Governor Braun Super PAC Spends Big to Make Trump Happy

This dropped maybe an hour before we were supposed to come on the air. I do this all the time. I do the template the night before, then news breaks in the morning and I’m thinking, well, all that work and now we’re going to talk about something else. But we have to talk about this. Friend of the show Adam Wren from Politico, who also writes the Importantville newsletter, is reporting that Mike Braun’s Hope super PAC is going to spend $500,000 on challengers running against senators who voted against redistricting. Let me repeat that. Mike Braun’s Hope super PAC is going to spend $500,000 against incumbent senators who voted against redistricting. Let’s start with the reality that most of these incumbents are going to win anyway. The incumbent re-election rate is off the charts for a reason. Look it up yourself. You don’t have to take my word for it. Incumbents win the vast majority of the time because they can use the office to dole out favors that help their re-election chances. They all do it. They have the power of incumbency. They have the power of being able to shape policy and legislation that benefits them politically. They get to go places. “Hey, the senator is here. The senator is speaking.” Chambers, rotary clubs, all of those things. They have huge built-in advantages. They can send the taxpayer-funded mailers and letters. All of those things. So number one, the majority of these people are going to win anyway. The second thing is that most of these challengers are bad candidates. The Brenda Wilson people are awful. We read you yesterday the excerpts from the IndyStar article where reporter Kayla Dwyer went to Senate District 38 — Terre Haute, Vigo County, Sullivan County, Clay County — and talked to people on the ground. People there said they don’t care about redistricting. They don’t care about Trump’s endorsement. They vote based on the performance of the incumbent, Greg Goode. Being the incumbent might be good for Greg Goode. It might be bad. I don’t know. But when you have candidates who are solely running on Trump’s endorsement and not running on issues that actually matter to people, they deserve to lose. These candidates have made Trump’s endorsement the only thing they’re running on. If you’re the governor and you get any sort of reasonable advice, you’d recognize that most of these incumbents are going to win anyway. Then the question becomes: how do you think they’re going to deal with you next year after you spent half a million dollars trying to defeat them? How do you think that conversation goes? “Well, Braun spent $500,000 trying to cost me my job. Sure, I’ll just go along with whatever he wants.” That’s not how it’s going to work. It’s not going to go well at all. It’s also sending a message to the rest of the Senate. These senators are a club. They work together. They hang out together. The rest of them are going to be angry too, including the ones who were not even up for reelection. Braun is needlessly angering people he will need in order to get his agenda passed. Now, if you had great candidates running on real issues, you might say it’s worth the risk. But these candidates aren’t great and they’re not running on anything. But here’s the point where you should really be upset. Mike Braun is spending $500,000 to try to appease Donald Trump. Braun doesn’t care about redistricting. He pursued it because Trump mandated it. And remember, Braun himself said that if Indiana didn’t do redistricting there could be punishment from the federal government. Let’s connect some dots. Braun said there would be punishment from the federal government if Indiana didn’t redistrict. Then people asked what punishment that would be. He tried to walk it back. But the problem was that his lieutenant governor tweeted that there would be ramifications, then quickly deleted the tweet. The problem is the internet is forever. Everybody saw it. Isn’t it pathetic that the lieutenant governor has become “delete tweet guy”? He posts something bold, then as soon as adult supervision tells him to remove it, it’s “Yes sir, I’m sorry,” and it disappears. But we know there was some sort of threat of retribution if Indiana didn’t do redistricting. Meanwhile, what major project out there would require federal approval and help? There’s a big one in southwest Indiana called the Mid-States Corridor. It’s the plan to connect I-64 to I-69 through southwest Indiana, running right through the heart of Braun’s home county. The people down there hate it. But it would benefit Braun’s business interests. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. So Braun is going to spend $500,000 to try to defeat incumbents who are likely to win anyway. It will anger senators who will still be in office next year and make it harder for him to pass his agenda. But here’s why people should be furious. One of the reasons I endorsed Mike Braun for governor was because he promised me something at state party headquarters. I was in a room with Braun, his chief of staff Josh Kelley, and Micah. They were asking for my endorsement and promised that they would spend big money through their political action committee to sway senators who wouldn’t support property tax reform. I own that endorsement. I’ve told you why I did it. Braun was going to win anyway. There was no chance he wasn’t going to become governor. Donald Rainwater had imploded politically. It became clear he wasn’t going to perform anywhere close to how he had previously. So I felt I had two options. I could keep standing on principle and accomplish nothing, or I could endorse Braun and try to move him toward property tax reform. For a year and a half we fought hard on that issue. We kept it front and center. But when the time came, Braun did nothing. One day of ads ran, then they pulled them after they got pushback. Now he’ll spend $500,000 on redistricting fights because he’s afraid of Trump. But he wouldn’t spend a dollar to help people with property taxes. That’s what your governor thinks of you. And honestly, my heart hurts. My heart hurts that this guy is such a piece of trash.