Spartz's Seat Drops Out of Cook's 'Solid' Column as GOP Ad Money Fails to Stop an 18-Race Slide

Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., in her official portrait for the 117th Congress. The Cook Political Report moved her 5th District race toward Democrats on Oct. 9. Photo: U.S. House of Representatives official portrait, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Victoria Spartz has spent six years making her own party's leaders nervous. As of Friday, the people who handicap House races are nervous on her behalf.

The Cook Political Report moved 18 House races toward Democrats on Oct. 9, and Indiana's 5th District was one of them, the Hill reported. The district runs from the Hamilton County suburbs up through Anderson, Muncie, Marion and Kokomo. Cook had rated it Solid Republican all cycle, Ballotpedia's ratings table shows. Republicans still hold the edge after Friday's update, Axios reported, but the seat is out of the category Cook keeps for races it doesn't consider competitive.

Four weeks out, and the ads aren't landing

Cook's House editor, Erin Covey, laid the shift at the feet of a strategy that isn't paying off. “In the final weeks of the election, Republicans have hoped that a massive ad campaign effort could dent Democratic candidates' images and shore up Republicans struggling to free themselves of the anchor of President Donald Trump,” she wrote in Friday's analysis. “With less than four weeks to go, that heavy spending has yet to move the needle.”

Not one of the 18 moves helped Republicans. Five toss-ups now lean Democratic, among them races held by Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn and Pennsylvania Reps. Ryan Mackenzie and Scott Perry, according to the Washington Examiner. Four races that had leaned Republican, including the seats of Michigan's Bill Huizenga and Virginia's Rob Wittman, slid to toss-up. Cook now projects Democrats gaining nine to 19 seats, for a House of 224 to 234 Democrats, and says they would need only 20% of the toss-ups for a majority if the races already tilting their way hold.

The National Republican Congressional Committee isn't buying it. “Pundits in D.C. can keep guessing, but voters on the ground have a clear contrast between common sense and crazy,” spokesman Mike Marinella told Axios, adding that “in November, we're going to win.” Axios also pointed to a Politico poll released Friday in which roughly one in four 2024 Trump voters said their district's Republican candidate would be better off breaking with him.

Not a leadership Republican, and never has been

Whatever is happening in the 5th, it isn't a story about a party loyalist. Cook's own race page calls Spartz “probably the most unpredictable member of the House Republican conference” and notes that she won her 2024 primary with 39%. This May, Army veteran Scott A. King, who didn't raise enough money to file a federal campaign report, still took 40% of the GOP primary vote against her, Cook noted. In the 2024 general election she won with 56.6%.

Her opponent this time is Democratic state Sen. J.D. Ford, who took Senate District 29 from Republicans in 2018. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has named the 5th one of its “Districts in Play,” and Ford is in line for a share of the committee's money, WTHR reported in August. The only public head-to-head numbers come from his side: an Impact Research survey for the Ford campaign put Spartz ahead 48% to 46%, with 51% of respondents rating her unfavorably. A poll a campaign chooses to release is a poll that helps that campaign, and it should be weighed that way.

IU Indianapolis political scientist Aaron Dusso told WTHR he still expected Spartz to hold on, narrowly. “If you can't win in this election, you probably can't win in Indiana ever,” he said of Democrats' chances in the district.

Two very different pitches to the same suburbs

On paper the choice is stark, the Indiana Capital Chronicle laid out Friday. Spartz wants spending cuts to balance the federal budget, changes to legal immigration and work visas, and more transparency and competition in health care. “Our healthcare costs are unsustainable and destroying the middle class,” her campaign website says. Ford wants Medicaid funding restored and protected, rural hospitals preserved and what he calls reproductive freedom protected, along with limits on home buying by large corporations and international investors and a rule that data centers cover their own water and utility bills.

They also split on last year's redistricting push. Spartz supported the effort to redraw Indiana's map; Ford voted against it in the state Senate, which rejected the new map in December. That means the 5th is being fought on the same 2021 lines it had last time, and the two have also sparred over whether to debate and over TV ads Spartz has called inaccurate, the Capital Chronicle reported.

Early voting opened Oct. 6, and Election Day is Nov. 3. Ford is betting that suburban voters are restless enough to fire an incumbent. Spartz has already shown she can win while a big share of her own party's primary voters pick somebody else. Friday's rating change didn't settle which of those turns out to matter more. It did tell Republican leaders their ad buys haven't changed the picture yet.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.