Senate District 27 sits in east-central Indiana, covering Wayne, Henry, and Union counties and a portion of Franklin County. The district's anchor is Richmond, the Wayne County seat, a city of roughly 35,000 that borders Ohio. This is rural and small-city territory with a manufacturing heritage -- auto parts, casket-making, lawn mowers -- that has thinned over decades but still defines the region's economic identity.
The district is deep red. Jeff Raatz has won his last two general elections with approximately 70% and 71% of the vote, respectively. No Democrat has been competitive here in recent memory.
Raatz has represented SD-27 since 2014. He is a U.S. Army veteran who settled in Richmond, holds degrees from Baker College, Miami University, and Indiana University, and chairs the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development. He briefly left state politics to aim higher -- in 2024, he ran for Indiana's 6th Congressional District and finished with approximately 13% of the vote.
Raatz voted YES on HB 1032, the Trump-backed mid-cycle redistricting bill. He published a column in his newsletter explaining his position: "The rules of engagement have changed on redistricting. Some states have gerrymandered so drastically that it has hampered our overall ability as a state to have appropriate influence in our U.S. Congress."
That loyalty was rewarded. On March 25, 2026, Trump endorsed Raatz, calling him "an America First Patriot doing a fantastic job" and giving him a "Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election." The endorsement batch also included six challengers to incumbent Republican senators who had voted against redistricting. The pattern is clear: the endorsements reward loyalty to the redistricting push and punish dissent.
Anthony Lee Jones is described as a retail worker who filed for the Republican primary. Beyond his filing, Jones has no visible campaign infrastructure. He does not pose a competitive threat to a three-term incumbent with a Trump endorsement and institutional support.
Ronald Itnyre, a Democrat from Richmond, filed for his second run against Raatz. He lost the 2022 general election 28.8% to 71.2%. He is a senior lecturer of biology and director of the Office of Sustainability at Indiana University East who grew up on a 300-acre corn and beef farm. His candidacy is structurally important even if it is not competitive -- a Democrat running twice in a district this red represents a commitment to contesting seats that party infrastructure often writes off.
The race's significance is not in its outcome but in what it reveals about how presidential endorsements function as a sorting mechanism in state-level politics -- rewarding the compliant and, by omission, marking the defiant.