Hoosier Republican senators discussed possible redistricting during a closed-door caucus meeting held on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, at the Indiana Statehouse. (Casey Smith/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
Senate Republicans met behind closed doors on Wednesday at the Indiana Statehouse roughly three weeks after their House counterparts to discuss redistricting, though none shared specifics with media following the caucus.
Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, who leads the Republican body, declined to comment as he left the Senate caucus room.
Also on Wednesday, a national poll found that most Republicans want to ban mid-decade redistricting even as a group sends texts encouraging Hoosiers to support the move.
House Speaker Todd Huston, right, and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray share a laugh in a May 2022 legislative meeting. (Photo by Monroe Bush for Indiana Capital Chronicle)
The two-hour meeting follows a Washington D.C. trip last month where Bray and House Speaker Todd Huston met personally with President Donald Trump to discuss redistricting. Trump and his allies have identified Indiana as an opportunity to grow the slim Republican majority in Congress.
Just two of Indiana’s nine congressional districts are held by Democrats, limiting pick-up opportunities. But with Republican supermajorities in both chambers, and a GOP governor, there’s little opponents can do to halt the process.
Despite the pressure, Indiana’s leaders haven’t yet scheduled a special session and the vast majority of Republican lawmakers have been silent on the issue. Several other senators leaving Wednesday’s meeting also declined to comment or share their perspective — though both Sens. Spencer Deery and Greg Walker have been vocal about their opposition.
The state’s entire Republican delegation in the U.S. House has come out in favor of redistricting, though doing so will shift the boundary lines of their districts. Congressional representatives aren’t required to live in the area they serve.
Members of the House Republican caucus are set to meet Friday.
Pro-redistricting texts
Texts sent by the conservative-leaning Forward America started showing back up Tuesday — urging Hoosiers to contact their local representative to support redistricting.
“Radical progressives like Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, and Kathy Hochul are plotting to stop President Trump’s agenda by redistricting their states and wiping out the conservative majority in Congress. Our state legislators have the power to counter the radical progressives’ power grab by doing our own redistricting here in Indiana,” one message read.
The U.S. Constitution requires a count of “all persons” every 10 years.
So far, the only state that has redistricted off-cycle is Texas, a Republican state. Another red state, Missouri, is in the middle of a special session doing the same.
Forward America was also responsible for robocalls to Hoosiers last month — resulting in several complaints to the Attorney General’s Office. That office didn’t return a request seeking an update.
The group is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501c4 nonprofit out of Alexandria, Virginia. The principal officer is Blaise Hazelwood, a Republican strategist and consultant.
Forward America has been around since at least 2019 and reported gross receipts of less than $50,000 for the 2024 tax period. It doesn’t have to make public its donors, which is why some refer to it as dark money.
Hazelwood is the owner of Grassroots Targeting LLC — a microtargeting company that tailors messages to certain voters.
She served as the Republican National Committee’s political director in 2002 and 2004 and spearheaded the development of Voter Vault, the first online national voter file, her company bio said.
Hazelwood launched Grassroots in 2005 to “provide accurate and actionable data — modeling every precinct in the nation.” The firm has consulted on winning presidential, senatorial and congressional campaigns as well as 19 governors.
Hazelwood did not return a call seeking comment from the Capital Chronicle.
A poll against redistricting
The same day as the GOP caucus, voting rights advocate Common Cause released a poll reporting that 64% of Republican and independent voters want to ban mid-decade redistricting.
Common Cause commissioned Noble Predictive Insights to conduct the poll between Aug. 26 and Sept. 2. It surveyed more than 2,000 registered voters nationally and an additional 400 to 500 registered voters in Florida, Texas, New York, Illinois and California.
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“In very clear terms, our poll shows even Republicans in red states like Indiana don’t want mid-decade redistricting,” said Julia Vaughn, the executive director of Common Cause Indiana. “But this White House is insistent on trying to twist the arms of Indiana lawmakers. We urge lawmakers in Indiana and Washington to follow the data and put an end to gerrymandering once and for all.”
Additionally, the poll found that the majority of voters in each state supported independent commissions to draw district boundaries, rather than state lawmakers. Sixty percent of voters who supported Trump in 2024 reportedly want Congress to ban mid-decade redistricting.
A left-leaning pollster last month similarly concluded that the majority of Hoosiers, or 52%, opposed redrawing maps. Traditionally, districts are redrawn following the once-in-a-decade census. The state’s current maps were drawn in 2021.
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