Rep. Todd Rokita appears endlessly willing to take on unpopular — but important — fights. | Darron Cummings/AP Photo Campaigns The GOP’s nastiest primary Todd Rokita and Luke Messer have been trying to outdo one another in Indiana politics since they graduated from the same small college decades ago.

The slugfest underway between Republican Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita in Indiana isn’t just for the right to compete for possibly the GOP’s best opportunity to seize a Senate seat from Democrats in next year’s midterms.

It’s a chance to finally settle the score between two ambitious pols who’ve been vying to outdo one another politically since they graduated from the same small college more than 25 years ago.


Yes, this one is personal.

Their campaign didn’t officially get underway until last week, but Messer, 48, has already accused Rokita of attacking his wife and “spreading lies” about his record. Rokita, 47, has questioned his rival’s mental health, calling Messer “unhinged” and a “ticking time bomb.”

With 10 Democratic senators from states that President Donald Trump carried up for reelection in 2018, the scale of opportunity for Republican gains has already spawned several no-holds-barred primaries. But few states are as ripe for a Republican challenge as Indiana — where Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly is unusually vulnerable, running in a state Trump carried by 19 points — and no primary has gotten so nasty, so quickly.

More than a dozen professional colleagues and personal acquaintances painted the hostility between Rokita and Messer as the product of three decades of pent-up rivalry. The two men, who both declined interview requests, have climbed Indiana’s political ladder alongside each other for years and even attended the same small, all-male Wabash College together in the early 1990s — a school whose unofficial motto, a former dean noted with a touch of irony, is “competition without malice.”

“I’ve been watching the race between Todd and Luke,” said David Hadley, the former dean of students at Wabash College, “and wondering if that’s going to carry through or not.”

Over the years, Messer has enjoyed the full embrace of Indiana’s political elite, which appointed him to a seat in the state Legislature and embraced him as part of its leadership. That same elite has always kept Rokita at bay.

Rokita became one of the nation’s youngest statewide elected officials when he was elected Indiana’s secretary of state at age 31. But he made enemies among Republicans in the state Legislature, which years later redrew Rokita’s congressional district in a way that put his home on the wrong side of the new boundary. Many of Indiana’s most prominent political leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence’s brother Greg, have lined up behind Messer. And when Rokita put his name forward for governor last year when Pence became Trump’s vice presidential nominee, the state Republican central committee instead went with now-Gov. Eric Holcomb, a former party chairman.

“Todd has a sense that ‘Messer gets all the breaks and I don’t,’” said one GOP operative. “Now they’re placed in a zero-sum game, and their underlying feelings come out.”

Those feelings reached a boiling point in May and have not calmed since. Messer had been considering a challenge to Donnelly since at least last summer, according to allies, and at first, Rokita waited quietly in the wings. But early this year, Rokita started raising money and meeting with Republican leaders in Washington. Then, a May Associated Press story revealed that Messer’s wife, a lawyer, was being paid a $240,000-a-year consulting fee from an Indianapolis suburb.

The attack struck a particular nerve with Messer, who thought it was prompted by Rokita, according to two people familiar with his thinking. And he didn’t hold back.

"Frankly, I've known Todd a long time and very little surprises me," Messer told a local TV station. "But I would say it's not typical that someone starts a campaign by coming after someone's spouse.”

Rokita kept needling Messer in public, about that story and for relocating his family to Virginia. Messer distributed a lengthy email accusing Rokita of “spreading lies and half-truths,” which Rokita’s campaign responded to by calling Messer “unhinged” and a “ticking time bomb.” Soon, as both candidates lashed out at each other in the press, a dozen edits appeared on Messer’s Wikipedia page echoing one of Rokita’s main lines of attack on Messer: his work as a lobbyist.

They have not always clashed, though their careers have been entwined from their earliest days. The affable Messer was the starting middle linebacker and captain of the football team at clubby Wabash, which has produced an unusual number of Indiana politicians for its size, while the hard-charging Rokita worked at the student newspaper.

