Indiana's Chief Trump Resister Breaks His Silence

INDIANAPOLIS — The Republican leading Indiana’s resistance to President Donald Trump’s big-ask redistricting pressure campaign is finishing a surreal, dystopian week.

On Sunday, hours after Trump posted on Truth Social that Rodric Bray was one of the “RINO Senators,” along with his colleague Greg Goode, who did not want “to redistrict their State, allowing the United States Congress to perhaps gain two more Republican seats,” Bray saw his colleague Goode and his family become the victim of a “swatting.”

Goode, who despite Trump’s post hasn’t actually yet made his stance on the matter known, was only the first Indiana lawmaker to get the swatting treatment. He was soon followed by another member, and another. By Thursday, there were four.

Bray is the president pro tempore of the Senate, which stalemated 19-19 Tuesday on a vote that was a close proxy for gerrymandering even as they flouted Gov. Mike Braun’s call for a special session to take up drawing new maps. The vote arguably meant that the White House is still seven votes away from the 26 votes they need to pursue their maximalist redistricting goals in the Indiana chamber.

Before the vote, on Sunday, Bray made some calls to ensure his family's safety.

“I talked to my local sheriff who I'm very close with, and he gave dispatch my home address and my cell phone number so that they can call me if something like that gets reported,” Bray said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO. He’s sought advice from other friends in local law enforcement, too.

As stalwart as Bray has been in resisting being drawn into Trump’s redistricting campaign, he has been equally resolved in keeping his own counsel about it. For more than three months, the 56-year-old smalltown lawyer and former Sunday school teacher has avoided doing a sitdown interview to explain his thinking — favoring keeping his down instead.

Until he met me in his statehouse office on Wednesday.

Bray, who sports an increasingly gray-flecked shock of dark brown hair, spoke in his spacious third-floor office in the 137-year-old Indiana Statehouse. Over his left shoulder hung a print of the Andy Thomas painting titled “Grand Ol’ Gang”: eight former presidents playing poker.

The metaphor struck me as apt. Trump has been locked in a monthslong poker game against blue-state Democrats with congressional seats as the chips. Whichever party wins the most number of chips wins control of the House of Representatives next November. Bray, the son of a state senator and grandson of a Silver Star-winning war hero and congressman, is an institutionalist who is routinely calling the president’s bluff.

There are two intertwined, pressing questions surrounding Bray that everyone from Capitol Hill to the White House is asking right now. The first: Is Trump’s dream of eking out two more House seats from Indiana dead?

“It’s not totally up to me,” he told me.

The second question: At a time when Congress and so many American institutions are folding under Trump’s pressure campaign, how does a lifelong conservative from a deep-red state in the beating heart of Trump Country hold out? Why is he sticking his neck out?

Bray told me that the changes Trump is demanding could long outlast him – and hurt his Indiana.

“It's absolutely imperative that we're able to do hard things here, and in order to do that, to do hard things that maybe not everybody agrees with and maybe even some people get really angry about,” Bray said of the Senate. “They have to have trust in the institution.”

There’s no sign that Bray will back down. In fact, interviews with more than a dozen of Bray’s colleagues, enemies and longtime acquaintances, many of them granted anonymity to speak candidly about an issue that has left the Indiana GOP in open civil war, suggest he’ll keep taking the heat.

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“There’s no moving Bray,” a Republican close to the White House said. “He’s going to die on this hill. He thinks he’s morally superior. Bray’s clear opinion is, ‘Fuck you.’”

Trump’s push to redistrict his party’s way to a congressional majority has hit more resistance than the White House expected. On Wednesday, a panel of federal judges ruled against Texas’ redrawn congressional maps that offered Republicans a chance for a five-seat pickup. Hours later, Bray heard from Speaker Mike Johnson, a call reported here for the first time.

“Just talked about the importance of the House majority,” Bray told me, adding it was “fantastic” and “productive.” Asked whether Johnson seemed to empathize with his predicament, Bray only said, “I’m not going to get into any of that.” (Johnson, who for months argued redistricting is an issue for individual states and he was not directly involved in such matters, did not respond to a request for comment.)

As one Indiana county GOP chairman, granted anonymity to speak candidly about an issue that has divided his party, put it to me, “The person with the biggest cojones in all of this is Bray, and he knows what's at stake.”

