Party unity 80%, in the bottom 5% of the Indiana House (average 95.2%). 908 roll calls in the IN 2025–26 session.
Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Chesser voted with the majority of Indiana House Democrats; it is ranked within the Indiana House. The count covers every roll call where Chesser voted opposite that majority.
At a glance
6 measures against the Indiana House. Chesser sits at −0.28 on the CSIP scale, more conservative than 93% of State House Democrats. 14% of the 14 bills Chesser sponsored got out of committee, in the bottom quarter of the Indiana House.
The measures on which Chesser sits furthest from the middle of the Indiana House, each against the same group, with the CSIP score when there is one. Every number is explained in its own section below.
Party unity
Indiana House average 95.2% · ranks 99th of 100 · 73 votes against the majority of Indiana House Democrats
CSIP ideology
More conservative than 93% of State House Democrats · ± 0.04
Attendance
Indiana House average 91.6% · ranks 9th of 100 · 908 roll calls
Out of committee
Indiana House average 46% · ranks 88th of 99
Itemized, 2026
State House Democrats’ median $40.4K · ranks 456th of 2,082
From Indiana, 2026
Of itemized individual dollars · ranks 1091st of 1,983 State House Democrats
Peer group: Indiana House. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; the thick bar is Chesser, the thin grey bar the peer average. The headline is the measure on which Chesser is most unusual among peers (Methods, §08).
What Chesser says
No statements for the IN 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.
Policy
No policy statements for the IN 2025–26 session.No classified statements (posts, press releases, newsletters, floor speeches) in this time window.
Ideology
Chesser sits at −0.28 on the CSIP scale, left of 0, more conservative than 93% of State House Democrats. Approximate range −0.32 to −0.24, which understates the uncertainty; from 133 donors and 298 roll calls.
CSIP, the lab’s Common-Space Ideal Point, places every official, federal and state, on one left–right scale, estimated from roll-call votes, who gives money to whom, and the text of statements. Negative is left of 0, positive right of it; 0 is the centre of the scale, not a definition of “moderate”.
CSIP ideal point
Approximate range −0.32 to −0.24. From 133 donors and 298 roll calls. Run 2026-10-25T215945. Blue is left of 0, red right of 0.
The outlined dot is Chesser, coloured by its side of 0 (blue left, red right, deeper further out); the bar through it is the approximate range (±1.96 standard errors), which understates the uncertainty; the grey ticks below are the medians of Chesser’s groups. 0 is the centre of the scale, not “moderate” by definition.
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score summarises how an official votes, who funds them and how they talk, relative to everyone else. It does not grade positions as good or bad, and two officials with the same score can differ on any single issue. The ± range is 1.96 standard errors, which understates the uncertainty: scores whose ranges overlap may not differ at all, and even scores whose ranges do not overlap may not differ.
Where Chesser sits
Every official in each group, on the CSIP scale
Show the data
| Group | Officials | Median | Share left of Chesser |
|---|---|---|---|
| State House Democrats | 2392 | −0.6 | 93% |
| Indiana House | 100 | +0.4 | 28% |
| All State House | 5324 | +0.1 | 42% |
How to read the strips
Every small dot is one official on the same scale, coloured by its own score (blue left of 0, red right of 0, grey at 0, deeper further out) and spread up and down only to keep dots apart; where a group is crowded the dots overlap, and darker patches mean more officials. The large outlined dot is Chesser in every row; the rule is each group’s median. The table under the figure gives the share of each group to the left of Chesser.
Money
Chesser reported $119.6K in the 2026 cycle, 3.0 times the State House Democrats’ median of $40.4K. State filings report no small-donation total. 92% of itemized individual money came from Indiana.
Campaign money from state campaign-finance filings, as aggregates only; the lab never shows an individual donor. Campaigns must report by name every person who gives them more than $200 in a cycle (“itemized”); smaller gifts are reported only as one total (“unitemized”), so donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations describe itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift total, so these figures add up itemized contributions only.
itemized in the 2026 cycle
From 78 itemized donors. State House Democrats’ median $40.4K.
