Indiana
Here’s who is running against Spartz and Goodrich in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District
It might not seem like it, but Hoosier voters across Indiana’s 5th Congressional District have nine candidates to choose from in the Republican primary election just weeks away.
Much of the Republican race for the 5th District has centered on incumbent U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, who turned the primary upside down in February when she reversed her 2023 decision to not seek reelection. Spartz was first elected in 2020 to represent the 5th Congressional District, which stretches from Hamilton County north to Grant County.
Since February, internal polling from both campaigns shows the race appears to be a battle between Spartz and Noblesville state Rep. Chuck Goodrich, who has led the entire field in fundraising with million-dollar personal donations to his campaign. The two have gone head-to-head in attack ads this election cycle with Goodrich’s campaign attacking Spartz’s previous support for aide to Ukraine while Spartz has claimed Goodrich “puts China first.”
5th District GOP primary: U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz has an uphill climb to reelection amid massive campaign cash gap
But while Spartz and Goodrich take swipes at each other, there are seven other candidates also fighting for Republican votes. The winner of the primary will face either Ryan Pfenninger or Deborah Pickett who are competing in the Democratic primary next month.
Here is what you need to know about the Republicans running in the 5th Congressional District primary on May 7. (IndyStar has listed the candidates alphabetically based on their last name.)
Raju Chinthala
Home: Carmel
Occupation: speech pathologist, founder and president of the Indiana India Business Council
Campaign Website: rajuforcongress.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Chinthala has raised $274,000 and spent just under $45,000.
Notable: Chinthala, who was born in India, was endorsed earlier this year by former Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, who led the city for nearly three decades.
Max Engling
Home: Cicero, but currently lives in Fishers.
Occupation: Full-time candidate
Campaign Website: maxforindiana.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Engling has raised just over $200,000 this election cycle and spent about $125,000.
Notable: Engling previously worked in Washington D.C. in the role of director of member services for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted from the chamber’s leadership role in October 2023.
Chuck Goodrich
Home: Noblesville
Occupation: State Representative, CEO of Gaylor Electric
Campaign Website: gowithchuckgoodrich.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Goodrich has raised $3.4 million and spent $3 million this election cycle. Goodrich has donated $2.6 million to his campaign.
Notable: Goodrich, who is the CEO of Gaylor Electric, started as an intern at the company in the early 1990s. Goodrich’s leadership role with the company and at the Statehouse has been a conduit for the state representative to carry bills tied to apprenticeships and work-based learning, part of a movement in state government to prepare students for career paths beyond higher education degrees. While those bills have been celebrated, there remain questions from some groups, such as the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, about additional funding and resources needed for such programs to actually be successful.
Mark Hurt
Home: Kokomo
Occupation: Lawyer
Campaign Website: markhurt.org
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Hurt has raised about $147,000 and spent just under $120,000 this election cycle.
Notable: According to his campaign website, Hurt has worked on health care policy for politicians such as former Iowa Congressman Fred Grandy, former Michigan Gov. John Engler and former U.S. Senator Dan Coats, an Indiana senator who served as the director of National Intelligence from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.
Patrick Malayter
Home: McCordsville
Occupation: Former accountant and consultant to accounting firms
Campaign Website: patrickmforcongress.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Malayter has raised $6,700 and spent no money yet this election cycle.
Notable: Maylayter’s key issue on the campaign trail has been establishing term limits for members of Congress. According to his campaign website, Malayter believes there should be eight-year limits on how long federally elected officials can serve in Washington D.C.
Matthew Peiffer
Home: Muncie
Occupation: President of A Voice for Kids, a foster children advocacy nonprofit
Campaign Website: Peiffer does not have a campaign website, but posts about his involvement in the community on Facebook at the page Muncies Smile Man.
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Peiffer has not raised or spent any money this election cycle.
Notable: Peiffer is a former foster child and has told media outlets he does not expect to win the primary election. At a League of Women Voters forum in Anderson in early April, Peiffer said he threw his hat into the race to make people more aware of issues he believes actually affect everyday Hoosiers, including mental health care for children in foster care systems and insurance for living donors.
LD Powell
Home: Carmel
Occupation: Businessman
Campaign Website: ldpowellforcongress.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Powell has raised just under $39,000 and spent about $35,000 this election cycle. Powell donated $35,000 to his campaign.
Notable: Powell is the only veteran in the Republican primary. He served in the U.S. Navy and is also a certified flight instructor.
Larry L. Savage Jr.
Home: Anderson
Occupation: Property management
Campaign Website: Savage does not have a campaign website but is posting about the election on the Facebook page Larry Savage for U.S. Congress Indiana District5.
Money raised/spent: There are no federal campaign finance reports for Savage’s campaign.
Notable: Savage describes himself as a “grassroots guy” and calls himself the “MAGA candidate” on his campaign Facebook page. Savage said he is pro-marijuana legalization and knows people that need access to marijuana to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Victoria Spartz
Home: Carmel
Occupation: U.S. Representative for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District
Campaign Website: spartzforcongress.com
Money raised/spent: Per federal campaign finance reports, Spartz has raised $358,000 and spent $133,000 since rejoining the 5th District primary in February.