Bray does know the stakes. But if there were any doubt, on Tuesday morning on the second floor at the statehouse, hours before the Senate cast its redistricting proxy vote, about two dozen pro-map-redraw protesters wanted to remind him. They hoisted signs that read Speaker Hakeem (Thanks Rod). They sported red T-shirts and some wore stickers with an Indiana map and “9-0” in white letters. Indiana’s current congressional delegation is 7-2: Seven Republicans and two Democrats. The protesters are hoping for a 9-0 wipeout of all Democrats.

Bray says the protesters, and the White House, are overconfident that a redistricting wouldn’t backfire.

“It seems like the public is talking about this in terms of a binary choice: either 7-2 or redistricting and get 9-0,” Bray said. “That is not clear at all to me, because we don’t know who's going to run.” Maps based on Trump 2024 baseline numbers might not hold in a difficult midterm because the new districts would have narrower margins and not all Trump’s voters would necessarily turn out in a midterm. “In fact, I mean, if you really got too cute, you could find yourself at 6-3,” Bray told me.

Bray is unwilling to redraw the maps as a shortcut to a House majority. He instead thinks Republicans should focus on winning in Indiana’s red-trending 1st Congressional District currently held by Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan. In Bray’s view, it makes more sense to try to turn that one district red than overreach and risk losing seats statewide.

He hasn’t yet convinced his fellow Republicans. Instead, a MAGA revenge campaign is unfolding that, at Trump’s behest, could spend more money and time targeting GOP state senators in primaries rather than dumping money into flipping the 1st. (Mrvan won the district over Republican challenger Jennifer-Ruth Green by less than 6 percentage points in 2022).

Trump hasn’t taken Bray’s recalcitrance well.

Bray has been the focus of an unusually direct White House pressure campaign. Last Friday, Bray fielded yet another call from Trump — his second. Bray was also called in person to the Oval Office in August, and received two vice presidential visits to his place of business. He and his members got the message sent by the symbolism of JD Vance’s motorcade rolling up the streets of the capital and Air Force One arching through the city’s skies.

“All of those were extremely amicable,” Bray said of every call and meeting — except, that is, for the last one. “The last one was more pointed. There was a disappointment in the President that we hadn't been able to move forward with what he wanted us to do.” (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Did the president raise his voice?

“I could tell he was not happy,” Bray said in his understated Midwestern way.

In our conversation, Bray told me he tried to lay out an alternative path for the president.

“I'm sorry, Mr. President,” Bray recalled telling Trump. “We think there is another path forward to get you what you need, and that is by finding a good candidate instead in congressional district No. 1 and getting behind a person there and funding that person and organizing that campaign.”

Trump appears unconvinced. On Sunday, then again on Tuesday, the presidential social media posts came. Bray was, in Trump’s estimation, one of the “politically correct-type ‘gentlemen’” holding up Trump’s map redrawing scheme ahead of the midterms. “Senators Bray, Goode, and the others to be released to the public later this afternoon, should DO THEIR JOB, AND DO IT NOW! If not, let’s get them out of office, ASAP,” Trump posted.

An aide to Bray texted him the Truth Social post. “I was not surprised by it,” Bray said. “I knew he was frustrated. I know that they're going to push on this issue, and that was probably going to be a way that they were going to do that.” 

Bray, of course, disputes that he is RINO.

“I’m not,” he said in our conversation. “I've been a Republican since the 90s. I was a county chairman in the late 90s and into the 2000s and have been a devoted member of the Republican Party my entire professional life. I still think I'm for small government, personal accountability and liberty, and I work toward that every day.”

He listed a small sampling of his and his Senate colleagues’ accomplishments: “We’ve been able to cut taxes 20 times in the last 10 years. We passed the strongest pro-life legislation in the country since Roe v. Wade was overturned. We’re a constitutional carry state. We’ve been able to do lots of things like make sure that China doesn’t own farmland, or land, anywhere within 10 miles of a military base in the state of Indiana. The list goes on and on and on.”

