Republican incumbents keep Indiana statehouse seats

Local Republicans who faced challengers for their Indiana statehouse seats apparently will keep their offices after Tuesday's elections.

House District 5

It appears that incumbent Republican Rep. Dale DeVon will hold onto his District 5 seat in the Indiana House of Representatives.

DeVon claimed 56.7% of the vote versus 43.3% for his challenger, Dr. Heidi Beidinger, a Democrat and president of the St. Joseph County Board of Health, with 98.6% of votes counted. DeVon had 11,738 votes, and Beidinger had 8,965.

Beidinger had jumped into this race because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and efforts to further limit abortion rights in Indiana, though she’d also had concerns over several health issues in Indiana.

The operator of a home-building business, DeVon was among those who’d followed up on the Supreme Court’s decision and voted in favor of Indiana’s near-total ban on abortions.

Indiana election results:Check full state and local results here live

“Women fought tooth and nail for these rights, and now they’re being stolen,” Beidinger has said. “I have two daughters and I don’t want them to grow up without the same choices that I had.”

DeVon said Tuesday that he instead focused this campaign on his passion -- helping at-risk kids and families – saying, “The breakdown of the family is what has hurt this country the most.”

Beidinger said she and DeVon ran two very different campaigns where “it was almost like the two shall never meet.” DeVon agreed. Both said they and their campaign teams spent a lot of time knocking on doors and speaking with thousands of voters. DeVon said he focused on reaching “soft” Republicans and “soft” Democrats since, for the “hard” members of the parties, “We’re not going to change their minds.”

Beidinger had said she was “highly optimistic” as she awaited results earlier Tuesday night.

DeVon, who’s held the office since 2012, said he’s used to close elections, having won last time against Don Westerhausen by half of a percentage point. Westerhausen, who was running for county commissioner this year, had opposed DeVon in the prior two elections.

Senate District 11

It looks like incumbent Republican Sen. Linda Rogers will keep her District 11 seat, having faced Democrat opponent Mindy Fountain. Both are Granger residents.

Rogers gained about 56% of the votes, compared with nearly 44% for Fountain in St. Joseph County alone with 98.% reporting – or 13,997 votes for Rogers versus 10,889 for Fountain. District 11 reaches into Elkhart County, too, where Rogers also saw a strong lead.

Rogers said she felt encouraged as she entered Tuesday night, based on thumbs-up she got from voters at the poll as well as responses she got from knocking on “thousands” of doors and making phone calls.

“I felt good all along because people were so good to me,” she said. “You don’t have to vote for me for me to help you.”

2nd District results:Rudy Yakym to succeed Jackie Walorski in 2nd District after beating Paul Steury

Rogers, who’s been in office since 2018, caught flack in 2021 for co-authoring a bill that reduced the state’s protections for wetlands, a bill that was initially denounced by Gov. Eric Holcomb and leaders of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, along with a wide spread of conservation groups and an 11-year-old boy whose petition gained tens of thousands of signatures.

Rogers is co-owner of Nugent Builders with her husband and brother and has been a member and past president of the Indiana Builders Association and Home Builders Association of St. Joseph Valley. She had denied that she would gain financially from the bill. A redrafted bill that still loosened the state’s wetland protections did eventually pass in 2021.

Rogers said Tuesday that critics misunderstood the bill’s aim. But she said she didn’t hear voters talk about the wetlands issue at all during the campaign. Instead, she said they talked about property taxes, education and inflation.

Fountain has said wetland restrictions should be reinstated, saying wetlands protect the water supply.

Fountain has said that she’d push for increasing teacher and school employee salaries. Rogers would push for affordable child care.

Fountain is associate director for professional development for master of global affairs students at the University of Notre Dame. Before this, she’d served more than a decade as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service.

“We ran a great campaign,” Fountain said earlier in the night. “I feel like no matter what happens, we ran a great campaign and I’m proud of our team and what we accomplished.”

House District 7

Republican incumbent Rep. Jake Teshka appears to have won a rematch with former Rep. Ross Deal, a Democrat, who’d lost the seat two years ago to Teshka.

Teshka won about 60% of the vote, compared with almost 40% for Deal. With 98.6% of votes counted, there were 11,189 votes for Teshka, 7,405 for Deal.

Bothare South Bend residents. Both had once served on city councils − Deal in Mishawaka, Teshka in South Bend. But they see each other differently.

Deal characterized Teshka as an “extremist” and himself as a “moderate” and a "consensus builder.”

Teshka, on the other hand, said he’s spoken with many working class people – often lifelong Democrats – who've moved to straight Republican tickets because they feel Democrats have taken a hard turn to the left. And that, he said, may have helped his campaign.

“What I’m pushing for is less spending and let’s let families decide what’s best for their children,” he said, having mentioned issues about what’s taught in schools, “and not all the craziness on the national level.”

Teshka voted earlier this year in favor of a bill to ban transgender girls from playing on K-12 girls sports teams. Deal denounced the ban, saying that the “legislature continues to create fear and division by politicizing issues.”

“I’m very comfortable with the race we ran,” Deal said Tuesday night as he awaited results. “We did everything we set out to do in terms of voter engagement. … Win or lose, I’m very comfortable with our effort.”

“We knew we had an uphill battle; the district was gerrymandered,” he added. “But we knocked on over 6,000 doors. We worked our tails off.”

House District 5 and 8

Two House incumbents were easily re-elected since they both ran unopposed, both Democrats from South Bend: Maureen Bauer in House District 5 and Ryan Dvorak in House District 8.

Bauer, a vineyard manager and wine maker, was seeking her second term in the seat previously held by her father, B. Patrick Bauer, who’d served in the House for 50 years. She opposed the bills last year that weakened the state’s wetland protections and the bill this summer that banned nearly all abortions.

Dvorak, an attorney and the son of former county prosecutor Michael Dvorak, was first elected to the District 8 seat in 2002.

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Indiana Statehouse race results: South Bend area recap and analysis