The governor candidate you haven't heard of: How Jamie Reitenour qualified for the ballot

Editor's note: This is part of a series of profiles on each of the six Republican candidates for governor.

Read our profiles on Mike Braun, Brad Chambers, Curtis Hill, Eric Doden and Suzanne Crouch.

"And Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and all the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, 'This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.' For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law.” – Nehemiah 8:9

Jamie Reitenour carries her well-worn Bible everywhere with her — complete with sticky notes, frayed edges and some tattered pages. As she sat at Command Coffee in Indianapolis to talk about her longshot campaign for governor, she flipped it open to point out her favorite verse these days: Nehemiah 8:9.

Reitenour had put a star next to the verse on the crinkled page, underlining the words “And Nehemiah, who was the governor.”

That verse, plus a directive from two strangers at Panera telling her to follow God’s plan for her life, is the reason Reitenour ended up joining the race for governor.

Reitenour is running in the May Republican primary against candidates who have far more name recognition than her, massive fundraising war chests and help from political insiders who, put simply, know how to get someone elected. Her campaign is more unconventional.

While candidates like former Secretary of Commerce Brad Chambers raised a whopping $8.3 million in 2023 when including a $5 million personal loan, Reitenour only raised $24,000. While Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden’s ads have filed the airwaves to remind people of his Christian values, Reitenour is relying on word of mouth campaigning among evangelical Christians who’ve met her at Bible studies and campaign worship nights.

And while Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Sen. Mike Braun and former Attorney General Curtis Hill have a collective decades-worth of political experience, Reitenour didn’t have much interest in politics until 2016. She’s still not polling well enough to make it on to most of the debate stages. Political experts and insiders don't expect her to win.

But the stay-at-home mother of five still managed to meet the high bar to qualify for the ballot in Indiana — collecting 500 signatures in each of the nine congressional districts and shocking some political observers. It’s a requirement so challenging that it almost knocked Sen. Todd Young off the ballot in 2016.

She’s tapped into the wing of the Republican party that preaches about freedom and has grown to distrust the so-called party elites in the aftermath of the COVID-19 emergency, when Gov. Eric Holcomb required mask mandates and schools to close. Though, with a crowded field of candidates, it's a group she is splitting with the more well-known Hill.

Indiana governor candidate Q&A: Jamie Reitenour on the issues

But, was Reitenour just called by God to run, or was she called to win?

“If you read the verse,” she said, “it says, ‘Nehemiah was the governor.’”

'It's about God'

It's evangelicals who are driving Reitenour’s underdog campaign.

Reitenour may be running for governor, but she seems most at ease when she’s leading worship or preaching about the Bible. On Good Friday she held a campaign event at Spirit of Life Church in Indianapolis with a group of primarily volunteers donning campaign t-shirts with the words “Indiana Goodness” on the fronts. If the event, which drew roughly two dozen people, was designed to bring new voters into the fold, it didn't seem to work: Most, if not everyone in the crowd, had already met Reitenour at previous events.

She sang “How Great is Our God” as she strummed her guitar on stage, eyes closed at times. She prayed and preached about the meaning of “It is finished,” some of Jesus' final words recorded in the book of Luke. Those in the pews sang along, occasionally raising their hands. And, even though the event was listed as a campaign stop on her website, Reitenour didn’t once mention she was running for governor or her vision for the state.

“I feel like the Holy Spirit is with her,” said Amanda Hummer, a behavior therapist, who traveled to the Friday night event from Columbus after previously meeting the candidate. “It’s about God. Obviously, you can tell that’s the heart of the mission.”

Reitenour, who graduated with a psychology major from Southwest Missouri State University, worked a variety of jobs from compliance manager to athletic director at a private Christian school before she became a stay-at-home mom, but the primary thread through her adult life has been volunteering at her church.

As the daughter of two military chaplains, she talks more about her walk with religion than about how she got interested in politics. She’s considered herself a Christian since she was 13 years old. The reason she moved to Indiana in 2017 after time in Missouri, New Hampshire, California, Illinois and Michigan was because her family found a new church in Indianapolis after they felt called by God to step out in faith.

