Mike Wolanin | The Republic State Rep. District 59 Ryan Lauer, center, talks with Rep. Greg Pence, right, and Greg Simo during the Bartholomew County Republican Party election results watch party at Hotel Indigo in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
Incumbent Rep. Ryan Lauer, R-Columbus, won a fourth term representing Indiana House District 59 on Tuesday, defeating Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair Ross Thomas in a rematch of the 2022 election.
Lauer, 47, received 63.84% of the vote, while Thomas, 54, received 36.16%, according to the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office. In 2022, Lauer defeated Thomas with 61.3% of the vote.
District 59 covers the western part of Bartholomew County, including the city of Columbus.
“I want to thank the people,” Lauer said following his victory. “It’s so humbling. …I want to thank every voter for taking the time and going to the polls and really proud of our community tonight. I’m really humbled and thankful for the voters’ confidence, and I’m looking forward to working very hard to support our community and to help improve our state.”
Lauer campaigned on passing legislation on supporting and passing legislation on child welfare, addressing what he described as “rapid increases in property taxes” and defending free speech and Second Amendment rights.
Thomas, for his part, said he was disappointed by the results and said straight-ticket Republican votes were hard to overcome. A total of 9,051 Bartholomew County voters voted straight-ticket Republican, or about 34% of all votes cast in the District 59 race.
“I don’t think anybody on our side was expecting a surprise victory,” Thomas said following his defeat. “We know that this is still a rural community. We know it is still a very much Trump-centric community, as the results show. But I have to say we’re disappointed that we didn’t make more inroads with some folks.”
“I’m always going to be puzzled that the people who are complaining the loudest about how bad their property taxes are or how bad the schools are or whatever their issue, but yet they vote straight-ticket Republican for the people who have been in absolute charge for 20 years,” Thomas said.
The local Democratic Party chair’s campaign centered around, among other issues, restoring reproductive rights following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 — which led to a near-total abortion ban in Indiana — and used ads on Facebook seeking to cast Lauer’s views on abortion as extreme.
Lauer voted in favor of the ban and was supportive of more restrictive measures that were ultimately not included in the law, including forcing women and girls who become pregnant due to rape or incest to carry their pregnancies to term.
Thomas also said one of his priorities if elected would have been “fixing public education” by, among other things, raising teacher pay and keeping “politicians from meddling with the curriculum.”
