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State Sen. Greg Walker is reversing his decision to retire from the Indiana Legislature, citing the political turmoil from the congressional redistricting debate.
Walker, R-Columbus, had announced last summer that he wouldn’t seek reelection to the Senate seat he first won in 2006, but on Wednesday he filed for another term on the first day of the candidacy filing period.
Walker told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that “circumstances are different” from when he previously decided to not run again.
“I felt like it was important for me to continue to stand for Indiana issues instead of Washington politics,” Walker said in an interview. “We’ve seen just a small taste of what federalization of Indiana elections could look like, and may eventually look more like than they do today, and I’m greatly concerned when I see Hoosier politics play a surrogate to those national battles.”
Walker was a vocal Republican critic of the redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump—and was one of several lawmakers who faced swatting or other intimidation tactics ahead of the Senate’s vote last month against redrawing the congressional maps.
Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, is among the Republicans who had announced bids to succeed Walker in Senate District 41, which includes all of Bartholomew County and much of Johnson County south of Indianapolis.
Davis, who voted in favor of the redistricting plan when it passed the House, said Wednesday she was continuing her Senate campaign.
“It does not affect me one bit,” Davis told the Capital Chronicle. “I’ve worked really hard, spent a lot of time in both Johnson County and Bartholomew County, gaining support, holding fundraisers and showing up at events. I am full-force steam ahead.”
Trump, Gov. Mike Braun and pro-redistricting groups have said they would support primary challengers to Republican legislators who didn’t support the proposed new maps that sought a 9-0 GOP Indiana congressional delegation by carving up the two districts now held by Democrats.
Walker said he didn’t know how redistricting supporters might try to insert themselves into his race.
“I’ve seen a lot of implied or explicit threats or implied or explicit rewards, but I don’t see a lot of evidence on follow through from outside forces,” Walker said.
Walker delivered more than 20 minutes of emotional remarks during a December committee hearing on the redistricting bill—at one point moved to tears—explaining why he could not support it.
“I fear for this institution … if we allow intimidation and threats to be the norm,” he said. “I refuse to be intimidated. I will not normalize that kind of behavior.”
Walker has broken from other Republican senators on some prominent issues in recent years, such as voting against the 2022 bill that revoked Indiana’s handgun permit requirement and last year’s bill allowing partisan school board elections.
He also voted against a 2022 bill sponsored by Davis that banned transgender youths from competing in girls school sports.
Davis supported all those bills and said “key differences” in their voting records would be a campaign issue.
“We’re opposite a lot on some voting issues that are core Republican values,” she said. “I will always vote for morals and for what the Hoosier families believe in.”
The 62-year-old Walker said his wife’s 2023 death had him reevaluating what to do, but that he now had a new resolve.
“I’m not too sure this isn’t to my own hurt to do this,” he said. “It’s just that I think that needs to be done.”
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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