by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.
For years I told my Republican friends Diego Morales was bad news.
Now that he’s potentially topping the ticket — and with their own races potentially in jeopardy — those same friends are running away from him like, to quote Monty Python’s Life of Brian, rats out of an aqueduct.
But at least the rats in the aqueduct had the decency to leave before the structural collapse. Some of these folks are going to wait until the ticket is underwater before they swim for it — and then act like they were never on board.
I’d like to say I told you so, so I will.
I told you so.
For those of you just joining us, a quick stroll down memory lane.
Before he was Secretary of State, Diego Morales had been fired from the Secretary of State’s office — the very office he now runs. He had exaggerated a military record that, on closer inspection, amounted to three months and eighteen days of active-duty training. He voted in one county while claiming a homestead tax credit in another. He called the 2020 election a scam, then sort of un-called it, depending on which room he was in.
And 39 days before the 2022 election, I reported in the Cheat Sheet that two women — both Republicans, one of whom had worked in the Secretary of State’s office — said Morales had sexually assaulted them years earlier. Morales denied the allegations. He skipped the debate that followed. He won anyway, underperforming every other statewide Republican on the ballot by 5 to 7 points.
Here is the part worth dwelling on. Indiana Republican Party Chair Kyle Hupfer later acknowledged that one of the women had come to him with her account two months after the party nominated Morales. And look, I get it — a chairman’s gotta do what a chairman’s gotta do, and a state party isn’t an investigatory body. But jeesh. The convention delegates didn’t get the information. The voters didn’t get the information. Morales got the nomination.
Then he got sworn in, and the entertainment really began.
The brother-in-law installed in a brand-new six-figure auto-dealer-services job. The $308,000 in spot bonuses in year one — the largest haul on record by a statewide elected official. The no-bid contracts worth millions that prompted his own party’s General Assembly to pass new transparency rules to rein him in. The $90,000 GMC Yukon Denali bought with taxpayer money from a dealer who’d given his campaign $65,000.
The unannounced ten-day trip to India, during which he skipped a budget hearing and a prayer breakfast his own office was sponsoring. The Hungary trips — plural — to speak at CPAC Hungary, on what he insists was “personal time” but somehow involved meetings with government officials.
And, most recently, the Marion County Election Board banning him from non-public areas of the election services center on Primary Election Day. Read that twice. The state’s chief elections officer, banned from a county elections facility, over campaign-finance violations involving the elections he oversees.
So here’s the question I’d like every Indiana Republican officeholder and candidate who endorsed Diego Morales — or who is currently sharing a ballot with him — to answer: Are your endorsements about to become un-endorsements?
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: there’s a very good chance Diego wins the nomination anyway. The convention math favors him. Delegates from the smaller and more rural counties love the guy, and they really don’t love the Indianapolis crowd telling them who’s acceptable and who isn’t. The more the suburban establishment wing of the party clutches its pearls over Diego, the harder rural delegates will dig in. That’s just how this works.
Which means a whole lot of Republicans on the 2026 ballot are about to be stapled to a nominee they cannot disown and cannot defeat at convention. And “I always had concerns” is not going to cut it when somebody pulls up your 2022 tweets on the big screen.
Now imagine what the commercials are going to look like. Better yet, imagine the mailers. The glossy two-sided hit piece landing in suburban mailboxes the weekend before the election. Your smiling face on one side next to Diego’s. The $90,000 SUV on the other. Maybe a tasteful pull quote from your 2022 endorsement, set in a nice serif font. “Paid for by” some committee you’ve never heard of run out of a P.O. box in Carmel.
You know exactly what I’m talking about. Because half of you have sent mailers like that.
Here’s the thing, folks. We wouldn’t have this problem if Holli Sullivan were Secretary of State.
Hell, at this point, I’ll even take Destiny Wells.
I hate to say I told you so.
But I did.
And I will again. See you in Ft. Wayne.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of Indy Politics. He is also an attorney licensed in Indiana and Illinois.