Where the money came from
Each square is one percent of itemized contributions in the 2026 cycle.
- Individuals (itemized)25 squares$30.3K
- PACs and other committees29 squares$34.9K
- Party committees46 squares$54.5K
Show the data
| Source | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Individuals (itemized) | $30.3K | 25.3% |
| PACs and other committees | $34.9K | 29.2% |
| Party committees | $54.5K | 45.5% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
Totals say how much a campaign took in, not how it was spent, and they rise sharply when a seat is up for election; compare cycles with that in mind.
Receipts by cycle
Itemized contributions, 2024 to 2026. The grey line is the State House Democrats’ median for 2026.
Show the data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2024 cycle | $334.8K |
| 2026 cycle | $119.6K |
Top donor states, 2026
Itemized contributions by donor state. 92% came from Indiana.
- Indiana$27.7K
- Kentucky$1,300
- Massachusetts$505
- Florida$500
- Illinois$237
Small donations
State filings report no total for small gifts.
Not reported in state filings.
Where itemized donors live
Individuals who gave more than $200, by donor state
Show the data
| State | Value |
|---|---|
| Indiana | $27.7K |
| Kentucky | $1,300 |
| Massachusetts | $505 |
| Florida | $500 |
| Illinois | $237 |
| California | $14 |
| Maryland | $11 |
| New Jersey | $6 |
| Ohio | $1 |
| Alaska | No data |
| Maine | No data |
| Vermont | No data |
| New Hampshire | No data |
| Washington | No data |
| Idaho | No data |
| Montana | No data |
| North Dakota | No data |
| Minnesota | No data |
| Wisconsin | No data |
| Michigan | No data |
| New York | No data |
| Rhode Island | No data |
| Oregon | No data |
| Nevada | No data |
| Wyoming | No data |
| South Dakota | No data |
| Iowa | No data |
| Pennsylvania | No data |
| Connecticut | No data |
| Utah | No data |
| Colorado | No data |
| Nebraska | No data |
| Missouri | No data |
| West Virginia | No data |
| Virginia | No data |
| Delaware | No data |
| Arizona | No data |
| New Mexico | No data |
| Kansas | No data |
| Arkansas | No data |
| Tennessee | No data |
| North Carolina | No data |
| South Carolina | No data |
| District of Columbia | No data |
| Oklahoma | No data |
| Louisiana | No data |
| Mississippi | No data |
| Alabama | No data |
| Georgia | No data |
| Hawaii | No data |
| Texas | No data |
itemized donors
People who gave more than $200
from Indiana
Of itemized individual dollars
How to read the map
Every state the same size. Darker states gave more itemized money; hatched states had no itemized donors; the outlined state is Indiana. Gifts of $200 or less carry no address and are left out.
Top donor occupations
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
- UNKNOWN$12.6K 19 donors
- GENERAL BUSINESS$4,950 5 donors
- NOT CURRENTLY EMPLOYED$1,639 7 donors
- RETIRED$1,075 8 donors
- OFFICE AND ADMINISTRATIVE OCCUPATIONS$475 3 donors
Top committees
PAC and committee contributions, 2026 cycle.
- INDIANA HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS$54.5K
- LAWYERS PAC OF INDIANA$3,000
- ACTBLUE$2,289
- ACEC INDIANA PAC$1,000
- BUILDING BETTER TOMORROWS PAC$1,000
Top employers
Itemized, 2026 cycle.
No employers reported.
Aggregates only. Individual donors are never named.
Votes
Chesser voted with the majority of Indiana House Democrats on 80% of party-line votes and missed 0.8% of 908 roll calls. Indiana House on average: 95.2% party unity, 91.6% attendance. Across all roll calls, Chesser voted against the majority of Indiana House Democrats 73 times.
