The Revenge That Found No One Home
In five other Indiana Senate districts, the story writes itself: a Republican senator voted against Trump's redistricting plan, Trump endorsed a primary challenger, and the machinery of punishment lurched into motion. Senate District 39 is the odd one out. Here, the target left before the shot was fired.
Eric Bassler announced his retirement in July 2025, citing twelve years as enough. [1] Four months later, he publicly opposed Trump's redistricting push anyway, becoming the seventh Republican senator to break ranks. [2] In December, he voted against HB 1032 as part of the 31-19 majority that killed the bill. [2] Then he walked away -- on his own terms, with a Senate resolution honoring his service.
Trump endorsed Jeff Ellington for the open seat in February 2026 regardless. [3] That decision is what makes SD-39 analytically interesting. Punishment is reactive. What happened here was something else: installation. Even with no enemy to defeat, Trump moved to claim the seat. The revenge campaign's second face -- patronage -- is most visible in the race where there is nobody left to punish.
The Firefighter Who Kept Running
Jeff Ellington is a retired firefighter, a business owner, and a man who does not quit easily.
He spent 29 years as a Rescue Technician with the City of Bloomington Fire Department, retiring in 2017. He runs J.R. Ellington Tree Experts, Ellington Stables, and Phoenix Demolition, and since 2018 has been restoring Bloomfield's historic Old Woolen Mill. He lives in Greene County with his wife Hope; they have two grown children and one grandchild. [4]
His political career began with an appointment to Indiana House District 62 on December 21, 2015. He won election in his own right in 2016, 2018, and 2020, representing Greene, northern Martin, and Daviess counties. In the House, he served as Vice Chair of the Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee and sat on Local Government and Natural Resources. He compiled a high American Conservative Union rating, an NRA "A" rating, and supported Indiana Right to Life and post-Dobbs abortion restrictions. [5]
Then redistricting took his seat away.
Indiana's 2021 mapmaking moved Greene County from House District 62 into District 45, where incumbent Bruce Borders already held the line. Ellington challenged Borders in the 2022 Republican primary and lost, 46.7% to 53.3%. He ran again in 2024 in a three-way primary and finished third with 27.4%. [6] Two consecutive losses. The state house door had closed.
So he pivoted. On August 8, 2025 -- with Bassler's retirement already announced -- Ellington filed for the SD-39 Senate seat. Different chamber, broader geography, fresh start. His campaign announced itself with familiar conservative priorities: protecting taxpayers, opposing tolling of Interstate 69, cutting fuel taxes, accelerating road repairs, immigration enforcement, and "America First" policies. "If elected, I'll fight to uphold conservative principles," he told the Sun-Commercial. "Even if that means challenging the insiders" who compromise conservatism. [7]
It was a solid but unremarkable entry into an open-seat race -- until the phone rang from Washington.
The Endorsement and the Oval Office
In February 2026, Trump endorsed Ellington on Truth Social, calling him an "America First Patriot" and praising him as "a successful businessman, retired firefighter, horse farmer, Greene County GOP Chairman and former State Representative who has dedicated his life to serving his community." He gave Ellington his "Complete and Total Endorsement" and noted he had won the district by 55 points. Ellington responded: "I am incredibly honored to have President Trump's endorsement." [3]
On March 4, 2026, Ellington was one of six Trump-endorsed Indiana Senate candidates who received an Oval Office meeting with the president. The other five were all challenging incumbent senators who had voted against redistricting. Ellington was the only one running for an open seat. [8]
That distinction matters. In the other five races, the endorsement is a weapon aimed at a specific target. In SD-39, it is a coronation -- national-level branding deployed to select a successor in a state legislative race where any of three conservatives could have won.
There is also the question of what the endorsement repairs. Ellington lost two consecutive primaries for the state house. The Trump brand offers something his local record alone could not: a reset. Whether voters in Knox and Daviess and Greene counties treat a presidential endorsement as decisive in a down-ballot primary is the open question of this race.
