A Loyalty Test That Runs One Way

For years, the rulebook of the Indiana Republican Party carried a promise to the rank and file near the top of its general provisions:

"The right of all individual Republicans to participate in all party activities shall be sacred and inviolable." — Rule 1-5, Rules of the Indiana Republican State Committee (2013 revision)

That sentence is gone. The rules dated June 20 of this year contain something else, a definition of the "Republican in Bad-Standing," and in the last days of a hotly contested secretary of state's race, a district chair reminded party members what good standing requires.

The machinery sits plainly on the page. Rule 1-25 defines a Republican in good standing as one "who supports Republican nominees and who does not actively or openly support another candidate against a Republican nominee." Rule 1-26, found nowhere in the party's August 2025 rules, supplies the punishment. Party officers who find a violation set the length of the sentence at their discretion and then decide the terms:

"The district officers or state committee shall specify, in writing, from the following whether an individual(s) duly found to be bad-standing can: a. Hold any party office; b. Attend or participate in any functions or events of a county, district, or state committee; and/or c. Have access to any proprietary tools or resources of the party." — Rule 1-26(2), Rules of the Indiana Republican State Committee (June 20, 2026)

An appeal is allowed only "pending a demonstration of support to Republican nominees," and the ruling is "final and not subject to further appeal."

I find it rich that a party now writes loyalty tests as if it were writing law. The rulebook is no statute, and Rule 1-2 admits as much: when the rules and a statute conflict, "the statute prevails." The document reads like one all the same, with a charge, a finding, a sentence of open length and an appeal that closes the matter. Shadow law is the right name for it, a private code dressed in the robes of a public one. It governs committee seats and delegate slots. It cannot touch a single ballot, which may explain why the party's allies carried the rest of the message to Facebook and the highway.

The letter came from Patricia Brown, who chairs the 3rd District Republicans and the LaGrange County party. Its expectations, she wrote, are "fundamental to the trust we place in those who seek office and/or serve in any capacity under the Republican banner." Kyle Hupfer, a former state chairman, posted that elected Republicans and party officials have "no wiggle room." The Indiana Federation of Republican Women bought billboards that read "Republicans who stay home elect Democrats," and the group's president doubles as spokeswoman for the Engling campaign. The state party said matters of standing "are best addressed by the respective county Republican organizations."

The party deserves a fair hearing. A political party is a private association, and the preamble of its rules invokes the right of members "to freely associate." Hupfer aimed his words at elected Republicans and party officials, and the 2013 rules already stripped good standing from any committee member who openly backed an opponent of a Republican nominee. What changed is the weight of the sentence and the loss of the promise. That leaves the question the rulebook never asks: where is the rule for the party's loyalty to its voters?

I will not forget how this party put moneyed interests ahead of the voters it now lectures about loyalty. This year's record answers a simple question: when the base and the lobbyists wanted different things, who won?

Data centers are the first exhibit. In February, as public opposition to the projects grew, the Senate voted for a version of House Bill 1210 that would have had large data centers pay local governments at least 1 percent of their electricity costs. According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, "private meetings between legislators and lobbyists for data center companies" then produced rewritten language, never discussed in public, that cut those payments to at most about one-fourteenth of the Senate's level. For a center with a $500 million annual power bill, a floor of $5 million a year became a ceiling of $350,000. Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, said he had already judged the Senate figure too high. The bill's lead sponsor, Rep. Craig Snow, R-Warsaw, delivered the verdict himself: "really just not a lot. I get that."

The second exhibit is the base's own agenda. Senate Bill 182 would have defined male and female throughout Indiana code and tied prison housing, birth certificates and school bathrooms to biological sex. It passed the Senate 37-8, and the House Public Health Committee never scheduled a hearing. A bill to tighten restrictions on abortion drugs died the same way. Sen. Liz Brown, a Fort Wayne Republican, warned that it was no time "for House Leadership to abandon their principles and the social conservatives who elected them to office."

The third exhibit is the bill for the loyalty campaign itself. The Restoration of America PAC put $1 million into ads in the secretary of state's race, the Capital Chronicle reports, including one that calls Democrat Beau Bayh a "nepo baby carpetbagger." The same report says the PAC is heavily funded by billionaire Republican donors Richard and Liz Uihlein of Illinois. A party whose loudest closing message rides on Illinois money stands on thin ground when it audits a Hoosier's loyalty. The rulebook leaves one question unanswered: who gave the party the right to define loyalty for everyone else?

The strongest reply comes from Georgia. In the January 2021 Senate runoffs, turnout in precincts Donald Trump had carried fell by about 310,000 voters from November, according to a Georgia Public Broadcasting analysis, and Democrats won both seats by about 55,000 and 94,000 votes. The billboards have a point. The cost of staying home is real, and conservatives paid it. I am asking for the opposite of staying home: a full turnout of Republicans who weigh every race on its merits, and a party that earns their trust. Loyalty demanded by bylaw is brittle. Loyalty earned holds through hard seasons.

Terre Haute's own state senator has shown the difference. Before he voted against the mid-decade congressional map, Sen. Greg Goode held a listening session with his constituents. President Trump labeled him a RINO and endorsed a challenger. In May, Republican primary voters returned Goode with almost 53 percent of the vote. "Folks here in Western Indiana, we made it about the district," he said that night.

This column argued on Oct. 30 that no party is owed a blank check. The Indiana Constitution holds the rule that outranks every bylaw, and Article 2 states it in seven words: "All elections shall be free and equal." A party may keep its committees and its tribunals. On Tuesday, you keep the ballot, and you can mark it line by line with the conscience God gave you. A party that wants your loyalty can still earn it, and Hoosiers have always been generous to those who do. The rulebook binds the committee. The ballot answers to you.