Mitch Daniels weighs in on what has become a national fight over gerrymandering.
INDIANAPOLIS — Former Gov. Mitch Daniels said he didn’t “see the point” of redistricting in Indiana, just as Vice President JD Vance was in the state pressing Republicans for an edge in the contest for control of the House.
“It would just be wrong,” Daniels told POLITICO. “People there have a right to pick the person they want.”
Vance traveled to the Hoosier State on Thursday to ask lawmakers to redistrict — potentially helping create 10 new seats for the GOP — ahead of the 2026 midterms. The visit comes as the White House continues to pressure Republicans in Texas to enact a new congressional map there that would generate up to five new GOP seats in the Lone Star state. Texas Democrats this week fled their state to avoid a quorum and halt the state Legislature’s business.
Daniels had sharp criticism for President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, saying the president “could’ve just kept quiet.”
“By spouting off in that way, he turns it into this partisan wrangle that we now see,” Daniels said in the interview.
Still, Daniels accused Democrats of having a history of using redistricting against Republicans over the years.
“It’s high season for hypocrisy,” he added, noting Democrats have also gerrymandered.
Gov. Mike Braun hasn’t committed to holding a special session to redistrict; Daniels pointed out that Indiana is already a Republican stronghold, holding seven of Indiana’s nine seats.
“My sense is you’d have to torture the lines to eke out another one somehow,” Daniels said. “It would be so overtly partisan that I would hope that they would abstain from it.”
If redistricting were to happen, Daniels said, “the ideal ought to be districts which make geographic sense” and “cross as few jurisdictional lines as possible.”
Should Braun call for the special session, Indiana Democrats would have limited leverage, as their Republican counterparts hold a supermajority in the Legislature. Daniels said he has not been in touch with House Speaker Todd Huston on the topic.
Daniels was one of the architects of Republican supermajorities in the Legislature, and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post last year lamenting “one-party rule.”
“The gerrymandering that once exaggerated a dominant party’s political margin is no longer much of a factor; social clustering and these other factors have often done a more effective job than the political bosses ever did,” he wrote. “In many jurisdictions today, one would have to reverse gerrymander, mixing geographies and crossing all kinds of legal boundary lines, to produce a truly competitive electorate.”
In his interview with POLITICO, Daniels said gerrymandering means that “you don’t get the balanced, competitive districts that many of us believe would make for a healthier political system.”
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