By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.

Mike Braun is a solid Republican.  No question,  He is “Licensed to MAGA: Which is why  I have to ask: in the secretary of state’s race, is the governor casting his vote for Beau Bayh or Greg Ballard?

Okay,  Everybody, deep breaths,   Step.  Hear me out,

Because with a single executive order, Braun just did more for the two non-Republicans in the SOS race than either campaign managed all summer. Repeal Indiana’s minority- and women-owned business enterprise programs and the biggest beneficiary is a white male. Make it two of them. Both Marines — Bayh the Democrat, Ballard the independent — and the governor spent a news cycle campaigning for both.

Work with me on this, folks. The program the administration torched has been on the books since 1983, and Rokita supplied the “un-American and unconstitutional” cover. But Braun isn’t on the 2026 ballot m neither is Rokita — they  don’t face voters again until 2028. He made the call; he pays nothing for it this cycle.

Guess who is on the ballot. The three Republicans running statewide in November — Max Engling for secretary of state, Elise Nieshalla for comptroller, Dan Elliott for treasurer — didn’t ask for this fight. But it was  handed it to them by executive order, and now it’s theirs to carry. All three will spend the fall answering for it. That’s how down-ballot works: the man who signs the order is home by nine, and the names on the ballot are the ones who smell like smoke or worry about getting smoked.

And they’ll answer for it where the map is tightest — in the donut. Hamilton, Hendricks, Boone, Johnson: the collar counties that used to be automatic. As I wrote last time, the women-owned business certificate skews heavily toward suburban Republican women — Carmel, Fishers, Westfield, Zionsville. “Why can the state prefer a veteran-owned firm but not mine?” is not a doorstep question any of the three asked for. It’s the one they got.

Which is the other problem with the line the order draws. It keeps the veteran-owned preference and kills the women’s. Veterans yes, women no — so what about a woman veteran? She served, she owns a business, and under the new rules she’s waved through the veteran door and turned away at the women’s, preferred and refused in the same breath. That’s not a principle. It’s a coin flip with a flag on it.

Now the gift. The Democrat at the top of the ticket is Beau Bayh — a former Marine infantry captain and a white man with the most recognizable name in Indiana Democratic politics. You can’t out-patriot a Marine. You can’t paint him as a diversity hire. The party that declared war on “preferences” just handed the edge to the one guy, look at his background, his profile that never needed one.

And Bayh isn’t even the one with the record. Greg Ballard is. A retired Marine lieutenant colonel — he outranks Bayh — and a two-term mayor of Indianapolis now an independent candidate with 41,000-plus signatures, Ballard spent eight years running the city’s minority-, women-, and veteran-owned business program. He doesn’t have to take a position on supplier diversity; he lived it. Braun just handed the independent his whole rationale: the party that torched the program versus the Marine who ran one — and ran it from the center-right, exactly the votes Engling can least afford to lose.

So Engling is boxed. A Democrat to his left, an independent to his right, both Marines hammering the same cut from opposite sides, and a decision he didn’t make stapled to his lapel through October.

None of this means the legal argument is wrong. As a lawyer, I’ve said the Students for Fair Admissions problem is real — the fight is over the evidentiary record, not the premise. But law and politics keep different scoreboards, and on the political one Braun aimed a contestable legal call at the two groups a nervous ticket could least afford to lose.

So congratulations are in order. Not to the contractors, who lose a program. Not to Engling, Nieshalla, and Elliott, who carry it. To Beau Bayh and Greg Ballard, who woke to find the governor running a turnout drive for them.

I’m starting to  miss Diego,