Donald Trump’s vow to extract retribution on Republican state senators in Indiana who rejected his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map got results Tuesday, with at least five of them losing to challengers backed by the president.

According to The Associated Press, one state senator survived his primary against a Trump-backed opponent, while the seventh race had not been called by the AP as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

While Trump’s job approval ratings have cratered in recent months amid high gas prices and spiking economic anxiety, the results, nevertheless, reflect the enduring power of the president’s endorsement in a GOP primary. Trump’s allies unleashed a wave of spending against the targeted state senators, branding them RINOs, or Republicans in name only, who had abandoned the MAGA movement.

“Everyone in Indiana politics should have learned an important lesson today: President Trump is the single most popular Republican among Hoosier voters,’’ Jim Banks, Indiana’s junior senator, told The Indianapolis Star in a statement that Trump shared on his Truth Social platform. “Indiana is a conservative state and we deserve conservatives in our state Senate who have a pulse on Republican voters.”

Two groups aligned with Banks — Hoosier Leadership for America Inc. and the American Leadership PAC — spent a combined $9 million in advertising on Indiana state Senate races, per AdImpact.

In December, the state senators had rebuked Trump by spurning his demand for mid-decade redistricting to help the House GOP pick up seats in the midterm elections. While Indiana Republicans hold a supermajority in the state Senate, 21 GOP state senators voted with the chamber’s 10 Democrats to reject a map that would have favored Republicans in all nine of the state’s House seats. 

Eight of those legislators were up for reelection, and Trump endorsed challengers against seven of them. The eighth state senator was also defeated in his primary Tuesday. 

House races

Several House members from Indiana turned back primary challengers Tuesday.

In the deep-blue 7th District, Democratic Rep. André Carson, whose Indianapolis-based seat would have been dismantled under the proposed GOP redistricting plan, fended off a handful of rivals, including attorney George Hornedo and Army reservist Destiny Wells. 

And Republican incumbents prevailed in a pair of red-leaning neighboring seats. In the 4th District, Rep. Rep. Jim Baird overcame a challenge from state Rep. Craig Haggard, while in the 5th District, Rep. Victoria Spartz won her primary over Army veteran Scott King. Spartz will next face Democratic state Sen. J.D. Ford. 

But the anti-incumbent fervor that played out in the legislative contests was also reflected in the closer-than-expected win by freshman Rep. Jefferson Shreve in the 6th District. The Republican, who had Trump’s endorsement and loaned his campaign $2 million, edged out a primary victory over Sarah Janisse Brown, an author and home-schooling mother of 15 who ran on a Make America Healthy Again agenda. Shreve was leading, 53 percent to 47 percent, when the AP called the race at 10:13 pm. Eastern time.

Two years earlier, Shreve, who spent more than $13 million of his own money on an unsuccessful 2023 bid for Indianapolis mayor, secured the GOP nomination with just 28 percent of the vote in a crowded primary. 

And the general election matchup is set in Indiana’s lone battleground House race. In the 1st District in the state’s northwestern corner, third-term Democratic Rep. Frank J. Mrvan and Republican Barb Regnitz, a Porter County commissioner, will face off after winning their respective primaries. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race Lean Democratic.