The Senator Who Left on His Terms
Eric Bassler had represented SD-39 since 2014, when he defeated incumbent John Waterman in a Republican primary. He holds a bachelor's degree in Chemistry and Psychology and a master's in Economics, both from Indiana University. He worked as a financial advisor at Edward Jones Investments. During the 2025-2026 session, he chaired the Ethics Committee and served on Appropriations, Environmental Affairs, and Rules. [1]
The timeline matters here. Bassler announced retirement in July 2025. He publicly opposed redistricting on November 13, 2025, declaring: "I cannot support any mid-census redistricting plan. Four years ago, my Republican colleagues and I voted for our current state and federal legislative maps. I stand by that vote and I will not support legislation to change our congressional maps." [2] He voted against HB 1032 on December 11, 2025. [2]
Because Bassler was already leaving, Trump could not punish him with a primary challenge. The endorsement of Ellington served a different purpose: marking the seat as Trump territory regardless of what Bassler did on his way out.
The Other Two Republicans
This is a three-way Republican primary, and the other two candidates each bring their own networks.
Tanner Bouchie is a Vincennes attorney and founder of Bouchie Law LLC. His campaign focuses on coal energy, rural first responders, and local infrastructure. He supports Trump's coal agenda. [9] In a district that includes Knox County's energy economy, the platform is well-matched to the geography.
Kristi Risk is the more intriguing candidacy. She chairs the Owen County Republican Party, has a background as a congressional Chief of Staff, and currently serves as Director of Government Affairs for Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith. [10] That last detail is significant. Beckwith is the same official who conveyed Trump administration threats about withholding federal funding from Indiana over the redistricting dispute. Risk works directly for a Trump ally -- and yet Trump endorsed Ellington over her.
That choice signals something about how the endorsement operation works. Proximity to the Trump coalition does not automatically translate into a Trump endorsement. Whatever criteria drove the Ellington selection -- whether it was his specific candidacy, local party dynamics, or something else entirely -- Beckwith's chief liaison to government was passed over.
Joseph Baughman is the sole Democratic candidate. In a district Trump won by 55 points, the general election is not expected to be competitive.
The Geography
Senate District 39 covers all of Knox, Daviess, Greene, and Martin counties and parts of Sullivan and Owen counties in southwestern Indiana. It is a rural, solidly Republican district with approximately 135,806 residents. Key communities include Washington (Daviess County seat), Vincennes (Knox County seat and Indiana's oldest city), and Bloomfield (Greene County seat). Bassler ran unopposed in both 2018 and 2022. [11]
This is deep-red territory where the Republican primary on May 5 is the real election. The question is not whether a Republican wins SD-39. The question is whose Republican.
What This Race Reveals
There is an irony at the center of Jeff Ellington's candidacy that is worth sitting with. He lost his House seat because of redistricting -- Indiana's 2021 maps merged his district with another incumbent's territory, and he lost twice trying to fight his way back. Now he is the beneficiary of a different kind of redistricting politics, endorsed by the president whose redistricting push the retiring incumbent rejected.
Ellington did not cause any of this. He entered the race before the endorsement campaign materialized, running for an open seat on straightforward conservative credentials. But the Trump endorsement transformed the race's meaning. What would have been a routine open-seat primary in southwestern Indiana became the sixth front in a presidential intervention into state legislative politics.
For voters in SD-39, the practical choice is among three conservatives with different patronage networks: Ellington carries the Trump brand and the Oval Office visit. Risk carries the Beckwith connection and statehouse experience. Bouchie carries a law practice and a coal-energy platform. All three would vote conservatively in the Indiana Senate.
What distinguishes the race is not ideology but alignment -- and whether a presidential endorsement, deployed in a state senate race where there is no incumbent to unseat, functions as decisive kingmaking or merely as one more data point in a rural primary where most voters know the candidates personally. SD-39 is where the redistricting revenge campaign reveals what it becomes when there is no one left to punish: a patronage operation, selecting allies for seats where dissent used to live.