A deal to have Secretary of State Diego Morales suspend his campaign ahead of the June 20 Republican state convention was literally hours away from being finalized, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. And then the whole thing fell apart.
The Deal
For much of the past week, sources told Indy Politics, U.S. Sen. Jim Banks and Attorney General Todd Rokita worked to broker an off-ramp for Morales. The pitch, sources say, was simple and straightforward: avoid a convention floor fight, let the party close ranks behind a consensus nominee, and find Morales a soft landing on the back end. Sources say Morales came close to accepting.
The consensus nominee Banks and Rokita had in mind, sources say, was Max Engling, Banks’s central Indiana regional director and senior adviser. Engling officially filed for the race the same day Banks and Rokita pulled their endorsements of Morales and threw their support behind him.
The Sticking Point
The sticking point on Morales’s end, sources say, was the landing.
The job on the back end was a possibility, not a commitment, and the people working the backchannel had trouble lining one up. Sources say Morales’s reputation and his own employment history complicated the search for a private-sector position, and not without reason. The public record on Morales includes a 2011 discipline-and-resignation episode at the Secretary of State’s office under Charlie White; a disputed earlier exit from the office under then-Secretary Todd Rokita. Throw in all the previous reporting on taxpayer-funded travel, vehicles, and a six-figure branded vehicle history product; sexual harassment allegations from his time in office; the hiring of family members into state positions; and, most consequentially, the CAN-2 Declaration of Candidacy forms his own office failed to properly notarize because staff members were not licensed notaries public — an oversight in the very office that issues notary licenses in Indiana. Morales also does not have the kind of pre-existing practice or business that a former officeholder typically falls back on. Sources say he was not willing to step aside on an assurance that the party would take care of him. He wanted a specific position in hand. Instead, all he got was a handshake.
This kind of arrangement is not unusual. When an elected official becomes a political liability, the party will often ask the official to step aside and, in exchange, work to line up a job or appointment to cushion the landing. It happens in both parties, in Indiana and elsewhere, and it usually happens quietly. What made the Morales situation different, sources say, was that the cushion never firmed up.
How Morales Got Here
Part of what put Morales in this position in the first place was his own office. Earlier this month, Indy Politics reported that Morales — who has built his political brand on election integrity and concerns about non-citizen voting — had paid Elina Kupce $160,000 a year as Deputy Chief of Staff, in a position that was never publicly posted and that she filled with no prior government experience. BMV records show Kupce’s Indiana driver’s license carries the “TEMPORARY” restriction the state applies to non-U.S. citizens. Kupce resigned April 29. Neither the Secretary of State’s office nor the State Personnel Department has affirmatively confirmed that her I-9 was on file or her work authorization individually verified. For a party that had been managing the cumulative weight of Morales’s record for months, sources say, the Kupce story was the final straw. That story, along with the May 5 delegate result, gave the Banks-Rokita camp the running room to move.
Enter the Elliott
While the landing piece of the deal was still unresolved, Treasurer Daniel Elliott released a public statement calling on Morales to resign as Secretary of State. Elliott had, by his own account, deliberately stayed quiet while the Banks-Rokita backchannel was active. When it became clear the polite option was not going to work, he went public.
And that’s why, sources tell Indy Politics, the word “resign” was the trigger. What Banks and Rokita had been framing privately as a voluntary exit was now, publicly, a demand for removal. Taking the deal at that point, sources say, would have looked less like a negotiated withdrawal and more like a response to Elliott. Morales, who livid, or “lost it” as once source noted, decided to stay in the race and said so publicly.
In Elliott’s telling, the nice approach had not worked, and it was time to tell the truth. He did not blow up a live deal. He confirmed a dead one.
On to Fort Wayne
That sets up a contested convention in Fort Wayne on June 20. Morales will face Engling, Knox County Clerk David Shelton, and conservative activist Jamie Reitenour, with delegates choosing the Republican nominee for Secretary of State on the convention floor.
Morales heads into the convention as a weakened incumbent. He could not win a delegate slot in his own precinct in the May 5 primary, where he and his wife, Sidonia, both ran for one of six available slots and both finished out of the money. The result means the sitting Secretary of State would have had to be appointed as a delegate just to be on the convention floor when his party decides whether to renominate him.
Who Is Max Engling?
Engling is the least known of the four candidates to the general public. He has spent his career in Republican politics rather than in elective office, working as a senior adviser to Banks and previously running unsuccessfully in the 2024 GOP primary for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, where he finished third behind Rep. Victoria Spartz. His allies argue he has the operational and policy chops the office needs and the relationships in Washington and Indianapolis to be effective from day one. Critics, including some delegates who have been on the receiving end of the past week’s outreach, have already begun asking whether a sitting U.S. senator’s staffer with no elective experience and a recent third-place primary finish is the right person to run statewide elections — and whether the timing of the endorsements, the filing, and the Morales push amounts to the senator handing a constitutional office to a member of his own staff. Engling enters the convention with the Banks and Rokita endorsements behind him and an operation that has been quietly preparing for this moment for months.
Shelton, the Knox County Clerk, has been running an active delegate-courting operation of his own and has positioned himself as the establishment alternative. Reitenour, who ran for governor in 2024, is pitching delegates from the right and has built a following among the more activist wing of the convention floor.
Also on the Ballot
Delegates in Fort Wayne will also choose Republican nominees for Treasurer and Auditor, though neither race is expected to draw the attention the Secretary of State contest will.
Democrats will pick their Secretary of State nominee at their own state convention on June 6.
