Todd Young’s campaign is at risk. | AP Photo Congress Top GOP Senate candidate in danger of missing ballot Todd Young, a three-term Republican House member from Indiana, may not have gathered enough voter signatures to run for Senate.

GOP Rep. Todd Young may not have submitted enough valid petition signatures to qualify for Indiana’s Republican Senate primary, putting his rising political career in jeopardy and changing the outlook for an open Senate seat that Republicans expected to hold easily.

To win spots on the primary ballot in Indiana, Senate candidates must get at least 500 registered voters in each congressional district to sign nominating petitions. But multiple hand counts of Young’s petitions conducted by the Indiana Democratic Party found just 498 valid signatures from Indiana’s 1st District, and the party now plans to challenge Young’s eligibility for the ballot.


“The IDP is formally challenging Young’s petitions because it is imperative that every candidate seeking office in Indiana is determined to be eligible — and it appears Todd Young may not be eligible,” Indiana Democratic Party Chairman John Zody said in a statement.

The state Democratic Party also plans to challenge an additional 88 Young petitions from the 1st District, for reasons ranging from unverifiable voter registration records to missing ZIP codes or other information on the petitions.

Young's campaign manager, Trevor Foughty, dismissed the challenges.

"Todd Young has clearly met the requirements to be listed on the ballot," Foughty said. "Our campaign submitted more than enough ballot petition signatures in each congressional district. Further, clerks in all 92 counties verified the validity of those signatures. At this point, any attempt to disenfranchise voters would be unfortunate, underhanded, and ultimately unsuccessful."

A separate report published by the Indiana Election Division showed Young perilously close to the qualification line, listing 501 signatures in the heavily Democratic 1st District. But two members of the division cautioned that their signature report is “not gospel” because of differences in the ways individual counties process and probe candidate petitions.

Either way, Young’s campaign is at risk. The three-term congressman had already raised nearly $3 million for his Senate campaign in 2015 and made powerful allies in Washington, where he had a 94 percent lifetime voting score from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

If Young fails to make the ballot, fellow Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman — a conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus — would win the GOP Senate primary by default, as the only remaining candidate. Republican Sen. Dan Coats announced last year that he would not run for reelection.

Stutzman’s campaign had a rough 2015, turning over much of its senior leadership and raising significantly less money than Young. Stutzman did get major endorsements, though, from the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, two groups that have a history of backing conservative candidates in Indiana.

Though Indiana leans Republican, Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly won the state in 2012 after voters rejected conservative state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who stumbled on the subject of rape and abortion late in the campaign. Many of the same groups that back Stutzman this year pushed Mourdock’s successful primary campaign against veteran GOP Sen. Richard Lugar in 2012, including the Club for Growth. (SCF endorsed Mourdock later.)

Former Rep. Baron Hill is the lone Democrat running in 2016, but his campaign has struggled to raise money.

Indiana’s elections authority has a meeting already scheduled for Feb. 19 to resolve ballot-access challenges. While Democrats will identify specific petitions they want to throw out, Young’s campaign will get the opportunity to try and rehabilitate petitions that have already been discarded, according to Angela Nussmeyer, the Democratic co-director of the state Election Commission.

Just this week, it seemed like Young’s path to the Senate had gotten easier: Former state GOP Chairman Eric Holcomb dropped out of the race on Monday, leaving Young as the lone establishment-oriented candidate facing Stutzman.

Visit the Indiana Senate race page to track more information about the election. The Campaign Pro Race Dashboard tracks the candidates and consulting firms engaged in the top House, Senate, and gubernatorial races of 2016.

