Diego Morales did the things the Republican Party rewards. He endorsed Donald Trump, and says he was the first Republican Secretary of State in the country to do it. He defended Trump’s name on the ballot. He campaigned for the president’s allies. He won his statewide seat at the 2022 convention, beat the democrat in the general election, and ran his office the way the party’s national leaders said an office like his should be run. In the Republican Party of 2026, that is the whole job description.
Now the party’s own leaders in Indiana are trying to take the seat away from him.
Indiana Republicans choose their nominee for Secretary of State at a state convention rather than a primary. Candidates file, delegates gather, and the delegates decide. This year, just before the filing window closed, a Senate staffer named Max Engling entered the race. Within days, three of the most powerful Republicans in the state moved in to endorse Engling. U.S. Sen. Jim Banks withdrew his endorsement of Morales. Attorney General Todd Rokita withdrew his and asked Morales to suspend his campaign. State Treasurer Daniel Elliott went the furthest and called on Morales to resign, saying the secretary “no longer reflects our values and is a weight on our ticket.”
Set Trump aside for a second, however you feel about him, because the point does not depend on it. Trump is the Republican Party right now. He sets the GOP’s direction and decides what the word “Republican” is worth in a convention hall. There is no space between the president and the establishment. They are the same thing. And the record shows Morales standing inside that line for years, not at the edge of it.
The record is his own, posted under his own name. In January 2024, Morales backed an amicus brief arguing that Secretaries of State could not strike Trump from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment. That March, Morales rallied with Donald Trump Jr. and endorsed both Trump and Banks, the senator who would later turn on him. That September, Morales posted a photo with the president and called himself a legal immigrant and proud Latino who proudly endorsed him. In April 2025, Morales stood outside the White House and wrote that the president “has a partner in the Indiana Secretary of State’s office,” and that month his office issued a release backing Trump’s executive order on election integrity. The Heritage Foundation, which has graded state election laws since 2021, ranks Indiana seventh in the nation on its Election Integrity Scorecard and counts it among only four states to post double-digit gains in that time.
Morales reads the move against him through that same lens. In a text to delegates, he called it “political retribution for me standing with our great President against those who fiercely opposed him.” Take the claim for what it is, his own. It still sharpens the question the rest of us are left asking.
Because the question almost asks itself. If a man does all of that and still gets called a weight on the ticket, what exactly was the test, and who decides when you have passed it.
In Indiana, the answer to the second part is not Banks, and not Rokita, and not Elliott. It is the delegates. On June 20, roughly 1,800 of them will gather at the Grand Wayne Convention Center in Fort Wayne and pick the nominee themselves.
Those delegates have overruled the party’s heavyweights before, and recently. I wrote last week about how they picked Morales in 2022 over the establishment’s choice, and how in 2024 they chose Micah Beckwith for lieutenant governor over a running mate backed by both the governor and the president of the United States, 891 to 828. The pressure this year is lighter than that, and it is aimed at a man those same delegates already elected.
Braun, alone among the heavyweights, has stayed out of the push against Morales. He also stood where these delegates will stand and watched a favorite lose. He told reporters that he respects the process.
The leadership is free to decide that it picked wrong in 2022. What it cannot do is define loyalty for years, watch Morales meet every part of the definition, and then treat his meeting it as beside the point. Either the test meant something or it did not. On June 20, the people who administered the loyalty test the first time get to say which.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
