democrat,” while three are “Likely Republican” and one is “Likely Democrat.” Of the five competitive races, four are toss-ups, all currently held by Democrats, and one “Leans Republican.”
Indiana, along with Ohio and Iowa, were labeled as “Likely Republican,” indicating the winner of the 2026 secretary of state race will probably be a member of that party. The Hoosier GOP has held the office since December 1994.
Morales won the secretary of state seat in November 2022. He upset the incumbent, Holli Sullivan, at the Indiana Republican Party state convention and, despite troubling allegations about his qualifications and conduct, fended off a strong Democratic opponent, Destiny Wells, in the general election.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball sees Morales as a strong contender in the 2026 contest because of his backing from the MAGA wing of the Indiana GOP. “He’s known as an aggressive retail campaigner, he should be well funded and his base of voters is considered solid,” the analysis said.
However, the report noted Morales’ tenure in office has been marred by controversy. He has had a tense relationship with the “more establishment-minded members of the GOP” and questions have been raised about his use of state funds to purchase a $90,000 luxury car from a dealership that contributed to his campaign, his trips to Hungry and India where he appeared to have met with government officials, and his hiring of his brother-in-law at a six-figure salary to be co-director of the secretary of state’s auto dealer services division.
Also, Sabato’s pointed out Morales could face some headwinds as the election season gets underway. Knox County Circuit Court Clerk David Shelton has already launched his bid to challenge Morales for the Republican nomination and speculation continues to swirl that Beau Bayh, son of former Indiana Democratic governor and former U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, could enter the secretary of state race as a Democratic candidate.
Morales told The Indiana Citizen he is confident he will win reelection.
“There are things that will happen that I can’t control, but I know as a lifelong Republican, I am in the best position to win next November,” Morales said in an email. “I have the financial resources and record to run on to defeat whatever far-left liberal the Democrats nominate.”
Shelton described Morales a likable guy and a hard campaigner, but criticized him for continually running for office, rather than doing his job. In particular, Shelton pointed to elections and said while the current secretary of state can “read off the script,” he has no experience setting up the polling places, enlisting the poll workers, making sure voters can cast their ballots, and counting the votes.
“As a county clerk, as an election administrator, it has been extremely frustrating over the last three years where (Morales) shows up at the (Association of Clerks of Circuit Courts of Indiana) conferences and instead of actually giving us useful information, he spends his time telling us how great he is, because he visited all 92 counties in the first three months of the year,” Shelton said. “That doesn’t make him a good election administrator. That makes him a taxpayer-funded tourist.”
Democrat Blythe Potter of Bargersville also has announced her candidacy for secretary of state. On her website, she conceded she may not be the party establishment’s first choice and she does not have political experience, but, she, too, highlighted elections and said she wanted to ensure voting is safe, accessible and treated as a human right, and to “bring honor and ethics” back to the state’s elections.
Indiana Democratic Party chair Karen Tallian did not mention the potential of Beau Bayh launching a bid for the office. Instead, she said her party was confident it would find a “serious candidate more qualified” than Morales and, she noted, the incumbent might lose the fight for the GOP nomination, which would change the race considerably.
“Finding someone more qualified will not be a high bar,” Tallian said in an email. “Diego’s long list of corruption and ethics scandals is a clear reason why he’s rapidly losing touch with Hoosier voters. They see his big purchase of a luxury car and his massive bonuses to family members and they’re ready for something new in Indiana.”
In 2022, election denialism was a major issue in many secretary of state races, according to Sabato’s. Republicans nominated candidates who echoed President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, but the tactic backfired and actually helped Democrats win secretary of state offices in several purple states.
How big the issue will be this election cycle is unknown. “If 2026 is more of a ‘neutral’ environment – and if battleground state Republicans shy away from nominating these types of candidates (who espouse election denialism) again – then Democratic incumbents in these offices could be vulnerable,” Sabato’s analysis said.
What may be the dominant topic in the 2026 secretary of state contest, at least in Indiana, is the allegation of noncitizens voting in the state’s elections. Federal and state laws prohibit anyone who is not a citizen of the United States from participating in elections and studies have found few incidents of noncitizens casting a ballot.
However, Morales and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita have raised the prospect that the state’s voter rolls include ineligible, foreign-born individuals.
About three weeks prior to the 2024 November election, Morales and Rokita announced they had asked the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to verify the citizenship of nearly 600,000 Hoosier voters and, earlier this year, sued the federal agency for noncompliance with their request. Also, since Indiana’s new citizenship verification laws took effect on July 1, Morales’ office has said it has identified about 1,600 voters who might not have legal status to vote.
Shelton indicated he would focus on election fraud, if elected, saying the state needs to strengthen its laws and enhance the penalties for election violations. He said he has encountered voter fraud cases in Knox County but could not pursue felony charges because either the paper poll books were not available or the statute of limitations had expired.
In addition, Shelton faulted Morales for seeming to take credit for the assistance offered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship status. Morales signed a memorandum of agreement on July 1 with DHS, giving Indiana access to a federal database so that state election officials can check citizenship naturalization numbers to determine whether voters are U.S. citizens.
“The secretary is taking credit for this,” Shelton said. “This is all related to Trump’s executive order from last March. This was a top-down gift from the federal government to give this accessibility and he’s acting like it’s all his idea.”
On his campaign website, Morales highlights elections and “protecting the vote” as key issues. He said he is supportive of efforts by the federal government to “allow documentary proof of citizenship for all voter registration applications” and to remove “outdated restrictions” that hinder states from maintaining their voter rolls.
Along with the issues of election security and fraud, Morales’ conduct as secretary of state could likely be fodder for rivals on the campaign trail. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the secretary’s spending habits from giving more than $308,000 in spot bonuses to the office’s employees and awarding contracts without soliciting bids from various vendors.
Morales told The Citizen that the allegations about his actions as a state official are false.
“The media has been after me since I won the Republican nomination in 2022,” Morales said in an email. “Their vicious attacks are based on half-truths and outright lies. I expect the attacks to keep coming, but I will focus on the issues that matter most to Hoosiers. I will be talking about election integrity and ensuring we only have citizens participating in Indiana elections.”
Shelton is not shying away from attacking Morales’ decisions and actions while in office, including giving a job to his brother-in-law and spending money to travel to foreign countries. Noting the secretary of state’s office has a consumer protection focus through its oversight of auto dealer and business services divisions, Shelton said he is committed to excelling at the job of being secretary of state, rather than chasing any kind of fanfare.
“(Morales is) saying, ‘Promises made, promises kept.’ Who’s he making promises to?” Shelton said. “He made a promise to his brother-in-law. Well, he kept that one. What kind of promises is he making overseas? That severely concerns me.”
Likewise, Democrats believe Morales’ conduct has given them an opening to recapture the secretary of state’s office.
According to data from Capitol & Washington, Joe Hogsett, three-term mayor of Indianapolis, was the last Democrat to serve as secretary of state, holding the office from 1989 to 1994. Although Wells ran a vigorous campaign in 2022, raising the party’s hopes that she would be the first Democrat elected to a statewide position since the late Joe Kernan left the governor’s office in January 2005, she received just 40.2% of the vote in the November election, compared to Morales’ 54.1%.
“We will be pointing out to Hoosiers at every opportunity that Diego Morales is unfit and unqualified to be secretary of state,” Tallian said in an email. “His record over three years in office has shown clearly that he gladly put personal gain over public service.”
The general election will be held Nov. 3, 2026.
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.
