by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.

I spent Saturday at two conventions in one building.

Indiana Comic Con and the Indiana Democratic State Convention — same roof, same day, the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. One room was packed with optimists in costume, rooting for heroes who beat impossible odds and win in the end. The other was full of people who enjoy comic books. Or did I get that backwards?

The party chair actually had to warn reporters not to mistake the cosplay for the delegates, which — if you’ve ever covered an Indiana Democratic convention — is funnier than it ought to be. Some years it’s a coin flip. I had a foot in each universe, working a half-dozen panels across the hall, and I’ll give the Democrats this much: Saturday they pulled off something they almost never get to do in this state. They left happy. And — honest to God — with a real shot at winning this thing in November.

We’ll get to God in a minute.

Bayh 61, Potter 39

That’s the headline. The number underneath it is 1,385 to 883. Beau Bayh — son of Evan, grandson of Birch, Marine turned lawyer, sitting on north of a million and a half in cash — is your 2026 Democratic nominee for Secretary of State. Nobody who was paying attention is surprised. Nobody who lives in the real world instead of fantasyland, anyway. The name, the money, the Politico glow-up — he’s been the favorite since the day he announced in October. Conventions reward exactly that package. Saturday paid out.

Give Blythe Potter Her Due

An esthetician and Iraq War vet who built a spa in Bargersville, with a sliver of Bayh’s money and none of his last name, walked off the floor with 39 percent. That’s not a protest vote. That’s a third of the room. There’s a wing of this party that’s sick of dynasties and wanted to say so, and Saturday they said it loud. Bayh would be wise to figure out who those 883 are before November — because in Indiana a famous name gets you a nomination. It does not get you a statewide office. Ask the last Democrat who tried.

To his credit, he’s already on it, courting Potter’s people before they stomp off to Greg Ballard out of spite. Smart. A bloc of sulking progressives parking their votes with an independent is exactly how a winnable race quietly turns into a missed one.

A Personal Note

I’ll keep it short. More than one delegate stopped me on the floor to say they’d read our Elina Kupce non-citizen reporting, our APRA work, the convention previews — and that they appreciated where I come down on real religious freedom, the kind that doesn’t need a false-prophet, Book-of-Revelation king to enforce it. And that all of it shaped how they’re thinking about the fall. I won’t pretend that isn’t gratifying. It is. I didn’t need the ego boost. But do solid journalism — with a dash of snark for seasoning — and yeah, I’ll cop to needing a bigger hat size.

Which brings me to the God I promised you. The religious-freedom thing is really just me being everyone’s favorite scotch-drinking, cigar-smoking, bacon-loving Muslim, and we got a lot of love for it this weekend. Which is a little rich, considering one of my better moments in this business turns on a subject I’m pretty much agnostic about. The Lord really does move in mysterious ways.

Now, the Losers

Every convention has a few, and they’re not always on the ballot.

Start with Destiny Wells. She has now assembled one of the great losing streaks in modern Indiana Democratic politics: Secretary of State in 2022, Attorney General in 2024, the party chairmanship after that, the 7th District primary against André Carson this May. Saturday she signed up for the losing side again — throwing in with Potter and rising to put her name in nomination — so Wells is now 0-for as a candidate, as a chair hopeful, and as a nominating speaker. Put that record on a scoreboard and the 24-41 Colorado Rockies, about as grim as baseball gets right now, would feel pretty good about themselves. At some point this stops being about the people she runs against and starts being about the pattern. Loyalty is a virtue. So is reading a room.

Then there’s Jesse Brown — avowed Indiana Democratic Socialist, devout voice of the terminally online left, a man whose entire political faith starts and ends with two words that conveniently both begin with G: Gaza and genocide. Brown went ten toes down for Blythe Potter, which means he spent Sunday on the wrong side of a 22-point margin, too.

Brown also spent the run-up to Saturday going after Beau Bayh — and, by extension, after me, dedicating a generous stretch of a Facebook homily to all the free publicity I’ve supposedly been handing him in The Cheat Sheet. It’s not based in fact, he concedes, but he appreciates it anyway. The feeling’s mutual, Jesse. For the record, he wants the world to know his case against Bayh isn’t only about Gaza — it’s also that the guy is 30, has barely lived or worked in this state, and is wired into his father’s establishment world. A network Brown maps out with the breathless confidence of a man pinning photos to a corkboard and running red string between them. Some of that’s a fair hit. The rest belongs on the corkboard. Either way, it’d land harder coming from someone whose candidate had cleared 39 percent. Here’s the thing about being loud online: delegates don’t vote in your replies. They vote on the floor. The floor was unmoved.

The Part That Actually Matters: Fort Wayne

Republicans gather June 19–20 to decide whether Diego Morales survives a convention floor that is — to put it kindly — restless. Engling, Shelton, and Reitenour are all in the water. The Kupce mess is still bleeding. And the endorsements that walked out the door this spring haven’t come strolling back.

Here’s how Saturday changed the math. Until now, the dump-Diego crowd could treat November as a formality — this is Indiana, the R wins regardless, so the convention fight was just an intramural grudge match. That got a lot harder to believe on Saturday. Democrats just nominated their most credible statewide candidate in over a decade — funded, disciplined, with a last name every Hoosier over 40 knows cold — in a race one early poll already had inside the margin three ways. The downside of renominating a scandal-dragged incumbent is no longer hypothetical. It has a face, a war chest, and a last name.

And it cuts both ways, which is what Republican delegates ought to be chewing on. A wounded Morales against a healthy Bayh is the one scenario that puts this office genuinely in play. But a winner who limps out of Fort Wayne bloodied, with the party split behind him, is just as exposed. There’s no clean exit. Just the least-bad door — and convention math has never been any good at finding those.

Which Brings Us to Mario Massillamany

The Hamilton County GOP chair — a Morales endorser in 2022, a guy who sat on his transition team — went on the Larry in Fishers podcast the day before our convention and said something that’s going to get quoted in Fort Wayne whether anybody wants it on the record or not.

Notably, he didn’t plant a flag. He called a contested convention a healthy thing, said he likes Max Engling, a fellow Hamilton County guy — and then turned around and defended Diego. Morales, he said, has gotten an unfair shake, and some of the incoming “would not have been received if he were the prototypical white male from Indiana.” Instead, in Massillamany’s telling, Morales is “a short Hispanic from Guatemala that has a thick accent” — an easy mark for the same things other people do without a scratch, just with a bigger target painted on his back. (Larry in Fishers, June 5: larryinfishers.com.)

Be precise about what that is: a defense of Morales aimed squarely at his fellow Republicans, from a chairman who’s otherwise keeping his options open. Whether it’s a real diagnosis or a convenient shield depends entirely on what you think is driving the opposition. My read? The delegates who soured on Diego did it over the documents — a credential scandal involving non-citizen codes and a deputy chief of staff — not over his accent. You can believe Morales has been treated unfairly and believe the Kupce mess is disqualifying. Those don’t cancel out. But Massillamany just handed Diego a grievance narrative to haul into Fort Wayne, and grievance narratives have a nasty habit of working on a convention floor. Watch that space.

The Conventional Wisdom?

Bayh is the real deal. The Democrats finally have a fall race worth watching. And Republicans have two weeks to decide whether they’d rather win the family argument or win the election. History says they can’t do both at once.

See you in Fort Wayne.

Abdul-Hakim is the editor and publisher of Indy Politics.  He is also an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois.