Candidates vying for Indiana Secretary of State are facing scrutiny over their connections to the state as the expensive race for the office, which oversees state elections, tops this fall’s ballot. Democratic candidate Beau Bayh, Republican nominee Max Engling, and Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard have all seen their Indiana ties questioned.
Beau Bayh, 30, whose birth along with his twin brother in 1995 was headline news as the first children born to a current governor and first lady in more than a century, has been challenged by Republicans regarding his years of voting in Indiana while living elsewhere. Bayh grew up in the Washington, D.C., area after his father became a U.S. senator. He did not move full-time to Indiana until 2024, following service as a Marine Corps officer and graduation from Harvard Law School. Since then, he has served a stint as a law clerk for federal appeals court Judge David Hamilton in Bloomington and now works for the five-attorney law firm MacGill PC, owning a condominium near downtown Indianapolis.
Bayh promotes himself as a seventh-generation Hoosier in TV advertisements and quickly counters doubts about his links to the state. In a recent interview with the Capital Chronicle, he stated, "I went every year to the State Fair growing up. I went to Colts training camp every summer." Bayh added that he has been voting in Indiana since he was 18, paying income taxes for the past eight years, and took his oath of office for the United States Marine Corps at the War Memorial downtown. He emphasized that many of his adult decisions have been focused on returning to Indiana to involve himself in the community. Military documents provided by his campaign list his father’s Indianapolis condominium as his "home of record," though his father’s Washington house was also listed as a mailing address. Bayh began voting in Indiana at age 18 with the 2014 Democratic primary, continuing to do so throughout his time at Harvard and with the Marines, often by mail but sometimes early in person. Republican TV ads have criticized Bayh's campaign for the office overseeing elections after he voted 15 times "in a state he wasn’t even living in."
Republican nominee Max Engling, 39, who is on leave from a staff position with U.S. Jim Banks, touts his "Hoosier roots" in campaign advertising. Engling grew up near Congerville in rural central Illinois and moved with his parents and seven siblings to Cicero in Hamilton County in 2006 when he was 19. He states he worked various jobs to pay his way through college, graduating from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in 2010. Inspired by the tea party movement, Engling moved to Washington, D.C., in 2011 for a Republican U.S. House intern position. He spent a dozen years working on Capitol Hill, advancing to a top staff position under then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. During this time, he and his wife, Kelcey, whom he married at a Noblesville church in 2011, lived in northern Virginia, where their four children were born. Fairfax County, Virginia, records show Engling canceled his voter registration there in September 2023. The Englings moved to the Indianapolis suburb of Fishers, and Max announced his candidacy for central Indiana’s 5th Congressional District seat in October 2023. He finished third in the GOP primary after U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz changed her mind about not seeking re-election.
Engling told the Capital Chronicle that while Bayh could not control growing up in Washington, his own Indiana life experience is more extensive. He stated, "I lived here, worked here, went to school here, met my wife here, married my wife here." Engling added that as an adult, he made the decision to serve in Washington to advance conservative priorities and then returned home to continue serving the people of Indiana. Voting records indicate Engling cast Indiana ballots from 2007, when he was 20, through November 2010. He resumed Indiana voting with the November 2023 municipal elections and is now registered to vote from a rural Cicero home that property records show he and his wife bought in May 2025, two months after they completed the sale of their Falls Church, Virginia, house they had owned since 2018.
Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard, 71, has also faced residency criticism. This stems from his statement in 2021 that he decided to retire to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Ballard, who grew up in Indianapolis, returned in 2001 after 23 years in the Marines and served as the Republican mayor of Indianapolis from 2008-2015. He told the Capital Chronicle that he and his wife had owned places in Myrtle Beach since soon after his Marine Corps service during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Regarding the South Carolina move, Ballard explained, "Within six months, we knew we were coming back." He clarified that they stayed down there for two years for a tax break tied to a principal residence. Ballard and his wife now own a home near the Boone County community of Whitestown, which they bought in 2023.
Libertarian candidate Lauri Shillings grew up near Lafayette and has lived in the state the majority of her life.
Campaign fights over Indiana connections have had mixed results in the past. Evan Bayh, Beau Bayh's father, faced a challenge to his eligibility to run for governor in 1988 due to time spent in Washington, related to the state Constitution’s five-year residency requirement, though this requirement does not apply to secretary of state candidates. The Indiana Supreme Court unanimously sided with the elder Bayh, who subsequently won two terms as governor. More recently, Sen. Richard Lugar lost the 2012 Republican primary following attacks that included questions about his voter registration at an Indianapolis home. The issue of residency could linger as a factor in the upcoming expensive state election.
