All four candidates for Indiana secretary of state shared a stage in Fishers Tuesday, trading not attacks but biographies — a Marine officer, a corn-detasseling college student, a volunteer fire chief’s daughter and a former mayor who once broke with his own party.
The OneZone Chamber of Commerce hosted the joint appearance at the FORUM Events Center as part of its Voices of Leadership Luncheon series, with Bondry Consulting as presenting sponsor. Chamber CEO Jack Russell moderated, organizing the session around each candidate’s story, their vision for the office and their approach to leadership, and holding all four to two or three minutes per answer.
On the November ballot are Republican Max Engling, Democrat Beau Bayh, Libertarian Lauri Shillings and former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, running under the newly formed Lincoln Party. The tone stayed collegial. The sharpest disagreements were about what the office is actually for.
Greg Ballard, Lincoln Party
Ballard pointed to his two terms as Indianapolis mayor, beginning in 2008 as the Great Recession hit — infrastructure work above and below ground, streamlined city processes, the Super Bowl. What he returned to was the team he built, people he said now lead organizations and companies across Indiana. From his Marine Corps service he recalled air so thick with oil smoke he could not see 50 feet ahead; the lesson was steadiness, because when things get hard everyone looks to the leader.
His legacy, he argued, is already underway in the Lincoln Party itself. Gathering roughly 37,000 signatures to make the ballot was a deliberate and punitive barrier other states do not impose, he said, and clearing it creates a path for candidates who are neither Republican nor Democrat. Closed primaries mean taxpayers fund contests roughly 10 percent of voters take part in — and that sliver effectively settles most of the legislature. He cited figures showing 41 percent of Hoosiers identify as independent.
Ballard alone made an explicit independence pledge: he would not endorse candidates or headline fundraisers for anyone whose election he would oversee. Asked about a hard decision, he cited his 2015 opposition to the state’s religious freedom law, when conventions canceled and employers said they could not recruit from out of state. Sometimes, he said, you have to be the one who stands up.
He wants to be remembered for integrity, experience and impact.
Beau Bayh, Democrat
Bayh grounded his answer in family. His grandfather authored the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age to 18, at a time when young Americans were fighting in Vietnam without a vote on it; his father created the 21st Century Scholars program. Asked on the trail whether he is running only because they did, he said no — what shaped him was seeing their impact firsthand.
As an attorney in the federal courts he has handled election law matters and securities fraud investigations and helps business owners form companies and resolve disputes. As a Marine infantry officer he commanded units drawn from every walk of American life, and later served on a top-secret intelligence program supporting Ukraine’s defense after Russia’s invasion. His leadership lesson: decentralized command, trusting the trained person closest to the information.
His first act would be an independent audit of the office on day one. Government misuse of taxpayer money, he said, “looks a lot like an iceberg.” He also wants to raise Indiana’s voter participation, which he said ranks at or near the bottom nationally, and to end straight-ticket voting — used in only six states — arguing it puts party labels on the ballot’s first page with no names attached and reduces competition.
Bayh has visited 84 of Indiana’s 92 counties. He said he asks college students by show of hands who plans to stay after graduation and sees fewer hands each time; he wants the office’s business division to be a real partner to graduates starting companies here.
He hopes to be called honest, effective and open-minded.
Max Engling, Republican
Engling introduced himself as one of eight children, now raising four of his own — ages 10, 8, 6 and 3 — in Cicero, and framed the office as an investment in Indiana’s next 50 years rather than a stepping stone.
Asked what prepared him outside politics, he answered: hard work. He baled hay and detasseled corn, then attended Ivy Tech and IUPUI while working construction on the Community North Hospital expansion — roughly 65 hours a week alongside 15 credit hours at night. He moved to Washington knowing no one, landed a job with the Committee on House Administration, the chamber’s elections committee, and waited tables five or six nights a week for three and a half years to cover the gap. He later worked for House leadership, an Indiana seed company and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks. That record, plus filing his own small business with the secretary of state’s office, gives him the most relevant experience on the stage, he argued.
He said he does not dwell on legacy — “you take the next right step” — but named three priorities: election integrity, including clear eligibility rules and accurate voter rolls; a transparency portal so any Hoosier can report a local election problem directly rather than hunting for an email address; and business filing fraud, particularly trucking operations that dissolve an LLC after a serious crash and refile, leaving no one accountable.
Engling also noted the race has changed shape since most candidates began campaigning — “the Republican is me” — and said he is already working with statehouse partners toward a coalition-building rather than adversarial posture.
He hopes to be described as a man of faith who led with humility and boldness.
Lauri Shillings, Libertarian
There was no lightning-bolt moment, Shillings said — just 50 years of watching her father serve. Both her parents were first responders in Montgomery County; her father became a volunteer fire chief and retired only a few years ago, all of it unpaid. Watching current leaders fall short of that standard is what pushed her to run, with the goal of elections administered by someone genuinely neutral.
She owns a marketing business, was previously creative services manager for a small newspaper in Madison County, and has spent eight years in Libertarian Party leadership as Hamilton County chair and 5th District representative on the state central committee — a role that puts her in regular contact with the secretary of state’s office.
Her signature issue is that office’s website, which she said looks built in the mid-2000s and returns 404 errors when users seek help. “Your website is your window to the world,” she said. She wants a transparency template showing business ownership and financial filings — so a user could see one person holds 20 LLCs — plus campaign finance data cross-referencing donors, PACs and corporations, then extended to counties so clerks have an easier job.
Shillings paired Indiana’s biotech and pharmaceutical growth with its low national ranking on quality of life and wages that have not kept pace. After 20 years of Republican supermajorities, she said, that party has to look in the mirror.
Her leadership example came from the same building: chairing the Libertarian Party of Indiana’s 2021 state convention, upended by COVID and pivoted to a hybrid format with credentialed remote attendance and digital voting — the first Indiana party to do it, she said.
She called herself a visionary, an advocate for people without the loudest voice in the room, and resourceful — and asked the room to remember she has been working class her entire life and entered the race as service, not a stepping stone.