908 roll calls Chesser could vote on in the IN 2025–26 session, compared with Indiana House. Attendance is the share with a vote recorded. Party unity counts only party-line roll calls, where most Democrats and most Republicans voted on opposite sides, and is the share of those where Chesser voted with the majority of Indiana House Democrats. The count of votes against that majority covers every roll call where the majority took a side.
votes against the majority of Indiana House Democrats
Party unity 80%, Indiana House average 95.2%, ranks 99th of 100. 908 roll calls in the IN 2025–26 session.
Attendance and party unity
The thick bar is Chesser, the thin grey bar the Indiana House average. The scale runs from 80% to 100% to show the gap.
Show the data
| Row | Chesser | Peers |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | 99.2% | 91.6% |
| Party unity | 80% | 95.2% |
What this means, and what it doesn’t
A missed roll call has many causes, from illness to campaigning, so attendance says how often, not why. A vote against the majority can be on procedure as well as substance, and many fall on roll calls where both parties split; the key votes below show the ones that decided something.
Key votes
25 roll calls the lab flagged as key in the IN 2025–26 session
| Party split (yea–nay) | Why it’s key | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 27, 2026 | Nay | With majority | pass | D 0–29 · R 62–2 · I 0–1Democrats 0 yea, 29 nay; Republicans 62 yea, 2 nay; Independents 0 yea, 1 nay | became law | |
| Feb 27, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 29–0 · R 65–0 · I 1–0Democrats 29 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 65 yea, 0 nay; Independents 1 yea, 0 nay | became law | |
| Feb 27, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 30–0 · R 65–0 · I 1–0Democrats 30 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 65 yea, 0 nay; Independents 1 yea, 0 nay | became law | |
| Feb 27, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 26–3 · R 65–0 · I 1–0Democrats 26 yea, 3 nay; Republicans 65 yea, 0 nay; Independents 1 yea, 0 nay | became law · party crossover | |
| Feb 27, 2026 | Yea | With majority | pass | D 30–0 · R 65–0 · I 1–0Democrats 30 yea, 0 nay; Republicans 65 yea, 0 nay; Independents 1 yea, 0 nay | became law |
How key votes are chosen
Automatically: a final-passage or override vote where the measure became law, the margin was under 10%, at least 10% of either party voted against its majority, or the bill was among the 25 most mentioned in officials’ own statements. Up to 25 per window, most recent first; five are shown. Bars show yea on the left, nay on the right, per party.
Votes most often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Chesser most often
- Randy NovakD383 shared votes96%
- Tyler JohnsonR321 shared votes96%
- Tonya PfaffD891 shared votes94%
- Blake JohnsonD338 shared votes94%
- Mitch GoreD710 shared votes94%
Votes least often with
The colleagues who voted the same way as Chesser least often
- Andrew IrelandR884 shared votes63%
- J.D. PrescottR860 shared votes63%
- Zach PayneR823 shared votes64%
- Matt HostettlerR743 shared votes65%
- Heath VanNatterR844 shared votes66%
How to read the agreement lists
The share of roll calls both members voted on where they voted the same way, among colleagues sharing at least 50 such votes. High agreement with members of the other party is common on routine votes.
Full voting record
IN 2025–26 session, loads in batches
Legislation
Chesser sponsored 14 bills in the IN 2025–26 session; 1 became law. Cosponsored 37 others. 14% of sponsored bills got out of committee (Indiana House average 46%; 88th of 99).
The bills Chesser sponsored and cosponsored in the IN 2025–26 session, from the official bill records, and how far each got: introduced, referred to or acted on in committee, passed one chamber, passed both, became law. A bill counts at every stage it has reached, so the blocks only shrink to the right.
