Max Engling secures Republican nomination for Secretary of State in Indiana

Former Banks staffer Max Engling on Saturday became the second Republican in as many election cycles to upset an incumbent secretary of state at the state party convention.

Heading into Saturday, Republican delegates faced four choices for secretary of state: current Secretary of State Diego Morales; Knox County Clerk David Shelton; Max Engling, a former staffer for Sen. Jim Banks; and conservative activist Jamie Reitenour.

Engling, Shelton and Reitenour all attacked Morales’ record, some more directly than others. Engling and Shelton in particular raised the specter of electability against the well-funded Democratic nominee, Beau Bayh.

“If we lose this office, we can lose everything else,” Engling said. “The secretary of state is the chief guardian of election integrity. And we must have integrity both in our elections and in our elected officials. They go hand in hand.”

For his part, Shelton pointed to his record of running elections in Knox County and said he is the only candidate who is not “riddled with scandals.” Meanwhile, Reitenour accused Morales of going back on his 2022 pledge to require paper ballots for all elections.

Despite his incumbent status, Morales cast himself as an outsider being unfairly targeted by establishment Republicans. He accused supporters who have deserted him of “stab(bing) me in the back” and said it all came down to a noncitizen working in his office who he said was in the country legally.

“I served in the Indiana National Guard as a legal noncitizen. If you trust people to give their lives for this great country, we believe we can trust them to work for our fellow Hoosiers,” he said. “They have smeared me with false allegations hoping that I would resign and drop my campaign, not because of anything I have done, but because they are afraid of Democrats and the liberal media.”

Engling finished the first round with 715 out of 1,631 ballots cast, nearly 44% but not enough to secure the 50% plus one required for the nomination. Shelton was second with about 33% of the votes and Morales had a little more than 14%. After Reitenour was eliminated for having come in fourth, some delegates who had voted for Morales in the first round voted for Engling. It was enough to give Engling about 53% of the vote on the second ballot and thus the nomination.

After the nomination came down, Engling said he’s not worried about rivals having a head start. Engling joined the race for secretary of state just before the convention filing deadline in May.

“We are one Republican team. We know that. We’re going to move forward as a unified team,” he said. “We are going to bring young folks together. We are going to bring our folks that are in the older generation all together and say we’re pressing forward, we’re not looking at what the other folks are dong.

Besides Bayh, Engling will face Libertarian Lauri Shillings in November. In addition, former Republican Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard is collecting signatures to appear on the ballot as an independent under the Lincoln Party label. Ballard has until June 30 to submit the required signatures. On Saturday, his campaign announced he has now collected more than 52,000 signatures. Ballard based his early campaign on criticism of Morales’ conduct in office but, after the convention, Ballard told News 8 the fact that someone else won does not change his campaign

“We think this is bigger than what we’re doing. The voter choice, the fact that we have to do it differently in that office, we have to be independent and nonpartisan, as both parties have been not that once they’re in that office,” he said. “It didn’t matter who won today […] because we now have major party candidates, neither one of them have ever been in charge of anything in their life and I’ve been in charge of the city of Indianapolis with 7,000 employees and a billion-dollar budget and several things in the Marine Corps.”

Bayh also downplayed the significance of Engling’s upset win.