Former city councilman Jefferson Shreve is running as a Republican to challenge Mayor Hogsett, who already had to fight off a spirited primary challenge from state rep Robin Shackleford.
Now, somewhat unusually for a city the size of Indy, the Dems don't have a deadlock on the mayor's office. We had a Republican mayor, Greg Ballard, as recently as 2015. This is because Indianapolis & Marion County have a "UniGov" setup: Everything you see in red on the map of Marion County below is part of Indianapolis.
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So if Shreve ran a disciplined campaign and stuck to crime and budget issues, he had a legitimate shot at the office, getting votes from the Republican base, independents, and the occasional disgruntled centrist Democrat.
The Hogsett campaign ran attack ads along the two axes where Shreve is most vulnerable: Abortion and Guns.
There's nothing a GOP candidate can say or do on the abortion front in these next election cycles; it's not gonna be a winner for the Pubbies in an urban/suburban environment like Indy. On the gun issue, Shreve's best bet was to just keep quiet and ignore the attack ads. He wasn't going to pick up any votes by leaning in on RKBA, but he wouldn't lose any by just shutting up.
Instead, he opened fire on his own foot with a high-capacity clipazine...
That's right, the GOP candidate decides to come out in support of Scary Looking Gun Bans and a repeal of permitless carry (neither of which stand a snowball's chance in hell in Indiana, BTW).
WTF was he thinking? It's not like this is going to get him any votes from disaffected Dems that he wouldn't have been getting already, but it's going to evaporate his support among the GOP base and libertarian-leaning independents.
This has, in my opinion, effectively torpedoed his campaign. Beforehand, I'd have said it was a coin toss, but now Hogsett's going to mop the floor with him.
