Indiana’s law banning transgender youth from girls school sports has emerged as a potential wedge issue in the race for secretary of state — despite the office having no role in the topic.
Republican nominee Max Engling and his campaign jumped on comments from Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard saying he regarded the law adopted in 2022 as “unnecessary.” Engling characterizes the former Republican Indianapolis mayor’s position as out of touch with conservatives.
Ballard calls Engling’s reaction a distracting “purity test,” while Democratic candidate Beau Bayh says he supports the current law and that the dustup is over a “nonissue.”
The flap comes as the Engling and Bayh campaigns face uncertainty over what impact Ballard might have on the race as he targets independent and discontented voters for the office that’s atop this year’s Indiana general election ballot.
How it all started
Ballard was asked during a WIBC radio show this month about his remarks in 2022 supporting then-Gov. Eric Holcomb’s veto of the transgender sports ban bill.
Ballard agreed at the time with Holcomb’s stance that the Indiana High School Athletic Association was handling the topic properly.
Ballard stood by that stance during the radio interview, arguing that what he said “was, at the time, a Republican principle, less government, which is no longer a principle of the Republican Party.”
“I said, ‘sports organizations have handled this so far and they seem to be handling it,’ and there was no hue and cry around the state of Indiana,” Ballard said. “I thought that was a pretty reasonable, I would even say Republican, answer at the time.”
The Republican-dominated Legislature enacted the law by overriding Holcomb’s veto. A federal lawsuit challenging the ban was dismissed in early 2023.
Engling and Ballard tussle
Engling supporters soon highlighted Ballard’s comments on social media.
Engling’s campaign chairman, state Rep. Andrew Ireland of Indianapolis, posted to social media that “Greg Ballard refused to say boys shouldn’t compete in girls’ sports but wants your vote to start a new ‘moderate’ political party. Voters deserve to know what woke nonsense Ballard’s new Lincoln Party actually stands for.”
Engling appeared days later on the WIBC show and said, “I do not need a poll to tell me the right answer here.”
“The right answer is we have to protect our girls and women in sports, and boys should not be playing in their sports. Men should not be playing in women’s sports,” he said. “This is not a hard question. This is a commonsense question.”
Ballard retorted in the radio interview and on social media that the topic was a distraction.
“Let me be clear: boys don’t belong in girls’ sports nor in their locker rooms. That’s common sense, and it always has been,” a Ballard post said. “Both parties have turned this issue into a purity test to distract you from the fact that neither are addressing what Hoosier voters around the state tell me they care about most: elected leaders who serve the people, and not a political party.”
Bayh denounces discrimination, backs ban
Bayh, the Democratic candidate, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that he supported the state’s ban.
“I think we should not have men playing women’s sports, and our state has already passed a law outlawing this,” Bayh said in an interview. “So, in fact, it’s a nonissue in our state.”
Bayh’s late grandfather, U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, championed the 1972 Title IX federal law banning discrimination against women in college admissions and sports.
Bayh criticized Engling for wanting to “talk about culture war issues that are not impacting people in their daily lives.”
“No one should be discriminated against in our state based on who you are, there’s absolutely no room for that,” he said. “If you happen to be transgender, you should not be discriminated against in housing, voting, jobs. It’s illegal, and it can’t happen.”
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
