Briggs' mailbag: Obviously, Democrats should vote Republican for Indiana governor

Happy Caitlin Clark week! I don't think we're even close to understanding how fortunate we are that the Indiana Fever got the chance to bring her to Indianapolis.

I have a lot of thoughts to share about the upcoming primary elections, so I'm only including two questions in this week's mailbag. If you'd like to submit questions for future mailbags and help balance out my topics, you can email me at the address below or fill out the Google form at the bottom of the online article page.

Edmund Smith: Democrats are concerned about having a say as to who will be our new governor. Is the only way to do that in this Republican state to vote on a Republican ballot in the May primary?

This idea attracted attention last week when a political action committee put up billboards urging Democrats to vote in the Republican primary.

Republicans dismissed the pitch, as IndyStar's Kayla Dwyer wrote, with a party spokesman calling it "unfortunate that Democrats in Indiana can't win elections on the merit of their own policies."

For Democrats, that's sad, but true.

Jennifer McCormick has already grabbed the Democratic nomination for governor, and whoever wins the May 7 Republican primary will have an immense advantage over McCormick in November. Democrats and independents should acknowledge reality and vote Republican next month.

The only reasons not to are if you strongly care about a down-ballot Democratic primary race, you plan to run as a Democrat in some future election or you feel pressure to vote Democratic and support the team.

Democrats want to guilt you on that last point. Jocelyn Vare, chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, issued a statement Monday warning that Democrats voting in Republican primaries can scramble election data and suppress fundraising.

Sorry, but that's a problem for consultants and candidates to figure out. Voters have bigger issues, such as who will be their next governor and whether they'd like to influence that outcome.

"We unequivocally ask all Democratic voters to vote Democrat in the primary. Important races are at stake," Vare said.

The stakes really are high — and that's why Democrats should consider how they can make a difference.

If you're looking to play the role of lib spoiler, you have two main choices in the gubernatorial primary:

• Brad Chambers, the CEO of Buckingham Cos. and a former state commerce secretary, is the (wink-wink) anti-Trump candidate. Chambers isn't explicitly running against Donald Trump, but he's making it clear he aspires to follow in the path of former Gov. Mitch Daniels as a pragmatic, business-oriented governor.

• Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch is the secret establishment candidate. She's made a rhetorical hard right turn, while maintaining the confidence of business leaders and local officials (including both moderate Republicans and Democrats) who expect her to govern as a Normal Republican if she wins. She's hitched her candidacy to an improbable pitch to abolish Indiana's income tax.

Those two candidates are chasing Sen. Mike Braun, who, fittingly for this discussion, wouldn't be running in the Republican primary at all in an alt-universe.

Braun for all practical purposes was a Democrat before sliding into the Republican primary ballot box for the first time in 2012 and then evolving into a less-than-sincere Trumpist. Now, he has Trump's endorsement even though he'd disown Trump, too, if he thought it would benefit his career.

It's tough to predict what Braun might do as governor. Braun does what is best for Braun. If you don't want a craven opportunist as your governor, then you might want to vote for someone who has a chance to beat him.

The other candidates are Eric Doden, a businessman and social conservative who might have been more palatable to moderate Democrats without Chambers entering the race; Curtis Hill, a disgraced former attorney general; and Jamie Reitenour, who seems to want a literal theocracy.

If you're a Democratic-leaning voter in Indiana, would you rather help a good-faith Republican candidate defeat a feckless Trump acolyte, or serve up a data point for your loser party? The answer seems obvious to me, but your mileage may vary.

Jerry Gearlds: My question is about the ads being run about the senator and gubernatorial candidates. I'm seeing a lot of ads talking about "finishing the wall" or "backing the blue" or "liberals destroying our cities," but none of the candidates talk about ANYTHING having to do bettering Hoosier lives or attacking each other for being too soft. Is this REALLY working on persuading voters?

I talked about campaign ads in a previous mailbag and defended the people behind them at the time, so I'll take this question as a chance to offer a somewhat contradictory perspective.

As I noted before, political ads hit the same national themes over and over again because consultants possess reams of data showing those points connect with people.

In the case of the Republican gubernatorial primary race, though, I think we're getting to a point where you have several campaigns stuck in a rut of playing not to lose. The problem with this approach is that Chambers, Crouch and Doden are losing — by a lot — to Braun and, yet, they seem to be clinging to generic, consultant-approved scripts.

It's past time for them to get more creative and take risks.

Braun is a recent example of how an effective ad campaign can move the needle late in a competitive primary. Braun famously in 2018 put out an ad in which he carried around cardboard cutouts of Republican primary opponents Todd Rokita and Luke Messer, asking voters if they could tell them apart (they couldn't). Braun ran a near-perfect Senate campaign then, combining resonant ads with effective branding (the blue shirt, for example).

It would be hard to replicate that success. Braun doesn't have to try. He's the frontrunner and his opponents are chasing him. They're just not doing it nearly as effectively as Braun did in 2018 when he defeated two candidates who were supposedly much stronger.

We're three weeks from Election Day. If playing the same old hits — border, outsider, etc. — hasn't worked yet, it's probably not going to make a difference down the stretch.

Thank you for reading! If you want to send questions for future mailbags, fill out the Google form on the online article page or email [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Democrats should vote Republican in Indiana's May 7 primary