When the secretary of state race came up in 2002 and Rokita decided to run, Messer, who had made a failed bid for Congress and then became the executive director of the Indiana GOP, passed on running himself and instead worked to raise money, make ads and bring in staff to elevate the relatively unknown Rokita. Bob Grand, a longtime Indiana lobbyist who is now supporting Messer, described Messer as a “tireless advocate” for getting Rokita elected.

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But many of the men who helped Rokita defeat a slew of other prominent Republicans in the primary have since abandoned him and are backing Messer for Senate, including his campaign manager Tom John and Grand. Rokita has gone on to earn a reputation as an exacting boss, prone to calling staff late at night.

“Todd has been more of a squeaky wheel than Luke,” said Dan Dumezich, chairman of Rokita’s finance committee. “Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and sometimes the squeaky wheel just irritates people.”

Rokita and Messer declined to comment for this story.

Rokita ran particularly afoul of the state Legislature — where Messer had quickly risen up the ranks during a stint several years earlier — in 2009, as lawmakers began preparing for the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. Then in his second term as secretary of state, Rokita proposed making it a felony for lawmakers to consider politics when drawing political boundaries. He toured the state promoting his idea and drew up sample maps with new boundaries.

The Legislature bristled at Rokita’s suggestion, which would have given his office new power and disrupted lawmakers’ safe seats. The state Senate president — a fellow Republican — said Rokita had “crossed the line.”

Two years later, lawmakers gave Rokita his due: The Legislature drew Rokita, who by then was serving his first term in Congress, out of his district. His home sat just 500 yards from the line — a slight that lawmakers called coincidental and Rokita publicly labeled as “comeuppance.” (Rokita would later move into his new district.)

Rep. Luke Messer has been quick to build coalitions and quickly rose to leadership positions in both the state House and in Congress. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

Messer had a very different experience in the Legislature: He was appointed to a state House seat in May 2003, and by 2005 was serving in the chamber’s leadership. After a Time magazine story spotlighted Indiana as a center of the high school dropout crisis, Messer embraced school reform and found support from Gov. Mitch Daniels, as well as Indiana’s elite donors.

Rokita eyed running for Senate in 2010, but opted instead to run for the House. He arrived on Capitol Hill in 2011 and within months found himself at the center of a national clash after he joined other newly elected conservatives in refusing to vote to raise the debt ceiling, enraging House leaders. Messer ran for Congress in 2010 unsuccessfully, but succeeded two years later on his third try. The Wabash grads then found themselves rubbing elbows — and at times, throwing them — on Capitol Hill.

Messer again rose up the ranks fast: Within two years he was elected as chair of the House Republican Policy Committee. And he again embraced education by leading a school choice caucus, hosting rallies attended by John Boehner and Eric Cantor that featured Messer as the smiling emcee.

While Rokita appears endlessly willing to take on unpopular — but important — fights, Messer has been quick to build coalitions and quickly rose to leadership positions in both the state House and in Congress.

But Messer’s skill at listening to people and building coalitions can have downsides as well, a GOP strategist warned. “Luke’s personality is to try to placate both sides. You may not ultimately satisfy anybody,” he said.

And Rokita, who led an education subcommittee, jockeyed with Messer for prominence on their key issue. In 2015, he was working diligently on a major education bill when Messer nearly unraveled a year’s work. Messer made a stand in favor of adopting school vouchers, a controversial issue that jeopardized the bill; Rokita fumed to colleagues until Messer backed down.

Today, both men are fuming in public as they launch their campaigns. Both say they’re focused on running campaigns that can eventually defeat Donnelly — but they frequently fall back into a now-familiar habit, nipping at each other instead of their Democratic foe.

But there’s also an upshot for people like Grand, the Indiana lobbyist, who happens to share an alma mater with the two Indiana congressmen.

“Either way,” Grand said, “Wabash College wins.”