Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels — who faced personal attacks from President Donald Trump for opposing a mid-year gerrymander giving Trump two more Republican districts — ended the week celebrating Trump’s defeat in Indiana.
“My state’s Senate, not often the subject of national attention, earned some on Thursday by declining to enroll Indiana in the bipartisan national embarrassment of mid-decade gerrymandering,” Daniels told the Washington Post, adding that Trump-friendly Republican senators appeared to wage “an instinctual rebellion against being ordered around, especially by outsiders.”
“There has been no shortage of that, ranging from a White House-led arm-twisting campaign, including Oval Office wooing and social media name-calling by the president himself, to apocalyptic ads predicting national disaster if Indiana failed to steal one or two congressional seats for Republicans. Then came the now-common promises to launch and lavishly fund primary campaigns against any dissidents,” Daniels said.
The pressure also included so-called swatting of legislators’ homes, calling down police with bogus anonymous tips, and reports of death threats.
“This whole drama flowed from the confluence of two of the most unhealthy trends in today’s politics: The spread of one-party dominance at the state level, and the nationalization of everything,” said Daniels. “Indiana is one of the three-fourths of American states where one party controls the governorship and both legislative houses, and one of the near-half with supermajority control. Politicians accustomed to doing whatever they want in the absence of real competition often overreach.”
But had gerrymandering proponents succeeded, Daniels argues, Trump might not have gotten what they wanted. Gerrymandering, he said, can be risky if voters are dead-set against a party.
“It’s not improbable that Republican majorities weakened to send voters into the two target districts, coupled with voter revulsion at the whole process, could have produced a result no better than the status quo,” Daniels said.
A fundamental reality, said Daniels, is that political or legislative majorities “must be earned, not engineered.”
“Many of my state’s senators stood firm for that principle this week, and through this small declaration of independence strengthened the case that their particular majority is one they deserve, and deserve to keep,” Daniels said.
Read Daniels' Washington Post column at this link.