Beau Bayh isn’t what Indiana voters want | Opinion (original) (raw)

May 28, 2026, 5:30 a.m. ET

My City-County Council colleague Nick Roberts recently wrote about the massive primary election turnout Indiana experienced this year. The numbers do indeed look good for Democrats and should be a cause for concern for Republicans. Far more people pulled a Democratic primary ballot than normal. Far fewer people pulled a Republican ballot.

Most of the people in this state still want nothing to do with the party as they currently understand it, though. Only 25% of voters view the Democratic Party favorably.

Where Republicans have lost in Indiana, it has often been to inspiring candidates who position themselves outside of the political establishment, speaking to bread-and-butter issues that impact people’s daily lives. That's why Indiana Democratic Party delegates should nominate Blythe Potter, not Beau Bayh, for secretary of state.

Voters dislike the establishment in both parties

It's true that moderates tended to perform well in the May 5 primary election. I see this as a result of major spending and insider influence over the political process, not as a reflection of the political leanings of the electorate. It’s not “pragmatism” that will win over Hoosier voters in November: it's a willingness to disrupt the status quo.

Independents in Indiana are assumed to have ideology and desires somehow in between the Democratic and Republican parties' rhetoric and positions. Democratic and Republican elected officials, though, are not two ends of a spectrum. On a global scale, both parties would be considered center-right.

Take it from a politician like me. Most people are not motivated by culture war issues or CNN sound bites. Voters simply cannot stand politicians or the establishment within either party.

Truly left-wing ideas like abolishing private healthcare, instituting minimum wage laws that require a living wage and massively regulating or abolishing corporate landlords are not widely supported by Democrats, especially in Indiana. Yet these policy proposals are far more popular than either political party.

Similarly, a large majority oppose AI data centers, yet most politicians from both parties’ establishment wings have remained silent on the issue.

Anti-establishment politicians often win

Regular people want their lives to get better. They will happily vote for people who openly reject establishment politics and the stifling backrooms where deals are made in favor of a politics of hope and an insistence on real reform.That explains how Barack Obama, a Black man with an unusual name, won the presidential election in Indiana nearly 20 years ago — but didn’t win the state in 2012 after he failed to jail bankers or put Main Street first after the financial crisis and Great Recession.

That explains how Bernie Sanders, an elderly Jewish socialist, won Indiana in the 2016 primaries, including winning self-identified independents by a large margin against Hillary Clinton.

That explains how Donald Trump, a candidate who was openly hated by the Republican establishment and who promised to “drain the swamp," earned the loyalty of so many Hoosiers. That said, I think many of his voters were hoodwinked by a con man.

Hoosiers are looking back at the days when far more of us could get a decent job as young adults. When we could buy a house and save up for our kids’ school. We have watched with our own eyes as working people have fallen further and further behind in Indiana, and as each generation has lower prospects than the one before.

We watch the rich get richer and their toys get fancier, all while we are priced out of existence. That's where the secretary of state's race comes in. Only one Democratic candidate can identify with regular Hoosiers.

Blythe Potter is the anti-establishment candidate

Potter has spoken about the difficulty of paying bills, the horror of watching the country slide away from our civil rights under Trump, the frustration and anger in seeing gas prices and grocery prices go up and up while wages stagnate.

She is running a truly grassroots campaign. She has worked incredibly hard without the help of the party establishment running cover for her.

Potter has fought uphill to break into that party establishment in all 92 counties. When she started out, she had basically nobody in her corner outside her own small community. Potter has fought for every ounce of respect she’s gotten and outworked her haters. She’s proven that she is ready for this challenge.

Potter is a regular person: a mom, a small business owner and a veteran. She doesn’t claim to have a picture-perfect past. Instead, she talks about what she has experienced, which Bayh has not: living in Indiana.

Beau Bayh is too establishment for voters

Bayh is a Harvard man, grandson of a senator and the son of a governor and senator. His prep school charges around $60,000 per year in tuition. He interned in the vice president's office as an undergraduate student. He is the very definition of U.S. political royalty.

Bayh’s campaign for secretary of state has impressed insiders and party faithful — the exact people who most ordinary Hoosiers can’t stand. He seems to be grounding his campaign in his dad’s last name and the donor network that Evan Bayh and Mayor Joe Hogsett, “Mr. Clean” himself, shared.

Bayh is framing himself as a change from incumbent Diego Morales’ corruption — yet he is accepting massive donations from Israel-first billionaires. He’s also taking money from fossil fuel and utility companies and pro-privatization school choice advocates.

Bayh is attempting to ignore the class aspect of politics and is running with the Kamala Harris vibes of a “return to normalcy” where everyone can work together. He wants to bring us together over our common values.

Here’s the thing: Multimillionaires and billionaires do not share common values with the rest of us Hoosiers.

The top 1% are getting richer and richer while they ruin our lives. The wealthy call for an end to division and anger while they continue buying our democracy and using it to make themselves rich. The working class is the victim of class warfare. Division and anger can end only when that warfare ends.

Whether they are skyrocketing our gas prices by starting wars for profit or skyrocketing our utility bills by building AI data centers, the elite in our society do not have good intentions for the world as we regular people experience it. They must be stopped before we can all just get along.

Regular people see all of this pretty clearly, regardless of the political labels we use for ourselves. If Democrats want to win back regular people to the party, why not prove it by picking a regular person for our nominee?

Jesse Brown, a Democrat, represents District 13 for the City-County Council.