House District 28 stretches across portions of Boone, Hendricks, and Montgomery counties in west-central Indiana. This is deep-red territory. Jeff Thompson has held the seat since 1998 -- twenty-eight years and counting. In 2024, he defeated Democrat Karen Whitney with 70.55% of the vote, a 41-point margin.
Thompson is not merely an incumbent; he is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee -- the single most powerful committee in the Indiana House, which controls the state budget. His biography is unusually cohesive for a career politician: a Purdue physics graduate who spent more than thirty years teaching chemistry, physics, and math at Danville Community High School before reshaping Indiana's school funding formula from the legislature.
Sheila Zielinski is running for public office for the first time, bringing a healthcare-centered career to a district represented by a career educator. A Pittsboro resident with 42 years at IU Health, her professional honors include the Indianapolis Star Salute to Nurses Inspiration Award and the IU Department of Medicine Outstanding Advance Practice Provider Award. Since retiring, she has continued practicing at the Gennesaret Free Clinic, which provides care to low-income families. Her implicit argument is experiential rather than ideological: she is offering healthcare expertise as a contrast to Thompson's education-and-budget expertise, without mounting an explicitly ideological challenge from the right.
Zielinski's path to an upset would require significant dissatisfaction with Thompson within the district's Republican electorate -- not dissatisfaction with his ideology, necessarily, but perhaps with his long tenure, his Statehouse focus, or his perceived distance from constituent concerns. Her healthcare background is a genuine credential, but she enters the race without a clear ideological wedge or a visible institutional base of support beyond her personal network.