Indiana Governor Mike Braun expected to announce special session for redistricting on Monday

INDIANAPOLIS — A Statehouse source has told FOX59/CBS4 that Governor Mike Braun is expected to announce Monday that he will call the Indiana General Assembly back into session on Nov. 3 to consider redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps.

The confirmation FOX59/CBS4 received about Braun’s plans appears to verify a report that the Indianapolis Business Journal published on Saturday.

The expected special session announcement follows intense pressure over the last month from the White House to redistrict Indiana to increase the GOP foothold on Indiana’s congressional seats. Seven of Indiana’s nine current representatives in U.S. Congress are Republicans.

“No matter what I think, certainly Trump wins, and he doesn’t lose fights,” said former Republican state representative Mike Murphy. ”Trump has promised primaries against anybody who dares go up against him or defy him, and you know what almost always happens there, Trump almost always wins.”

This weekend’s Washington Examiner quoted sources in Trump’s orbit and other D.C. observers that the White House was prepared to seek retribution against the governor and Indiana Republicans should they fail to take up and pass redistricting.

”He’s apparently just caved to President Trump, and so what he’s trying to do is bring even more pressure on his own Republicans, particularly in the Senate, to go along with this attempt to steal congressional seats,” said Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat from Bloomington. ”It’s amazing to me that he’s going to waste tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars for a special session just so the Republican Party, really President Trump and those national Republicans, can gain an unfair advantage.”

Last week, former Governor Mitch Daniels published an OpEd piece in the Washington Post in opposition to redistricting, and Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray said he did not have the party votes in his own chamber to pass a new map.

Terri Austin, a former state representative and Democrat from Elwood, said some Republicans will be forced to support redistricting though, in principle, they oppose it.

”Oh, you’ll find some who will hold their nose,” Austin said. “But I also think public sentiment is gaining momentum, and I think former governor Mitch Daniels said it best when he said they should resist the pressure, and for all of their rationales that have been put forward, two wrongs don’t make a right.

”This thing is gonna be sort of what I call a crap shoot,” Austin added. “You don’t know whether there will be some holdouts, you don’t know who won’t bother to show up, you don’t know whether or not they’re going to threaten folks with a primary, all of this remains to be seen yet.”

Murphy said statehouse Republicans will be forced to weigh their GOP political survival against the wishes of their voters.

”Polls are showing that 53% of the voters in the state of Indiana are against redistricting midterm,” he said. “I think there’s a significant number of republican legislators who believe that it’s wrong to do that, but they may be forced because of self-preservation to cast a vote against their beliefs.”

Murphy said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that arbitrarily splitting up an existing district for blatantly unbalanced political purposes is barred.

”If you split Marion County to make it Republican, you invite significant lawsuits from the Democrats,” Murphy said. “What the courts have ruled is that you cannot split communities of interest. If you split Marion County, you are splitting communities of interest no matter how you go about it.

”Just because California does something or Virginia does something or Texas does something, doesn’t mean Indiana should do it. We have a heritage of good, midwestern, common-sense values, and we generally do what’s right — both parties do. And I hope that prevails no matter which way it goes.”