Trump-backed candidate in Indiana’s lieutenant governor race falls short

INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour endorsement in Indiana’s lieutenant governor’s race flopped on Saturday, with his preferred candidate losing in a convention battle in this deep-red state.

In a somewhat rare down-ballot defeat for the former president, state Rep. Julie McGuire, his endorsed candidate, narrowly lost to Micah Beckwith — a Christian nationalist pastor and former congressional candidate who has said that God told him he sent “those riots to Washington” on Jan. 6 and that it was God’s “hand at work.”

Beckwith’s yearlong campaign for office was unprecedented in a state where the GOP gives a pool of 1,800 delegates the power to choose the lieutenant governor nominee. The last time Indiana saw a contested convention for the post was in 1996, and Beckwith defeated McGuire by a narrow vote of 891-828.

In addition to Trump, McGuire, a little-known, first-term lawmaker, had the support of Sen. Mike Braun, who won Indiana’s six-way, $40 million gubernatorial primary last month. On Saturday, just hours before the vote, Braun said he convinced Trump to make the endorsement.

“When I talked to him on Thursday before I came here, I asked him to give me an endorsement,” Braun told delegates at the convention. “That's how you get stuff done.”

Hours later, the endorsement fizzled.

“Holy smokes — Trump world is going to lose their shit,” said a Hoosier Republican with close ties to the former president who was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized by the Trump campaign to speak.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The race is an example that not all politics have become nationalized in the Trump era. Beckwith is a Trump supporter, and well-liked among the former president’s most ardent supporters in Indiana. He ran as an “insurance policy” for conservatives — promising to be a “check” on their own party’s leader after grassroots Republicans fumed at term-limited incumbent Gov. Eric Holcomb’s pandemic restrictions in 2020.

Acknowledging defeat in a brief press conference after the vote, Braun predicted a potentially rocky relationship with Beckwith.

“There’s no doubt about this. I’m in charge,” Braun said. “And Micah is going to be someone that works with me. And if he doesn’t … it will probably not be as fruitful in terms of what we can get done.”

It’s a bruising start to the general election for Braun, whose campaign took a strong-fisted approach to getting elected officials behind his choice.

Indiana Democrats, who haven’t won a governor’s race in 24 years, see Beckwith’s win as an opportunity to change their electoral fortunes in November. Indiana Democratic Party Chair Mike Schmuhl said the vote ”showed their stark divisions.”

Trump won Indiana by double digits in 2016 and 2020, and no Democrat has won statewide since 2012. The DNC sent a paltry $70,000 to the state this week to try and break the GOP supermajority in the statehouse, and is unlikely to get involved in any statewide race here.

Still, establishment Republicans were left reeling, with one Republican operative predicting that the upset was “either the official death of the Indiana GOP or just another strange chapter in a strange era.”

Asked what the outcome meant for the future of the party, Blair Englehart, an Indianapolis GOP consultant, needed just one word.

“Chaos,” he said.