“We were at a time where our family just felt like we wanted to stand in our faith in a way that we never had before,” Reitenour said. “We didn't want to be comfortable. We wanted to operate with the same kind of heart and urgency that you really see a lot of Christians operate in when they're on mission trips.”

Many of the people who have latched on to Reitenour’s campaign met her at church functions. That includes Paige Miller, a former teacher and head of the Hamilton County Mom’s for Liberty chapter. Reitenour has already named her the head of the state’s K-12 education agency, should she be elected, and called her involvement with Mom's for Liberty "icing on the cake."

The national group, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has named an extremist group, was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic to push for the end of school restrictions, but has since focused more broadly on parental rights. Locally, there's been no shortage of controversy associated with the group. The local chapter apologized last year for quoting Adolf Hitler in its newsletter in an effort to make a point about the dangers of an overreaching government.

While Miller says she would work with the legislature to ensure parental rights, Miller and Reitenour spend more of their time talking about the state's low passing rate of the third grade reading test and bringing more teachers into the policy-making fold, rather than social issues. Lawmakers passed a law this year requiring more third graders who can't read to be held back.

"We can fix this, and that's the hope, and that's what I love in Jamie," Miller said. "I love the hope she offers, and that's what I want to bring to the kids in the state of Indiana."

Fact check: What the candidates for governor got right or wrong during the debates

Qualifying for the ballot

Even collecting enough petition signatures to qualify for the ballot was a feat. Every signature has to be from a verified registered voter, and campaigns have to count on local elections offices to verify the signatures quickly enough to know whether they need to collect more before the deadline.

So how did Reitenour do it? Her team of volunteers are devoted. So much so that during the coffee shop interview, six volunteers — only one of whom is paid — showed up to listen in at nearby tables.

Miller said Reitnenour and her supporters went everywhere from churches to Walmart parking lots seeking signatures. One of the other volunteers took advantage of a homeschooling winter festival on her 22-acre farm in Johnson County to ask for support from the hundreds of homeschooling families who showed up. (Reitenour homeschools her children, too.)

When the campaign found out it was 200 signatures short in Marion County with just days left until the deadline, her volunteers didn't give up. They went back out to collect more. The campaign crossed the finish line with a total of 6,500 signatures across the state, 2,000 more than needed.

"We got the signatures," Miller said, "because she's got a group of people that will come out and do what she needs."

Perhaps more importantly than having a dedicated troop of volunteers, she’s managed to tap into the social conservative faction of Republican voters that felt forgotten during the pandemic. It's the same group of people who count personal freedoms and parental rights among their most important beliefs, having pushed back on vaccine mandates and leading to discord on library and school boards.

"There's been this this radical shift in the conservative mindset that now it's up to the conservative elite to make these decisions for all the rest of us, because of them and what they're doing — picking winners and losers," Reitenour said. "It's all good and well until you have a situation like we do in this country where you have inflation, you've got a moral crisis."

As part of that, one of her boldest ideas is to eliminate the Indiana Economic Development Corp., created under former Gov. Mitch Daniels and praised by governors since as playing a crucial role in growing the state's economy. The semi-quasi government agency, however, has been chided for its handling of the creation of the LEAP Innovation District and a lack of transparency surrounding the project.

Micah Beckwith, among the most prominent social conservative voices in the party, isn't endorsing a candidate because he is running for lieutenant governor at the Republican state convention this summer. But, he says he aligns with Reitenour's world view and philosophy.

“It's an unorthodox campaign," Beckwith said. "She's kind of running to, I would say, the unengaged, evangelical Christian voter or even the disenfranchised Republican, somebody who's just kind of fed up with the Republican doublespeak, if you will, speaking out both sides of your mouth."