Bills by stage
Counts for the IN 2025–26 session
Show the data
| Role | Introduced | In committee | Passed one chamber | Passed both chambers | Became law |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored | 14 | 14 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Cosponsored | 37 | 37 | 31 | 16 | 6 |
How to read the blocks
Ink blocks are bills Chesser sponsored, ochre blocks bills Chesser cosponsored; the figure above each block is the count. Most bills in any legislature never leave committee, so a short staircase is the norm.
of sponsored bills got out of committee
Indiana House average 46%. Ranks 88th of 99.
Cosponsorship partners
Colleagues who most often cosponsor with Chesser, by number of shared bills in the IN 2025–26 session; the square shows their party.
- Ed Clere16
- Carey Hamilton11
- Lonnie Randolph6
- Kyle Pierce3
- Kyle Walker3
What this means, and what it doesn’t
The score is the share of sponsored bills that a committee reported out or a chamber passed, with at least 5 sponsored bills, ranked within the peer group. Members of the majority party and committee chairs move more bills, so the rank reflects position in the chamber as well as effort. Cosponsorship partners are the five colleagues who share the most of Chesser’s bills; the toggle shows more.
Bill list
Sponsored and cosponsored, with status and policy area; five are shown, the toggle shows the rest
| HR 51 | Honoring Officer Brian Elliott | Cosponsor | Feb 25, 2026 | Passed one chamber | Unassigned | First reading: adopted Feb 25, 2026 |
| HR 50 | Reaffirming the commitment of sister ties between Indiana and Taiwan. | Cosponsor | Feb 23, 2026 | Passed one chamber | International Affairs(model) | Authored by Representative Lauer Feb 23, 2026 |
| HCR 24 | Recognizing the 70th anniversary of The Arc of Indiana and honoring its enduring leadership and advocacy for Hoosiers with intellectual and developmental disabilities. | Cosponsor | Feb 18, 2026 | Passed both chambers | Unassigned | Returned to the House Feb 26, 2026 |
| HR 33 | Recognizing March as Brain Injury Awareness Month in Indiana. | Cosponsor | Feb 10, 2026 | Passed one chamber | Unassigned | First reading: adopted Feb 10, 2026 |
| HR 36 | Recognizing March 17, 2026, as Profound Autism Day and April as National Autism Month. | Cosponsor | Feb 10, 2026 | Passed one chamber | Unassigned | First reading: adopted Feb 10, 2026 |
Online
A site that changed 3 times in 90 days. Chesser’s campaign site had 2 pages when last crawled on Oct 1, 2026.
The lab crawls Chesser’s official and campaign websites (weekly for Congress, monthly for the states) and keeps every page’s text, so changes can be read later; it also records social accounts and describes the images Chesser posts with a vision model.
Websites
- 2
pages crawled
3changes in 90 days
How to read the counts
“Pages crawled” is the size of the site at the last crawl; “changes in 90 days” counts pages whose text differed from the previous crawl. Sites change for many routine reasons, such as new press releases, so a high count is not by itself notable.
Social accounts
Images Chesser posted
No images from Chesser’s posts have been described.
About the descriptions
Written by a vision model and may be wrong. Open the post to see the original. Five are shown; the toggle shows the rest.
State floor speeches
10 turns, Feb 13, 2025 to Feb 16, 2026
Floor speeches
Transcribed from chamber video or captions by the lab. They are not classified for kinds of statement.
Methods and sources
How this page was made. Profile built Oct 28, 2026; site last built Oct 28, 2026. Every number on the page is computed from the sources listed here, by the same rules for every official; nothing is written by hand.
The headline
The headline is the measure on which Chesser is most unusual among Indiana House, chosen by one rule for every official of every party. The candidates are the rate of each kind of statement and of extreme labels, party unity, attendance, the small-donor share, the in-state share and total receipts of the latest cycle, the share of sponsored bills that got out of committee, talk-to-bills agreement, and the CSIP score’s place within the party group.
