What we’re deciding this year

There are 100 House seats and 25 Senate seats up for election this year, with 53 incumbents seeking reelection unchallenged, according to The Indiana Citizen.

Forty-two of the House incumbents aren’t being challenged. In the Senate, 11 candidates have a clear path to victory at this point, although party officials can fill ballot vacancies after the primary, reducing the number of unchallenged candidates.

In the U.S. Senate, Republican Todd Young and the Democratic mayor of Hammond, Thomas McDermott, are unchallenged in the primaries. In the U.S. House, the Ninth District will be highly contested with incumbent Trey Hollingsworth stepping down. The other eight districts have incumbents running for their seats once again.

This will be the first election utilizing 2020 census data and new maps after redistricting. With some incumbents being drawn into the districts of their colleagues, this created some unique circumstances in which incumbents will be running against other incumbents.

Unique competitions

One example of this is District 47, representing areas of southern Indiana, where Sen. Kevin Boehnlein, R-Jeffersonville, will be facing off against Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Salem. Both candidates are technically incumbents but have been in office for a short time. Boehnlein was chosen to replace Sen. Ron Grooms, R-Jeffersonville, upon his retirement in November 2021. Grooms was the only Republican who voted against the new redistricting maps, which shifted his district.

Byrne was chosen to replace Sen. Erin Houchin, R-Salem after she stepped down in January to pursue U.S. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth’s Ninth District congressional seat.

Houchin will be running against Republicans Stu Barnes-Israel; Rep. J. Michael Davisson, R-Salem; Dan Heiwig; D. Eric Schansberg; Mike Sodrel; Bill J. Thomas and Brian Tibbs in the primary. Democrats Matthew Fyfe, D. Liam Dorris and Isak Asare are also vying for the seat.

In the House, Rep. Curt Nisly, R-Milford, will be competing with fellow Republican legislator Rep. Craig Snow, R-Warsaw. Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, and Rep. Jeff Ellington, R-Bloomington, will be competing for District 45.

The election commission received a challenge on Ellington’s candidacy since he had not been residing in the district. The commission turned down the challenge, with Ellington saying he had moved to challenge Borders in the primary, according to The Indiana Citizen.

Despite calls for an independent redistricting commission to be used for the new maps, the maps were Republican-drawn. Critics said the maps favored incumbents and minimized competition.

The ballot will also include school board elections and some other local races.

“If the conferees reach a compromise, the chambers vote whether to accept the conference committee’s decision. Generally, conference committees are comprised of two legislators from each chamber appointed by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. If the committee is unable to reach a compromise, the bill dies.”

Andy Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne, called conference committees “a magical place” because of the ways they change bills, often behind closed doors.

“When you look at the grand scheme of all of the bills that go to the conference committee, you always have to remember, what’s the bigger picture?” Downs said. “What’s the negotiation that’s going on?”

Stripping-and-inserting bills

This session, one example of this was the strip-and-insert that was done onSenate Bill 209. In a conference committee, legislators took SB 209, which was initially a drug bill, and replaced it with permitless carry legislation.

Democrats disagreed with this decision. In a video released by the Indiana House Democrats, Rep. Ragen Hatcher, D-Gary, discussed how it happened. The House Democrats also issued a press release on the topic.

“Today, the supermajority used the conference committee process to resurrect their radical proposal to eliminate handgun permits in Indiana,” Hatcher said. “The Democratic members of this committee were given mere minutes to look over the committee report.”

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, disagreed with the conference committee decision to suddenly revive the dead bill and held time for testimony following the committee meeting. That’s when a representative of the Indiana State Police spoke out against the bill.

The gun licensing language ended up in House Enrolled Act 1296, which was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb Monday.

Often, similar strip-and-insert procedures are denied if the changes aren’t germane, or relevant, to the initial bill, according to Downs. But the legislature wanted to push through the permitless carry legislation, and it’s become a “nationalized” issue, he said, meaning Indiana appeared to be falling behind compared to states that passed similar legislation.

“They wanted to make sure they got it done,” Downs said. “They’ve been trying to do it for years, and given the supermajority, I think a lot of people would wonder why they hadn’t.”

Swapping committee members

The rules a particular institution operates under matter significantly, Downs said.

In Indiana, each chamber has two conference committee members, along with a few additional members as non-voting advisers. In other states, it’s more common that there are three or more voting members.

In both chambers in Indiana, a unanimous vote and signatures of all conferees are required. This is unique since many states just require a majority vote and the majority of the conferees to sign the report.

Conferees are sent back to their caucuses following a conference committee meeting to decide if they wish to sign off on a conference committee report. Because all four members must sign the report in order for it to move to the full chamber, legislative leaders exercise the power to replace conference committee members unwilling to pass reports determined important to the majority.

This past session, several Democratic conference committee members were swapped out for Republican ones under the Republican supermajority. On the final day of the session, Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson, and Sen. Michael Griffin, D-Hammond, were removed as conferees on the gun legislation, HB 1296.

“The supermajority, no matter what state you’re in, creates an interesting set of circumstances. Because although the bodies have the rules by which they operate, sometimes they can suspend rules or change rules, but it may take a supermajority vote to do it,” Downs said. “And if you’re in the supermajority with one party, it becomes a whole lot easier to make those sorts of changes.”

Indiana House conferees are chosen by the House speaker, while Senate conferees are appointed by the Senate president pro tem—Rep. Todd Huston, R-Fishers, and Sen. Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville. Five states allow the minority leader to appoint or have input on conferees, but Indiana is not one of them.

Following adoption by the committee of a committee report, a majority is needed to adopt the legislation on the floor of both chambers.