It’s not like all of Indiana agrees with Bray. The Senate Majority Campaign Caucus commissioned its own poll on redistricting that found that, contrary to some statements from Indiana Senate Republicans, a gerrymander has 64 percent support among the GOP base in Indiana. Bray did not dispute that support. The White House is said to have similar number in their own polling

But Bray’s allies say he’s not trying to win a popularity contest. They see him as one of the last tried-and-true Republican institutionalists making a stand and protecting the legislative body he has served in for 13 years — and in which his father Richard Bray served in for two decades. His opposition is neither intended to be a thumbing of the nose at Trump nor his mission of protecting the Republican majority in the House next November, but to protect the Indiana Senate. Any vote on redistricting would expose opponents to being primaried by Trump allies and imperil the GOP’s supermajority in the chamber. And there aren’t even any projected maps yet for lawmakers to review.

Bray doesn’t dispute that he is an institutionalist, and he explains his philosophy by connecting respect for the legislature to respect for democracy.

“People differ on policy every day,” Bray said. “Lots of us within our own caucus differ on policy every day. That's just part of how that works. But if the anger and the distrust is about how it's done, that feels a little more insidious to me, and it begins to break down the faith we have in our democracy.”

“He is one of the purest men I know,” one Indiana Republican senator told me.

But in the White House’s view, Bray has misled and opposed their efforts every step of the way over the last three months. In August, POLITICO reported that Trump ushered him and Speaker Todd Huston into the Oval Office to discuss redistricting after a larger delegation of Hoosier Republicans visited the White House. A Republican close to the White House told POLITICO Bray had promised to give them a heads up on major developments, and reneged on that promise when a spokesperson told POLITICO last month he did not have the votes for new maps.

“If they feel that way, I apologize,” Bray said.

Braun has expressed frustration with Bray, insinuating that Indiana could lose out on federal funding for key projects if the Senate doesn’t deliver a gerrymander. And in a jaw-dropping interview with local affiliate Fox 59, Braun said he would support a leadership coup taking out Bray.

On the evening before Vance's Indiana rescue mission last month, White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, Intergovernmental Affairs Alex Meyer, Political Director Matt Brasseaux and RNC Chief of Staff Michael Ambrosini dined at St. Elmo, the world-famous steakhouse, in downtown Indianapolis. Bray couldn’t attend, citing a previously scheduled fundraiser. But his top deputy Chris Garten, who is backing gerrymandering, attended. Garten was also invited to the White House with other Indiana Republicans like Sen. Scott Baldwin next month — leading some to wonder whether Garten would challenge Bray for leadership. Baldwin told POLITICO there wouldn't be enough votes to take out Bray. (Garten didn't respond to a request for comment.)

All of this offers a window into a larger intra-party battle unfolding as parochial Indiana Republican politics crashes into MAGA. Bray, who has tried to tamp down the conflict at every turn with diplomatic statements, is the second Hoosier to tell Trump no at a pivotal moment: There was, of course, former Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6. (MAGA X figures like DC Draino frequently speculate Pence is pulling the string on redistricting — “Is former Indiana Governor Mike Pence trying to get revenge on the MAGA movement that he backstabbed on J6 and telling Rodric Bray not to redistrict?” Rogan O’Handley tweeted last month. But Bray says they haven’t talked; also Pence is on record as not opposing the move: "I would defer, whatever angst it creates for people, I would simply defer to the state legislatures and the governors to determine what they think is appropriate … whether it be in Indiana, Texas, California or anywhere else,” Pence said earlier this fall).

That latent civil war burst out into the open this week, with Braun threatening to “compel” Bray and others to hold a special session on redistricting early next year, though it’s not clear how he would do that.

“One act of courage tends to inspire others,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who texted Bray an encouraging message last Friday evening, and has been a vocal opponent of the White House’s full-court press on mid-cycle redistricting, told POLITICO in an interview.

Bray, for now, isn’t moving. “His family knows battles,” one Indiana Republican senator told me.

Indeed. In 1944, Bray’s grandfather William, the former congressman who did not run for re-election during the 1974 post-Watergate wave, led his battalion in an amphibious attack on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands — which is how he won the Silver Star.

That Bray, in his after-action report, noted that “each man knew his individual job, resulting in a maximum collective effort.”

Reflecting on that quote — and the last three months he’s had — Bray said it rang true for him and his own role in all of this.

“It works,” he said, “I certainly agree with that philosophy.”