Her pitch to voters

Most of Reitenour's website is dedicated to red-meat social conservative issues that her supporters gravitate toward. Her website platform contains a commitment to protect "families from ideologies that seek to redefine the roles and identities of parents" and to end all abortions in Indiana, no exceptions. (There are narrow exceptions in law currently in the cases of rape or incest up to 10 weeks post-fertilization, to protect the life of the mother and in the case of fatal fetal abnormalities.)

She wants to keep Critical Race Theory out of schools, prohibit transgender Hoosiers from playing sports and expand parental rights when it comes to their children's public school curriculum.

"She's really a person who is led by love, passion, justice," said Sarah Janisse Brown, one of Reitenour's campaign directors, "and a true understanding of what American freedom and liberty is all about."

But in interviews and on the debate stage she typically focuses on different issues. Aside from eliminating the IEDC, she wants to require all students to complete an apprenticeship before graduation and eventually nix property taxes altogether.

"I'm going to shrink government the way the conservative party says it should be," Reitenour said, "and I'm going to do so while caring for the people and not spending a lot of taxpayer money."

A central part of her campaign in recent weeks has been less about policy and more about her frustration with being left off multiple debate stages because she didn't meet the polling or fundraising requirements set by the independent media outlets hosting the debates. With limited money, the debates are one of the few ways Reitenour can get out her name.

"My exclusion from these important events in the democratic process is an injustice that needs to be corrected," she said in a press release. "Are the requirements of the Indiana Constitution to run for statewide office so disrespected that those in power must find other ways to direct the electorate?"

Winning would be a 'miracle'

In the book of Judges in the Bible, Israel leader Gideon was preparing to enter battle with 32,000 troops to face the Midianites, whose numbers reached 135,000. God reduced Gideon’s numbers to just 300, and still, Gideon's army won the battle.

It's a portion of the Bible that Hummer, one of Reitenour's supporters, pointed to when discussing the campaign. Reitenour, too, is confident about her chances.

"It's a moment in time, where you can see that the Lord has made a way," Reitenour said. "When you're in politics, they tell you there's two ways to win: millions of dollars or a miraculous ground game. And we have the miraculous ground game."

While having limited funds makes it challenging to get her message out, her low-dollar campaign has earned the support of the Indiana-based Citizens Coalition for Legislature Accountability, which views her decision to largely ignore large fundraising efforts as a good thing. That group wants to reform the Indiana General Assembly so that campaign cash and lobbying efforts have less influence on the process.

Dan Stock, the group's director, said a prime example of the need for reform was the COVID-19 pandemic. Someone like Reitenour can provide critical oversight over the legislature, Stock said.

"This is somebody who is running against lobbyists who are well-funded," said Stock, who once went viral for criticizing masks and the vaccine at a school board meeting. “She's the only one of the candidates who set off from the get-go saying this has to work without lobbying money."

Still, Reitenour appears unlikely to win the May primary: An Emerson College Polling/The Hill poll of 526 likely Republican primary voters released in March found that only 1.6% of those surveyed support Reitenour. Another poll commissioned by Indy Politics and Crossroads Public Affairs came to a similar conclusion: She still was polling at 1% in late March.

“If she wins — and I think it's still a long shot — I think everyone kind of recognizes it'll be a miracle and glory to God,” Beckwith said. “There is there's no doubt in my mind if she wins, it will be 100% God's hand putting her into that position.”

About Jamie Reitenour

Age: 44

Home: Indianapolis

Education: Psychology degree from Southwest Missouri State University

Family: Husband, Nathan, and five children.

Previous experience: Former compliance manager at Windsor Capital Mortgage, former athletic director at Calvary Christian School, former executive assistant at Tory R Walker Engineering, Inc, women's ministry and worship coordinator at Calvary Vista.

Support from outside groups: Indiana Republican Assembly Super PAC

Contact IndyStar government and politics editor Kaitlin Lange at Kaitlin.Lange@indystar.com or follow her on X @Kaitlin_Lange.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jamie Reitenour is running on faith for governor in Republican primary