“In Indiana, we’re not going to be intimidated,” said state Sen. Jean Leising. “We’re strong people.”
The 76-year-old Leising, who represents a rural district in southeast Indiana, recalls her eighth-grade grandson telling her that his basketball teammates were getting negative text messages about her after she spoke at his school, and she said that played a part in her joining 20 fellow Republicans in rejecting the redistricting plan.
“Boy, when I got home that night, that’s when I decided,” said Leising, who was first elected to the Senate in 1988. “I was angry. So the next day, I said, ‘I’ve got to talk about this,' because this is over the top. This shouldn’t be the way it was.”
State Sen. Mike Bohacek publicly stated that he rejected the measure because he has a daughter with Down syndrome, and he was offended by the president's use of a slur for people with disabilities to insult Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
"Choices of words have consequences," Bohacek explained.
Sen. Greg Walker, who represents Mike Pence's hometown of Columbus, was among GOP senators targeted by swatting attacks ahead of the vote, and he said he felt that voting in favor of Trump's measure would have rewarded wrongdoing and set a dangerous precedent.
Although law enforcement has not publicly linked the swatting attacks and other violent threats to a political motive, the president posted repeatedly on social media about the Indiana redistricting push, singling out individual senators who were leaning no and threatening primary challenges against them, and Vice President JD Vance went twice to the state to meet with legislators.
Sen. Greg Goode, who faced strong public opposition to the scheme earlier this fall at a town hall in Terre Haute, criticized “over-the-top pressure from inside the Statehouse and outside" and condemned "threats of violence, acts of violence.”
“Whether we realize it or not, whether we accept it or not, the forces that define this vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrated the political affairs in Indiana,” Goode said in a speech before the vote.
Leising said she voted for the president all three times he's run, but she criticized his attempt to pressure her and other Republicans into a mid-decade redistricting scheme to help maintain congressional majorities for the rest of his second term.
“I wish that President Trump would change his tone. He needs to be more positive about what he needs to address for ’27 and ’28," Leising said. "Why does he need to have a Republican majority in ’27 and ’28? What is he going to do next?”
She summed up why the campaign backfired.
“You wouldn’t change minds by being mean, and the efforts were mean-spirited from the get-go,” Leising said. “If you were wanting to change votes, you would probably try to explain why we should be doing this, in a positive way. That never happened, so, you know, I think they get what they get.”
