State politics can be volatile. Consider the case of Indiana. A year ago, embattled governor Mike Pence faced the prospect of a challenging rematch against the former speaker of the Indiana house, John Gregg, whom Pence had defeated by just 75,000 votes in 2012 to succeed popular Republican governor Mitch Daniels. Also a year ago, Daniels’s former campaign manager and deputy chief of staff, Eric Holcomb, was planning a long-shot campaign to win the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Dan Coats, for whom Holcomb was then serving as chief of staff.
As the 2016 election cycle unfolded, Indiana politics went in an entirely different direction. Pence’s 2012 running mate, Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann, resigned to take a college presidency. Pence picked Holcomb as Indiana’s new lieutenant governor. A few months later, Donald Trump picked Pence as his running mate. On July 26, state Republicans selected Holcomb to replace Pence as their gubernatorial nominee. He began the fall campaign as an underdog against John Gregg, just as the Trump-Pence ticket faced long odds for the White House and as the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, Representative Todd Young, faced an uphill battle against the former Indiana senator and governor Evan Bayh.
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