By Cate Charron
Indiana Business Journal
U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana will be swapping U.S. Congress chambers after assertively winning his Senate race Tuesday.
Banks will replace Sen. Mike Braun, who is running for governor, and will join fellow Republican Sen. Todd Young in representing Indiana in the U.S. Senate.
Banks passed on running for a fourth term in northeastern Indiana’s heavily Republican 3rd District to instead seek the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
The Associated Press called the race at 7 p.m. with Banks leading Democrat Valerie McCray and Libertarian Andrew Horning by a wide margin. According to AP, with just 14% of votes counted, Banks had 62.5% of the vote.
Banks, who served in Afghanistan, was elected to serve in the U.S. House in 2016. His Senate campaign priorities include the several hot-button issues he’s weighed in on previously. He is pushing for conservative legislation concerning immigration, abortion and “wokeness in schools and sports.”
This race’s disparities were illustrated by fundraising numbers. According to Federal Election Commission filings through Oct. 16, Banks had raised $6.8 million and McCray only $129,000. The race was largely uncompetitive with McCray failing to gain momentum early in the campaign season.
With the wide fundraising gap and former President Donald Trump on the ballot, Chad Kinsella, director of the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State University, said it would have been an especially tough race for Democrats to win.
For a statewide race, a lesser-known candidate needs to run commercials and send mailers, Kinsella said, but that’s not possible with the funding McCray raised in this race.
“To a degree, it’s almost to the point where it seems like he’s running unopposed,” Kinsella said. “The Democrat has not gotten any traction.”
That lack of traction, said Laura Merrifield Wilson, a political science professor at the University of Indianapolis, resulted in party boosters skipping over this race. There’s a limited amount of money to go around, she said, so it was targeted toward the most flippable Senate seats.
“The Senate race certainly gets forgotten because there’s just less space for it,” she said. “I don’t know how much voters are aware or really following these races.”
New Congress members will be sworn in Jan. 3.
