Indiana Capital Chronicle
For The Republic
INDIANAPOLIS — This month, about 1,800 Republican party insiders will choose who’s on the ballot for Indiana’s second-highest office, in the party’s first competitive lieutenant governor contest in decades.
They’ll pick between pastor-influencer Micah Beckwith — who’s been on the campaign trail for a year since launching an unusually public bid — and Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Braun’s announced running mate: state Rep. Julie McGuire, who’s been on the road for just three weeks.
Beckwith has encouraged delegates to defy the nominee’s selection, pitching himself as both the prospective governor’s cheerleader and a check on his power.
“The lieutenant governor does not work at the pleasure of the governor; the lieutenant governor works at the pleasure of the people,” “… And if (the seat) is owned by the people, then you now have the right and the duty and responsibility to speak up when you see something that shouldn’t be that way.”
Beckwith, however, could be a final obstacle to the November-eager Braun campaign. The U.S. senator is widely expected to win in the general election; Hoosiers haven’t elected a Democrat as governor since 2000.
“I think that we’ll win that competition, and if by chance that doesn’t work, which I think is very slim, I’ll deal with it,” Braun told the Indianapolis Star last month. His campaign, on McGuire’s behalf, declined multiple requests for interviews and written comments.
Delegates will convene June 15 at the state convention to make their choice.
After recent pay increases, the position is set to come with a $188,000 salary. Beckwith and McGuire, as candidates for the position, paid 10% of that salary — $18,780 — to the Indiana GOP to be a candidate at the convention.
The delegates
Each of Indiana’s 92 counties get one GOP delegate for every 550 votes garnered by the party’s secretary of state candidate in the most recent election for that office. Delegate hopefuls run in primary elections like other candidates.
Secretary Diego Morales earned nearly 1 million votes in 2022. The Indiana Republican Party says it’ll muster 1,814 delegates this year.
Delegates nominate candidates for the next general election and adopt the party platform in midterm election years, according to the party’s rulebook.
But delegates have traditionally leaned more conservative than Republican general election and even primary election voters. And they haven’t always fallen in line with the party establishment.
For instance, delegates nominated Morales over Gov. Eric Holcomb’s incumbent appointee Secretary of State Holli Sullivan in 2022, indicating their distaste for the governor.
Delegates this year also will nominate a Republican attorney general candidate though current officeholder Todd Rokita is unopposed.
The candidates
Beckwith has promised an activist approach to the lieutenant governor position.
His upstart campaign began as a rebuke of Holcomb: the state’s pandemic-era shutdown, plus a veto on a transgender girls sports ban. Beckwith says his motivation is unchanged, even as Braun promises a more socially conservative approach to the governor’s office than the economy-minded Holcomb.
“I think he’ll be a good governor,” Beckwith said of Braun. “But I think everybody needs good accountability. I would have never thought Eric Holcomb in 2016 would have turned out to do some of the things that he’s done … all of these conservative, bedrock principles he just abandoned.”
“I’m looking to back up a strong conservative governor,” Beckwith added. “The only time that I would ever step out of line is if the governor — which I don’t believe Mike Braun would do this — but is if the governor steps out of line from constitutional conservative values.”
Beckwith is a pastor at Life Church’s Noblesville campus and co-hosts a podcast called “Jesus, Sex and Politics” with another pastor. He also operates a small business — a music school — and remains involved in his family’s dairy company.
He has also been active in Hamilton County in moving or banning allegedly inappropriate library books.
Beckwith highlighted that leadership, business and agricultural experience as assets McGuire “doesn’t have.” And he argued that, after five years of policy work with the Indiana Family Institute, he’s also got the legislative chops.
McGuire is a one-term lawmaker from Indianapolis, with two sessions under her belt. Should she win the GOP convention nod in June, a caucus of precinct committeemen would fill her position on the ballot.
She spent more than 15 years as the Parish Business Manager at St. Roch Catholic Church and has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University.
She’s authored one bill that became law: House Enrolled Act 1369, which strengthened Indiana child molesting and rape laws related to child abuse and neglect cases. McGuire was also the original author on legislation that initially repealed a special downtown Indianapolis taxing district, but removed herself after negotiations spared the district.
She touted health care costs, “health freedom” and parental rights as priorities in written comments following Braun’s running mate announcement.
Beckwith has made his own promises: ending or freezing property taxes for certain seniors and veterans, and a series of tax reductions for Hoosier farmers. He additionally wishes to combat liberal ideologies and “anti-American sentiment” in schools.
Beckwith said his campaign is “getting pretty close to have the majority of delegates that we need to win,” but declined to provide a specific estimate.
The position
Indiana’s lieutenant governor has a myriad of duties.
The officeholder is first in line to lead the state if a sitting governor can’t fulfill the top spot’s duties. The lieutenant governor also presides over the Senate, and casts tie-breaking votes.
Indiana Code also gives the officeholder 26 additional roles, according to the National Lieutenant Governor’s Association. That includes overseeing the State Department of Agriculture, the Office of Community & Rural Affairs and the Office of Defense Development, among others.
The lieutenant governor separately chairs the Indiana Mental Health Roundtable, the Intellectual and Development Disabilities Task Force, and the Civics Education Commission.
— The Indiana Capital Chronicle covers state government and the state legislature. For more, visit indianacapitalchronicle.com.
