The Republicans have regained control of the Indiana State House of Representatives for only the third time in over 20 years. This shift is significant for many reasons. Although a majority of Hoosiers (between 53-56%) have consistently cast votes for Republican General Assembly candidates, the Democrats have held the House in eight of the last ten elections due to how they drew the district lines. That will change with the redrawing of new district lines next year.

Much more important to AFA of Indiana than the political realignment is the change in leadership that will occur this January. No longer will South Bend Representative Patrick Bauer and other Democrat leaders be able to unilaterally stand in the way of pro-life, pro-family and virtually any other conservative policy idea. The days of Speaker Bauer the obstructionist are over!

At the time of this writing, many of the election results are still coming in but it appears as though the GOP will have at least 53 seats and at least two more in the Indiana Senate, giving them a likely two-thirds, "super-majority."

I believe a lot of this change at the state level is due directly to the leftist policies of President Obama. Many of the GOP gains occurred in Southern Indiana where it seems likely that many conservative, pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-2nd amendment Democrats could no longer stand the liberalism of their party leaders, much like the realignment we observed in the southern US a few years ago.  However, this did not play out as much in northern Indiana.

There have been some notable exceptions tonight. In Kokomo, voters chose Mike Karickhoff over Ron Herrell who had talked a good talk on life and marriage among other issues, but seemed to leave his values in Howard County during the legislative session. (He had an 80% pro-abortion voting record with Planned Parenthood a few years ago.)

In Delaware County on the Senate side of the statehouse, Democrat Senator Sue Errington, a former policy director for Planned Parenthood, lost to Doug Eckerty.

Most of the other changes appear to be coming in from Southern Indiana. One of note is AFA of Indiana PAC-endorsed Senate candidate Jim Tomes whom many AFAIN supporters know as the leader of a group called the 2nd Amendment Patriots.