A potential bright spot for Dems in Indiana

Indiana Democrats, shut out of statewide offices for a decade in the solidly red state, could change that on Tuesday thanks to an unexpectedly competitive secretary of state race.

Republican nominee Diego Morales, a former gubernatorial aide to Mike Pence who has called the 2020 election a “scam,” has been dogged by controversy in recent months, including allegations of sexual improprieties, voter fraud and misuse of campaign funds. That has created an opening for his Democratic opponent, Destiny Wells.

The race remains close, according to public polling: Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis and handicapping newsletter run by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, ranks the race as a tossup.

Morales is part of the America First Secretary of States’ coalition, a group that promotes candidates who believe the 2020 presidential election was marred by significant voter fraud to run for their state’s top election-management position. Pence, his former boss, held a fundraiser for Morales here on Oct. 12.

“It does feel like an opening,” said Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor and presidential candidate. His former political action committee, Win the Era, endorsed Wells last month. (Buttigieg stepped down from involvement in the PAC when Biden nominated him to the Cabinet.) “The truth is in Indiana, for a statewide candidate to win, you have to not only have a great candidate on our side, but also see some big mistakes on the other side.”

The spate of damaging news about Morales has been accumulating for weeks. They include reports that he was twice-ousted over performance-related issues in 2009 and 2011 in the same office he seeks to lead; exaggerating his military service that included just three months and 18 days of basic training; a pair of sexual assault claims; reports he spent $43,000 of campaign funds on a vehicle; and, most recently, accusations of voter fraud in 2018 when he was running for Congress and voted in a different county. POLITICO has not independently verified the allegations.

According to a report by The Indianapolis Star, the sexual assault allegations against Morales allegedly occurred more than a decade ago. In a statement sent to media outlets, Morales has denied them “unequivocally.” Morales' campaign has said he was proud of his volunteer military service; that a reliable car was necessary to run a "successful campaign," and he told the Fox 59 TV station that when it came to the matter of his residency, he followed all applicable state and federal election and property tax laws.

Morales’ campaign declined a request for an interview through a spokeswoman.

Kyle Hupfer, the Indiana Republican Party chair and the Republican National Committee general counsel, told The Indianapolis Star in a statement that he learned of at least one of the sexual assault allegations from one of the women, a Republican, in August. Hupfer initially accepted a request for an interview with POLITICO on the secretary of state’s race but canceled it shortly before it was scheduled to take place.

In a statement, an Indiana GOP spokesperson said the party is “confident” that Election Day will be a “good day for our statewide ticket.”

Wells, a lawyer and Army Reserve lieutenant colonel who served in Afghanistan, has tried to capitalize on the controversy surrounding her opponent. “There are a lot of unforced errors by our opposition,” she said in an interview. “Every time that happens, we try to make the most of the opportunity. We’ve had to be pretty resourceful.”

Wells has outraised her opponent by nearly $116,000 this year as of last week, according to her campaign, a substantial sum for a down-ballot race, with Wells raising $739,494 to Morales $622,805.

Morales won his nomination at the Republican convention in June by beating Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s handpicked candidate, incumbent Holli Sullivan. His candidacy was largely fueled by delegates’ furor over the governor’s pandemic-era public health restrictions.

Mike O’Brien, an Indiana Republican operative and former legislative director for former Gov. Mitch Daniels, said Republicans made a mistake in choosing Morales over Sullivan.

“None of these revelations is a surprise,” O’Brien said. “They were discussed around the [state GOP] convention and it was concluded that the establishment was trying to take him down with false claims. There’s still that sense among the party faithful. And it's hard to learn tough lessons as a party when we don’t stop winning. So we’ll probably just keep making the same mistakes.”

The close race, in part, is a byproduct of a monthslong effort to rebuild the state’s Democratic Party under new state chair Mike Schmuhl, a South Bend operative who was appointed to the body’s executive committee earlier this year by DNC chair Jaime Harrison.

“I was very clear when I ran that our fortunes aren't going to change overnight, or necessarily with one election,” said Schmuhl. “But I do think it's a process. And I think that we put in place a long-term plan to help build up our party.

Wells, who has sought to leverage anger over the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and Indiana’s status as the first state to hold a special session to restrict abortion, made her closing pitch to a few dozen gathered outside a suburban Indianapolis office park on a recent Friday night.

“If I know anything from my years of service in Afghanistan, women’s rights is a barometer of a healthy democracy,” she said. “And right now, we don’t have a healthy democracy.”