Why Beau Bayh Generates Real Energy While Destiny Wells Remains a Perennial Has-Been With Low Energy

Beau Bayh has real energy unlike Perennial Candidate Destiny Wells who runs for everything under the sun.

Opinion Article written by Hoosier Enquirer Staff

August 22nd, 2026: Indianapolis, Indiana

Hoosiers know a winner when they see one, and they know a loser when the same name keeps showing up on the ballot with the same result. That is the simple, common-sense reason there is genuine energy around Beau Bayh and almost none left for Destiny Wells.

Destiny Wells has become the definition of a perennial candidate in Indiana Democratic politics. She ran for Secretary of State in 2022 and lost. She ran for Attorney General in 2024 and lost. She chased the state party chairmanship and lost. Then she launched a late, noisy primary challenge against longtime Congressman André Carson and lost again. At some point the pattern stops looking like persistence and starts looking like refusal to read the room. Fellow Democrats have not been shy about it either—calling her out in public as divisive and a “narcissistic demagogue who reeks of failure.” When your own side says that out loud, the problem is not messaging. It is the candidate.

She campaigns as if Indiana owes her the next office simply because she keeps filing paperwork. That is not how Hoosiers work. We respect service, results, and people who can actually talk to the farmers, factory workers, and parents who still believe biological reality matters. Wells has never convinced a majority of those voters she understands them. Her track record shows it.

Now look at Beau Bayh. A seventh-generation Hoosier, Marine Corps infantry officer who rose to captain, Harvard-educated but not the soft kind that never left the classroom. He served, came home, and is now running for Secretary of State as a Democrat who actually sounds like he has spent time around normal people. He supports Indiana’s ban on men in women’s sports—plainly, without the usual progressive hedging. “I think we should not have men playing women’s sports, and our state has already passed a law outlawing this,” he said. That is not radical. That is basic fairness and the protection of Title IX that his own grandfather helped write.

A Marine who understands the Constitution and the culture of this state is going to be more relatable to Hoosiers than another progressive who treats every loss as proof the voters just need better lecturing. Bayh talks about cleaning up corruption in the Secretary of State’s office, secure elections, and serving the public instead of the party or himself. That is the language of competence. In a red state that has not handed Democrats a statewide office in a long time, voters notice when a Democrat refuses to run as a pure culture-war activist.

Destiny Wells represents the latter—another loss waiting to happen, still convinced the problem is everyone else. Beau Bayh, for all the Bayh name baggage, at least looks like he has figured out that Indiana is not a coastal faculty lounge. He is moderate where it counts for Hoosiers: biology is real, the Second Amendment is not a punchline, and public service is supposed to mean something.

That is why the energy is with Bayh and not with Wells. One candidate keeps showing up ready to lose the same way. The other at least understands that Hoosiers still prefer results and common sense over another lecture from a serial also-ran. Indiana does not reward failure forever. It rewards people who sound like they belong here.