The builder ranks every measure within the same peer group the page compares it with, and writes each official’s percentile: the share of the group below the value, ties counting half, so 0.5 is the median and a value shared by many never ranks first. A measure’s score is how far that percentile sits from the median (0 in the middle, 0.5 at either end), and the highest score leads if it is above 0.25, outside the middle half of the group. Scores within 0.03 of each other are a tie, broken in this order: votes against the party majority, kinds of statement, ideology, roll calls missed, small donations, in-state money, legislation, agreement, extreme labels, receipts.
A measure counts only with at least 200 statements, 100 roll calls or 5 sponsored bills behind it and a peer group of at least 10. Two things never lead: high party unity or attendance, where most members sit, and a high rate of a kind of statement backed by fewer than 10 statements. When nothing qualifies, the headline is a neutral fact instead: statements classified, or years in office. The wording always names the direction (“in the bottom 5% of …”, “votes against the majority of …”).
Identifiers
- Profile id
- 0761bcc1-6fbf-4a37-8b52-46c2bc6912fa
- Open States
- ocd-person/0761bcc1-6fbf-4a37-8b52-46c2bc6912fa
Bulk files with the same data for every official:
Freshness of this profile’s data
- What politicians sayOct 27, 20261 days agoMembers of Congress: tweets since 2017; press releases, newsletters and floor speeches since 2022. State legislators: tweets since May 2024. Governors: tweets since January 2025. Labels from an LLM classifier.
- Roll calls (state)Oct 21, 20267 days agoOpen States floor roll calls, 2019 on (none for AK and MO).
- Bills (state)Oct 28, 2026todayOpen States bills and sponsors, 2019 on; stages from roll calls.
- Campaign money (state)no dateState campaign-finance agencies, 2019 on; aggregates only.
- Ideology (CSIP)Oct 25, 20263 days agoCommon-Space Ideal Points (CSIP), current validated run.
- WebsitesOct 25, 20263 days agoWeekly crawls of federal sites since April 2026; monthly state crawls since June 2026.
- State floor speechesOct 21, 20267 days agoState floor speech turns (published transcripts and captions), 2020 on; not LLM-classified.
How the measures work
- What politicians say
- Every post, press release, newsletter and congressional floor speech is read by a language model and marked for personal attacks, policy criticism, policy discussion, bipartisanship and credit claiming. A statement can be in several. Rates are shares of statements in the window. The methods paper.
- Extreme labels
- A statement has an extreme label when it calls a politician, party or policy “far left”, “far right”, “MAGA”, “extreme”, “radical”, “woke”, “fascist” or “communist”. The target is who the label is aimed at.
- Policy areas and agreement
- Statements and bills share 25 Congressional Research Service policy areas (state bills are assigned by a language model). Agreement is 1 − Jensen–Shannon distance between the two distributions, shown with at least 20 policy statements and 5 bills.
- Ideology (CSIP)
- Common-Space Ideal Points place federal and state officials on one left–right scale, estimated jointly from roll calls, campaign contributions and the text of statements, with standard errors. Only a validated run is shown. The methods paper.
- Campaign money
- Campaigns report by name only donors who give more than $200 in a cycle; smaller gifts are reported as one total. Federal totals and the small-donor share come from the FEC’s financial summaries of each campaign committee. Donor counts, donor states, employers and occupations cover itemized donors only. State filings report no small-gift totals, so state figures are itemized only. The lab never publishes donor names.
- Votes and key votes
- Attendance, party unity and the count of votes against the majority of an official’s own party come from roll calls (Voteview for Congress, chamber records for the states). Key votes are final-passage or override votes that became law, were decided by under 10%, saw at least 10% of a party vote against its majority, or concerned one of the 25 bills most mentioned in officials’ statements.
- Peers and ranks
- Comparisons are with the same party, chamber and level (for example House Democrats); state legislators are compared within their state and chamber for votes. Every comparison names its group. Rank 1 is the highest value in the group; tied values share the average of their ranks, and the percentile is the share of the group below the value, ties counting half.
America’s Political Pulse · Polarization Research Lab