Greg Ballard, the former mayor of Indianapolis, will pave the way for other candidates if he gets enough votes, part of an unpredictable race for Indiana secretary of state.
By Jane C. Timm
Greg Ballard, the former two-term Republican mayor of Indianapolis, is running for secretary of state in Indiana this year, hoping to create a new party that he says would increase competition in general elections and moderate growing extremism in the state.
Ballard, 71, gathered more than 37,000 signatures — an endeavor that cost his campaign more than $780,000 — to get his name on the ballot as an independent candidate.
Under Indiana state law, if a candidate wins at least 2% of the votes in the secretary of state race, their party secures ballot access for the next four years. Ballard is calling his party “the Lincoln Party” and vows to pave the way for independent candidates to run under the moniker in the future.
Speaking to NBC News, Ballard blamed “a lot of the toxicity of politics” on the fact that Indiana has “no competitive general elections in November. Everything’s decided in May in the primaries. We think that if you have competitive general elections in November, then the voters will have much more choice, and the toxicity will decrease.”
It’s part of an unexpectedly dramatic statewide race in a very Republican state, with Donald Trump carrying Indiana by at least 16 points in each of his presidential runs and legislative and congressional maps drawn to benefit the GOP.
Just six of the state’s 138 federal, statewide and legislative elections in the 2024 general election were decided by 5 points or less, according to state data, and many legislative races were uncontested. No seats changed parties.
Ballard, who says he’s running to win and not just to create the party, is one of four candidates running for secretary of state this year, thanks to an unusual flurry of ballot access efforts and controversies surrounding sitting Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales.
Republicans nominated a late addition to the race — Max Engling, an aide to Sen. Jim Banks — after the party ousted incumbent Morales at its nominating convention.
Democrats, meanwhile, nominated Beau Bayh, a scion of one of the state’s best-known political families, while the Libertarian Party — which has had ballot access in the state since 1994 — put forward Lauri Shillings, a creative director who ran for Congress in 2024.
“This is a unique year where someone could win this race with 26% if you go four-way split,” Shillings said. “And we’re coming into an election with a fractured Republican base.”
Morales, the incumbent, has been accused of misusing government funds and awarding pricey no-bid contracts to campaign donors as secretary. He has denied wrongdoing. In the weeks before the convention, some top Republicans pulled endorsements from Morales, and Engling was recruited to run just ahead of the filing deadline.
“How did I get in this race? It was delegates coming to me directly. So, convention delegates saying, ‘We want somebody that we can get behind, that we share values with, that we believe can win in the fall, but importantly, that we believe can run this office professionally and do the actual job really well,’” Engling said in an interview.
Both Bayh and Ballard said in interviews that Republicans replaced Morales because of the threat their candidacy posed to GOP chances of keeping the office.
“The reason that they’ve replaced him here at the eleventh hour is not because of the corruption, it’s not because of the incompetence,” Bayh told NBC News. “They’ve now pulled their endorsements at the eleventh hour and replaced him because they figured out that he was going to lose to us.”
“The same forces that have propped him up for the past four years and allowed this corruption and misuse of our tax money to fester are supporting my opponent now,” Bayh added.
Bayh launched a six-figure ad buy in Indiana this week, introducing himself to voters as a former Marine sharpshooter keen on cleaning up corruption. He had $2.3 million in his campaign account as of his most recent report — more than all the other candidates combined.
Ballard spent most of his money on qualifying for the ballot, ending the most recent fundraising reporting cycle with just $26,000 on hand after his expensive signature-gathering effort. He has since announced receiving a $100,000 donation.
As Ballard campaigns, he’s pitching his candidacy — and the Lincoln Party — as an alternative.
“For every Hoosier who is sick and tired of politics as usual, this campaign is for you,” Ballard said last month. “The status quo is over. The stranglehold is broken.”
Still, his rivals say, they’re not sure what the Lincoln Party represents.
The party doesn’t have a party platform right now, Ballard said, though he said he expected itwould be “fiscally responsible and socially tolerant.” It’s unclear whoelse is involved.
Ballard’s campaign manager, Nathan Gotsch, serves as the effort’s face.
“What we’re looking at is a model that is more candidate-centric rather than policy-centric,” Gotsch said. “I would argue to you that while the Republican and Democratic parties claim to have platforms, they don’t actually govern from them, and I think that they really are little more than brands right now.”
Gotsch, the former executive director of Independent Indiana, ran as an independent for Congress in 2022, losing to Banks.
Pressed on who else was involved in the party and how it would vet future candidates after Ballard’s race, Gotsch declined to share names, saying there are Democrats, Republicans and independents involved. He argued that independents have a strong track record in Indiana, suggesting voter desire for alternatives.
According to research conducted by Gotsch’s Independent Indiana group, 244 independents ran in Indiana in2023 and 2024 elections, and 52% of them won.
“The data — and our conversations with voters in Indiana — is clear: they’re not asking for new party built in the image of the two that are failing them. They just want better candidates to choose from, independent of those parties,” he said in an email. “In Indiana, that requires forming a new political party to provide ballot access, institutional support, and a real path to victory for those better candidates.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.