Bake the Cake
Elections aren’t lost in November—they’re decided long before it.
Indiana’s political failures aren’t about candidates. They’re about turnout, money, and who shows up before November. In 2026, Democrats and Republicans face different tasks—but the same responsibility: shape your party where power actually lives.
In 2022, Indiana’s Secretary of State race seemed competitive for a time. Republicans were split, Democrats saw an opening, and there was genuine energy around the candidates and their differences. It was also the year election denialism moved squarely onto the ballot, with candidates like Diego Morales running for the office responsible for overseeing Indiana’s elections.
I was the Democratic nominee that year.
Early in the campaign, during an initial strategy conversation, someone on my team made an observation that cut through everything else. We were dealing with a Democratic operative who was heavy on messaging and light on mechanics. The comment was blunt:
They’re icing a cake that isn’t there.
At the time, I took it as criticism of a consultant. Looking back, it was a warning about something much bigger.
By September of 2022, near the end of the campaign, that warning came into focus. Riding in a car on yet another long drive to Lake County, I asked a simple but serious question:
“Marion County is going to tank this race, isn’t it?”
My campaign manager quietly said yes.
Most people don’t realize how much statewide races in Indiana depend on the basics—field operations, voter contact, precinct organization, and turnout. When those systems are weak, even strong candidates and good messaging can’t make up the difference.
That’s when the metaphor finally clicked.
For years, Indiana Democrats have worked to perfect the icing—candidates, stories, emotional investment—without doing enough to bake the cake itself. The cake is turnout. It’s infrastructure. It’s money invested beyond a single cycle. And without it, everything else quietly falls apart.
Crossover Votes Are Real — and Still Not Enough
People often overlook that crossover voting really does happen in Indiana.
We saw it in 2022. Some Republicans—particularly suburban, college-educated voters who value institutions—crossed over in the Secretary of State race. Some did it quietly. Some reluctantly. But they did it.
We saw it again in 2024. Opposition to figures like Mike Braun and Todd Rokita pushed a noticeable number of voters away from straight-ticket Republican voting. These weren’t ideological conversions. They were situational choices—responses to chaos, extremism, or perceived incompetence.
That matters.
It matters because Indiana still has persuadable voters. There is a real—and growing—group of Republicans and independents willing to cross party lines when they believe institutions, competence, or democratic norms are at risk. That group is likely to grow again in 2026.
But here is the hard truth: crossover votes are additive, not foundational.
They can narrow margins. They can outperform expectations. They can even flip outcomes at the edges. But they cannot replace turnout. And they cannot overcome systemic failure in the counties that are supposed to anchor statewide Democratic performance.
Margins matter. But math matters more.
You can win more crossover voters and still lose badly if your base does not turn out. You can overperform in the suburbs and still come up short if urban turnout drops. It’s easy to convince yourself there’s momentum while the raw vote totals tell a different story.
That is what happened in 2022. And again in 2024.
Which brings this back to Marion County.
If turnout in Marion County continues to hover in the high-30s to mid-50s range—depending on the cycle—no amount of crossover voting will save a statewide Democrat. Not when the Secretary of State race sits at the top of the ticket, and not when most of the county’s congressional seat is effectively settled—when the incumbent is seeking what would be his tenth straight term in Congress. In that environment, there is little natural incentive for casual or disengaged voters to turn out. Turnout has to be built.
You can ice the cake with crossover voters.
But if you never baked it—if you never invested in precinct organization, voter education, and consistent engagement—there is nothing underneath to hold it together.
Marion County Turnout — What the Numbers Tell Us
Turnout failures aren’t theoretical. They show up plainly in the numbers.
In 2022, Marion County posted just 34% voter turnout—among the lowest of Indiana’s large counties in a midterm election. That mattered because races like Secretary of State rise or fall on organized turnout. When the infrastructure isn’t there, these contests don’t collapse spectacularly. They simply come up short.
And this wasn’t an anomaly.
In 2024—a presidential and gubernatorial election year, when turnout should be strongest—Marion County still lagged. Participation hovered in the mid-50 percent range, several points below the statewide average. In a county of this size, that shortfall translates into tens of thousands of missing votes.
This isn’t a one-time issue. It’s a pattern.
Marion County underperforms in midterms, when turnout work matters most. It also underperforms in presidential years, when turnout should be easier. That decline has continued across cycles, regardless of candidate, national attention, or political climate.
This isn’t about enthusiasm. It isn’t about ideology. It’s about whether voters are being contacted, informed, and mobilized consistently over time.
You cannot fix a turnout problem with persuasion alone. When the county expected to anchor statewide Democratic performance continues to fall short—even in high-salience elections—the math simply does not work.
This is the structural failure underneath the icing.
Money, Party Capacity, and Why This Keeps Repeating
Turnout problems do not exist in isolation. They are tied directly to money—and to how parties choose to use it.
Right now, the Marion County Democratic Party has essentially no money. What was once a county organization capable of sustained field operations now struggles to fund even the basics. At the state level, the Indiana Democratic Party is on track to finish the year in the red.
That financial reality has consequences.
Over time, Indiana Democrats have developed a culture in which candidates protect and hoard their own resources rather than invest in long-term party capacity. Money flows into individual races and late-cycle spending—but not into the infrastructure that makes turnout reliable from one election to the next.
County parties are hollowed out. Field programs become episodic. Institutional knowledge disappears. And when it’s time to mobilize voters, there is very little left to mobilize them with.
This creates a predictable loop.
Weak infrastructure leads to weak turnout. Weak turnout reinforces candidate-driven strategies. Candidate-driven strategies further starve the party. Each cycle begins from a weaker position than the last.
Similar structural ailments exist on the Republican side. Voters may cross over in general elections, but very few engage where it matters most—inside the delegate and convention process. As a result, the most motivated factions dominate internal outcomes.
Until money is treated as an investment in shared capacity—and until more people participate before November—the structure will not change.
This is the cost of never baking the cake.
Two Parties, Two Tasks — One Democratic Imperative
If you want different outcomes, the work starts earlier than most people realize—and it looks different depending on the party.
For Democrats, 2026 is about fundamentals. Democrats will elect both precinct committee members and state convention delegates. Precinct committee members serve four-year terms and help run county parties between elections. This is where turnout, voter contact, and long-term capacity are built. Delegates, elected for a single cycle, attend the summer convention and vote on statewide nominees.
Democrats who want better results cannot skip this step.
For Republicans, the task is different—but no less urgent. Republicans do not elect precinct committee members in 2026. What is on the ballot are state convention delegate seats. That is the point of leverage. If you want to stabilize your party—if you want to push back against unserious candidates or internal chaos—the only place to do that is at convention.
These efforts are not in conflict.
A healthy democracy depends on two parties operating at their best—with strong internal checks, engaged members, and real accountability.
In Indiana, this work begins the same way for both parties: by filing a CAN-37 during the January–February filing window and running for election inside your party.
You don’t get to keep criticizing the icing if no one is willing to bake the cake.
Amen, sister. We should do a brain dump of the encyclopedia of this stuff in my head going back to 2006 sometime.
Very good, Destiny. I am glad you are doing this writing and staying in the arena. Your points about crossover voting (mostly I suspect stealthy done in the secrecy of the voting booth to avoid shunning by one's family and contacts) should be compared to the possibility of cultivating new voters from the very large pool of non-voters. Figure out why half of eligible voters nationwide, or more, dislike both parties so much that they see nothing for themselves in participating. The words fairness and opportunity (aka The American Dream) are a place to start analyzing the mechanics of government, employment and politics.