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By Christopher Wright, Guest Contributor
Arlington, Virginia - We had previously thought that Patrick McAuley — the Republican nominee against incumbent Democrat André Carson in Indiana’s 7th Congressional District, covering the Indianapolis metropolitan area — was worth considering in the 2026 midterms. We no longer hold that view.
After negotiations, Mr. McAuley gave the GOP Action group, of which the author is a founder, certain private pledges about what he would do if elected. In late August, according to our account, he sought to revise those pledges and said he was “very firm” in the new positions. Those positions, as we understand them, include support for a pathway to citizenship and a refusal to join the House Republican Sharia-Free America Caucus.
We treat that change as a breach of the understanding we thought we had. A candidate who revises written or oral commitments when they become inconvenient raises an obvious question: what else would shift after Election Day?
We are grassroots Republican activists. We are tired of an establishment we believe too often:
• dissolves or sidelines local GOP units that move in an “America First” direction (a charge we have made about Florida);
• votes with Democrats more often than the base expects (a charge we have made about Idaho);
• frustrates grassroots initiatives (South Carolina, in our telling);
• leaves state parties weak while claiming the conservative mantle (Virginia, including the Medicaid-expansion fight);
• keeps conservative activists at arm’s length in Georgia, Tennessee, California, and elsewhere;
• and treats immigration and the role of Islamic law in American public life as secondary.
We are also tired of candidates who win with grassroots energy, and then move to the left once they are elected. Senator Marco Rubio’s 2013 work on comprehensive immigration reform is a long-standing example for this movement. Local examples, such as Congressman Larry Nordvig in Virginia, are cited the same way: first votes that disappointed the people who helped elect them.
In 2026, primary voters did remove several incumbents this group considers insufficiently conservative, or RINOs, including Congressman Dan Crenshaw in Texas, and Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas. That is public record. It does not, by itself, prove every other grievance on the list.
If a group extracts pledges in order to hold a candidate to account, it is consistent to withdraw support when those pledges change. Whether Mr. McAuley’s new positions are wise is a separate question for Indiana 7th Congressional District voters. That district is heavily Democratic; Carson has held it since 2008, and independent ratings have long treated the seat as safely Democratic. A withdrawn endorsement from one activist network will matter more as a warning to other candidates, than as a likely change in the November outcome.
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About the Author: Chris Wright is a member of the Potomac Tea Party and founder of GOP Action, which supports conservative Republican candidates around the country.