Notable: Spartz grew up in Ukraine and immigrated to the U.S. in 2000 after meeting her husband. Spartz has drawn headlines about her ties to the country since February 2022 when Russia further invaded Ukraine, from an emotional press conference in March 2022 condemning violence from Russia to criticism of Ukrainian leaders. Spartz voted no on the House’s recent approval of aide to Ukraine that passed the chamber on April 20.
Contact IndyStar’s state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at brittany.carloni@indystar.com or 317-779-4468. Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A man is dead after a shooting Thursday night on Indy’s near east side, police say.
According to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, just after 8 p.m., officers were called to the 2000 block of East Washington Street on a report of a person shot.
When officers arrived, they found an adult male inside an apartment with injuries consistent with gunshot wounds.
Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services transported the man to a hospital in critical condition, where died shortly after arriving.
Homicide detectives responded to the scene to begin the investigation.
Crime Resources
Gov. Mike Braun asked state regulators to reconsider their decision to greenlight a $71 million rate increase for AES Indiana, doubling down on his condemnation of a move that could leave Indianapolis residents with higher electrical bills for years.
Braun wrote in a June 18 news release that he had asked Indiana Utility Counselor Abby Gray, who heads the office representing ratepayers in proceedings before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, to petition for a rehearing of the AES rate case.
Gray indicated in the release that her office would submit the petition shortly. No petition had been posted on the IURC’s online docket as of this story’s publication.
The rate increase, which was approved by the IURC on June 17, was substantially less than the $192 million increase that AES initially requested. It was also less than the amount proposed in a settlement last October between AES and major electricity consumers.
But the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, which Gray leads, came out strongly against any increase to AES’s base rates. In September, the OUCC called for a $21 million reduction instead.
As the Republican Party grapples with rising discontent over affordability, Braun has used opposition to rising utility rates to telegraph that he’s committed to keeping costs down for Indiana residents. He signed a law in February that allows the state to make rate-setting decisions that reward or penalize utilities based on metrics including affordability.
In March, he told reporters that he would take on Indiana’s five investor-owned utilities, describing himself as the “new sheriff in town.”
And after the IURC voted 3-1 to approve the AES rate increase, he wrote in a post to X that he was “deeply disappointed.”
Braun wrote in the June 18 news release that he had appointed Gray, a longtime OUCC lawyer and judge, to her current post because he knew she “would help me fight for Hoosiers.”
According to AES’s estimates, the rate increase will cost households an additional $5 per month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity they use, beginning in July. A second hike will take effect in January.
Tilly Robinson is a Pulliam fellow for the Indianapolis Star. She can be reached at tilly.robinson@indystar.com.
The Protect College Sports Act, legislation meant to introduce and codify sweeping reforms related to college athletics, passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday morning.
It now heads to the Senate floor.
The bill passed out of committee by a 19-9 vote. Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young voted no, his decision reflecting Big Ten concerns over the bill.
A spokesman for Sen. Young told IndyStar, “Senator Young hopes that additional changes can be made to the bill to address concerns raised by the Big Ten.”
Co-sponsored by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), the Protect College Sports Act represents Congress’ most substantial success so far in a yearslong effort to bring legislative reform to college athletics. Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders in college sports — including the NCAA, member conferences and schools, and other major players — have lobbied for national solutions to what have become state and regional problems.
Several pieces of legislation have been introduced across the last several years, only to fizzle long before reaching the floor of either chamber. The SCORE Act, introduced last year in the House of Representatives, gained some traction and passed out of committee, but was never brought to the floor.
Which makes Thursday’s news meaningful. Moving the Protect College Sports Act to the Senate floor, while not a guarantee of any outcome, potentially takes the bill past a threshold no other such piece of reformative legislation has yet been able to cross.
Cruz told Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger on Thursday that Cruz believes Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is committed to introducing the bill to the Senate floor soon.
The bill provides a legal framework for a host of potential reforms and protections for college sports. It grants limited antitrust protection to the NCAA, places limits on certain things including potential conference realignment, builds safeguards meant to protect non-revenue and Olympic sports, addresses potential broadcast rights reforms, and more.
It enjoys significant backing, and not just among leaders in college sports. This week, the NFL, its players’ association, the National Basketball Players Association and Major League Baseball all voiced their support for the bill.
Two key constituencies not in lockstep on the bill voiced their own concerns Thursday.
In a joint statement issued just after 10 a.m. Thursday, the Big Ten and SEC — far and away the two most powerful conferences and arguably two greatest power centers, full stop, in college athletics — suggested they still hold significant reservations over the bill.
“From the outset, we identified a set of essential revisions to the PCSA necessary for the long-term sustainability of college athletics,” the statement read. “We have worked with both majority and minority staff to advance those revisions, which focus on better supporting student-athletes and stabilizing the college sports environment. We continue to believe revisions are needed to secure our support for the bill.
“Despite our sustained engagement and good faith efforts, these critical revisions have not been accepted.”
The statement went on to note the “several Commerce Committee members that share our concerns and support these recommendations.”
Young is one of several members of the committee representing a Big Ten state, including one of three Republicans. He is the only Republican member of the committee whose state contains multiple schools in the conference.
Allowing for those reservations, Thursday’s news is still significant. It marks the first time a bipartisan bill on the subject has reached this point in the Senate and, should it be brought to the floor, it would be the first such legislation to reach that stage, in either chamber.
The bill could be brought to the Senate floor as early as July, though that timeline remains fluid.
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