In 2022, Indiana Republicans gathered at their state convention and made Diego Morales their nominee for Secretary of State, the 63rd person to hold the office. The delegates picked him even though he was not the party leadership’s preferred candidate. That November he won the seat outright. Now he is the incumbent, running for a second term. An incumbent in his own party usually gets the benefit of the doubt.
This time the party is not granting that benefit of the doubt. Four years after the delegates put him in the office over the party establishment’s objection, that same party establishment wants the office back, and it is asking the same delegates to take it away.
U.S. Sen. Jim Banks had endorsed Morales. This spring Banks withdrew his endorsement. Attorney General Todd Rokita withdrew his too and asked Morales to suspend the campaign. State Treasurer Daniel Elliott did not stop at suspension. He called for Morales to resign on the spot and said the secretary “no longer reflects our values and is a weight on our ticket.” The three of them threw their support behind Max Engling, an aide in Banks’s own Senate office who filed to run the day before the filing deadline. The party establishment fell in line to support their new candidate.
Whatever case there is to make against Morales, it is the delegates who get to weigh it. It has always been the delegates’ call.
The party establishment keeps forgetting how the Indiana convention actually works. On June 20, somewhere near 1,800 Republicans will gather in Fort Wayne and choose the nominee. Senator Banks can work the room all day. So can a county precinctman nobody outside his precinct has heard of. When the voting starts, the senator holds no more power than the unknown precinctman. The arrangement exists so the party’s direction is set by the people who show up, not by the people who “outrank” them.
The delegates chose Morales once already. They did it in 2022, when the establishment backed Holli Sullivan, the appointed incumbent and Gov. Eric Holcomb’s pick. The delegates looked at her, looked at Morales, and picked Morales. Morales went on to beat Democrat Destiny Wells that November and became the first Latino elected to statewide office in Indiana. So the same party establishment is now asking the delegates to throw out the man they elected.
If this were the first time the party establishment had misjudged that room, I might call it a misread. But it is not the first time.
In 2024, Gov. Mike Braun picked Julie McGuire to run with him for lieutenant governor. The convention almost always rubber-stamps the running mate. President Trump put his thumb on the scale just two days before with what he called a “Complete and Total Endorsement” of McGuire, which is roughly the heaviest thing a Republican can drop on a state convention. The delegates picked Micah Beckwith instead, 891 to 828. A governor and the president on one side, and the delegates still proved their independence.
The faces giving the orders change from year to year. A governor, a president, now a senator and an attorney general and a treasurer. For the most part, the delegates stay who they are, and what they keep doing is ignoring all of the noise and then voting with their own minds.
A party that elects a man, watches him win statewide, and then sends its senators out to run him off the next ballot is telling its own volunteers that their vote was conditional, good only until the party establishment changed its mind.
If I were a delegate who cast a ballot for Morales in 2022, I would want to know what that vote was worth, and I would not much like the answer the party establishment is offering.
One Republican has refused to join the push, and it happens to be the one who has stood exactly where these delegates will stand. Braun lost his running-mate fight in 2024 with the president of the United States backing his choice. He understands the convention floor. When his colleagues started calling for Morales to step down, Braun refused to join them: “Whenever you try to intervene and say this or that, I don’t like that, in general,” he told reporters. “I think the delegates will now have another choice, and I respect the process.”
Party leadership never wanted Diego Morales in this office. The delegates put him there anyway. Two years later, they rejected leadership again in the lieutenant governor’s race. Now the party establishment is back to ask them to undo the first decision. They have refused that kind of demand before. On June 20, the leadership is betting they have forgotten how.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster founded Redress South Bend and reports on local government and public records in South Bend and St. Joseph County. He is 31 years old and is majoring in finance. He is a Cleveland sports fan and a longtime season ticket holder of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
