Indiana's 14-year era of one-party supermajority control in the state House is over — and the Republican who led last year's congressional redistricting push will hold the gavel in the smaller majority that replaces it. A drastically reduced Republican House majority elected Rep. Ben Smaltz of Auburn as speaker-elect on Wednesday, November 4, a day after House Speaker Todd Huston of Fishers lost his reelection bid and Democrats picked up an apparent 16 seats in the chamber, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
The result ends the two-thirds House supermajority Republicans had held since the 2012 elections — the margin that let them conduct business and pass bills even when Democrats were absent — and reduces what was a 70-30 Republican margin to an expected 54-46 from January. Smaltz emerged from a three-and-a-half-hour private meeting of House Republicans indicating they would still set the legislative agenda, according to the Chronicle's reporting from the Statehouse.
The redistricting champion takes the gavel
Smaltz is not a compromise figure chosen to calm a shaken caucus — he is the lawmaker who led the Indiana congressional redistricting push last year and introduced the Trump-backed redistricting bill in the House. That bill was ultimately defeated in the state Senate 19-31, and several caucus members who helped block it lost their primaries, in a fight that split Indiana Republicans long before Tuesday's general-election losses finished the job.
He was also a top lieutenant to the man he replaces: Smaltz chaired the powerful House Rules Committee for the past four years under Huston. He was first elected to the House in 2012 — meaning he has never served a single session in a chamber where Republicans lacked a supermajority — and he now takes over a 54-seat majority in which defections of just a handful of members can stall a bill. Huston himself was beaten in Fishers by Democrat Lauren Cole, one of the 16 Republican losses that remade the chamber.
The full leadership teams, in both chambers
Alongside Smaltz, Rep. Matt Lehman of Berne will continue as House majority leader, and Rep. Jake Teshka of North Liberty was picked as majority caucus chair, replacing Rep. Greg Steuerwald of Avon after Steuerwald also lost his reelection bid. House Democrats, who chose their team on Wednesday as well, reelected their leadership: Leader Phil GiaQuinta of Fort Wayne, Floor Leader Cherrish Pryor of Indianapolis and Caucus Chair Carey Hamilton of Indianapolis.
The Senate changed hands at the top too. Senate Republicans voted to elect Sen. Chris Garten as the chamber's next president pro tempore — he succeeds Rod Bray later this month — and made Sen. Tyler Johnson of Leo the new majority caucus chairman, replacing Sen. Travis Holdman, who was defeated in the May primary. Senate Republicans keep their own supermajority, 35-15, so the Senate remains firmly in Republican hands even as the House majority narrows.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, set the leadership of an expanded caucus on Friday. They flipped five districts while retaining their 10 seats, growing to a 15-member caucus, and reaffirmed Sen. Shelli Yoder of Bloomington as their leader, according to a Friday announcement reported by the Capital Chronicle; Sen. La Keisha Jackson of Indianapolis joins the leadership as caucus chair. The expanded Democratic caucus says it intends to focus on utility, grocery and housing costs, plus funding for public schools and childcare.
The House speaker presides over floor sessions, appoints committee chairs and leads the majority party's legislative agenda. At 70-30, a speaker could lose 15 members of his own party and still pass a bill. At 54-46, Smaltz can lose only a few — which gives the enlarged Democratic minority, and dissenting Republicans, real bargaining power for the first time since 2012.
For Indiana's growing South Asian and Punjabi communities — and for the trucking and logistics workforce centred on Indianapolis, one of America's biggest freight crossroads — the new arithmetic matters in practical ways: the cost-of-living bills Senate Democrats say they will push, and any transport, housing or small-business measures in the 2027 session, will now need votes from both parties in the House instead of passing on Republican numbers alone.
What happens next is procedural but fixed: Smaltz is poised to be formally elected speaker during the Legislature's Organization Day on November 17, when new lawmakers are sworn in, and Garten's succession as Senate president pro tem takes effect later this month. The next legislative session then begins in early January — the first since 2012 in which Indiana's House will operate without a supermajority.