Jennifer McCormick speaks at a podium in a high school gym in her recorded announcement she will run on the Democratic ticket for Indiana Governor in 2024.
Screenshot from campaign video
The Indiana Democratic Party has landed a proven vote-getter in the 2024 governor’s race in Jennifer McCormick, a former schoolteacher, principal and school superintendent who was elected state superintendent of public instruction in 2016.
But there’s a catch: McCormick won that contest with the full support of the Indiana GOP, a party she abandoned in 2021 over its policies on public education, abortion and gun control.
Whether a Republican turncoat can capture the votes needed to win the state’s highest office for Democrats for the first time since the 2000 election in a solidly conservative Indiana remains a high hurdle to cross. Republican domination of Indiana politics is so far-reaching that no Democrat has won any statewide race in Indiana since 2012, and the GOP also maintains supermajority control of both chambers of the Indiana Legislature.
McCormick announced her run for governor on Thursday in her hometown of New Castle, ending one of the worst-kept secrets in Indiana politics. (McCormick announced in December that she formed an exploratory committee for governor and had strongly hinted she would enter the race in the months since then.)
Her entrance into the race comes after three campaign cash-rich Republicans—U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden—already have rolled out their campaigns. The three candidates each reported around $3 million in campaign funds at the end of 2022, while McCormick only had about $42,000 in her campaign account.
The GOP hopefuls likely will have to spend big money in a cutthroat primary race while McCormick could save her cash for the general election, assuming no other Democrats enter the race. No other obvious choices have yet to hint at a run.
That could give her a slight advantage, said Andy Downs, director emeritus of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University—though he cautioned that Democrats will still struggle to out-fundraise the GOP.
“Republicans will use up their resources going into the primary, but she is facing an uphill battle in terms of raising money,” Downs told IBJ.
While Republican candidates in Indiana can usually rely on support from the national party and out-of-state groups, the Democratic money machine is a far cry from what it was in decades past as traditional donors have largely steered clear of races in Indiana seen as unwinnable under the current political climate, Downs said.
Tom McDermott, who ran for U.S. Senate against Republican Sen. Todd Young in the 2022 election and lost by more than 20 points, publicly lamented this problem earlier this year, blasting the national party on Twitter for ignoring the race.
“People thought that Christina Hale had a shot at the House, that Evan Bayh and Joe Donnelly had a shot at the Senate and John Gregg had a shot at the governor, and a bunch of out-of-state money flowed to those runs,” Downs said. “Those people ended up losing and those races weren’t close. Since they weren’t close, political investors are going to ask themselves, ‘Is there someplace else I can put my money and make a better investment?’”
To find a winning strategy (and perhaps some moral support), Democrats may want to look at states like Kansas, where Democrat Laura Kelly held onto power in the 2022 election despite Republicans holding firm control of the Senate and a supermajority in the House, says Chad Kinsella, a politics professor at Ball State University. Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature, is another example of the 2022 red wave that wasn’t.
McCormick’s chances may also hinge on President Joe Biden’s approval rating—which currently hovers around 40%—come November 2024.
“One of the most important things happening nationally is people are voting straight ticket, so they need a strong candidate at the top of the ticket to help push through Democrats down the ballot, including Jennifer McCormick,” Kinsella said.
Biden’s low public approval rating isn’t going to do Democrats any favors, but if Donald Trump—the focus of several high-profile criminal investigations and having already been indicted in one of them—wins the Republican nomination, could that help McCormick?
“I would imagine that would play well in and around Indy, The Region, and more urban and suburban areas, depending on how strong or not former president Trump is at that point in time,” Kinsella said.
If McCormick hopes to become the first Democratic governor since Joe Kernan left office in 2004, she’ll likely have to rely on smaller donors. She hinted as much in her campaign announcement.
“I’m not a self-made millionaire,” she said. “I know what the cost of gas and eggs are. It’s going to take a lot of work to get the resources and support to run a great competitive campaign. It’s going to take a lot of small donations, but part of that is making sure that we are getting out and people understand what our platform is going to be, to get them to believe in us.”
This story is by Peter Blanchard of the Indianapolis Business Journal.
