KOKOMO, Ind. — Mike Braun isn’t a culture warrior.
The Republican has the upper hand against Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly in the midterm election, an advantage he owes to President Trump’s standing in ruby red Indiana. Yet Braun has little in common with Trump, save wealth and the entrepreneur resume. He’s more apt to lull voters to sleep with conservative ideas for rebuilding infrastructure than stir them with nationalist paeans about the dangers of immigration.
Being boring is a Hoosier tradition, and it can work for Braun (“understated” is how he describes himself). Think Republican Sen. Todd Young; Democratic former Sen. Evan Bayh; Vice President Mike Pence, a former Indiana governor; Donnelly, even. The key to Braun keeping Republican voters in the fold and maintaining his built-in political edge? Don’t stray too far from the Trump agenda.
“Following Trump’s policies always goes over well in this state and in this county,” Mark McCann, a Republican and the elected Howard County prosecutor told the Washington Examiner this month after mingling with Braun at a Rotary Club luncheon in Kokomo, a manufacturing hub 60 miles north of Indianapolis, where the candidate highlighted his work on transportation reform in the state legislature.
McCann’s take was affirmed in conversations with rank-and-file Republican voters up and down the state, from the rural south near the border with Kentucky to suburban Indianapolis and points north.
Some voters concede they could do without Trump’s carnival barking showmanship — which might surprise his most loyal supporters and #MAGA rally aficionados. But fidelity to the president’s agenda is non-negotiable.
“I like a lot of the things that Trump is doing and trying to get for our country, and I just want to see our country go in the right direction, and we need to be more positive and support each other better,” said Braun supporter Debbie Weidenbenner, 60, a second-grade teacher from Jasper, a tight-knit hometown in Southern Indiana that is still dominated by the German Catholic families who settled there generations ago.
“Some of the ways that [Trump] goes about things I don’t necessarily agree with,” Weidenbenner added, as she braved the summer heat to catch a glimpse of Braun in Jasper’s annual Strassenfest parade. “But I do agree with the things that he’s trying to fight for.”
Democrats are poised for big gains in the House in November. Their enthusiasm is through the roof, and voters in traditionally Republican, affluent suburbs are showing signs of drifting left in a rebuke of Trump’s provocative behavior — and tweets — if not his agenda.
But like 2010, when the Republican tsunami bypassed blue California, this year’s Democratic wave, if it materializes, appears unlikely to wash ashore in red states like Indiana, solidly conservative and satisfied with the president, where the battle for the Senate will be won or lost.
Enter Braun, 64.
Except for a short stint in the Indiana state House of Representatives, the owner of Meyer Distributing, perhaps the nation’s largest automobile parts distributor, can boast critical qualities for success in politics in the Trump era: He’s an outsider who treats Washington and incumbent politicians with contempt — and promises to go to Capitol Hill and upend the status quo.
“The fact that he has not been a career politician as well, I think, is going to bode well,” Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., said in brief interview after introducing Braun to party activists in Hamilton County, in the conservative Indianapolis suburbs. Trump’s image has held up there, and GOP incumbents like Brooks don’t appear under fire the same as other suburban Republicans; but she sternly discouraged complacency.
“The Democrats are fired up this election cycle. They are really fired up. They are out knocking on doors,” Brooks, expected to win a fourth term, told activists who gathered at the Hamilton County GOP headquarters in upscale Westfield to hear from Braun and ask him questions. “They are out working hard. We have to outwork them.”
Braun is mostly sticking to the Trump script on matters of public policy, albeit absent the president’s signature in-your-face, reality TV style. It’s working — if what the Republican tells voters on the trail about his private polling, which he raises regularly, is accurate. Braun said last week that his data has shown him leading Donnelly, 62.
Where he departed from strict Trumpology is on immigration.
Asked about his position on “illegals” during the question and answer session with grassroots volunteers in Westfield at the Hamilton County GOP headquarters, Braun delivered a nuanced answer. He paid homage to the Trump’s focus on border security but departed from rhetoric that at times disparages immigrants (legal and illegal) and questions the value of robust legal immigration.
“That’s a difficult subject,” Braun said. “Many employers in Indiana would struggle to fill jobs if they did not have immigrant labor and most of them do the best they can to make sure the status is correct.”
“The country was built on immigrants,” Braun added. “A border, though, that is systematically abused and not respected, you then have the problems that have come with it. I think that we have to secure our border and then we have to start systematically fixing all the problems that have come along with it. And part of that means we don’t ever lose what was important about this country in that we welcome folks in to it.”
If Braun is worried at all, it’s on healthcare and trade.
He’s cautious in discussing Trump’s trade policies, which many in Indiana support in principle but fear could pummel healthy state economy reliant on manufacturing and agriculture. On healthcare, Donnelly sees an opening to outflank Braun and make inroads with the swing voters and soft Republicans. To shield himself, Braun is vowing to support government regulations that force insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and outlaw lifetime caps on payouts.
Republican audiences support this policy, first legislated under Obamacare, despite their general opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which Braun says he would make another run at repealing. At the meeting with activists in Hamilton County, spontaneous applause broke out when he vowed to preserve current protections for pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps.
Because Braun wants to repeal Obamacare, liberal groups have accused Braun of deception. But his campaign confirmed to the Washington Examiner the businessman’s support for these provisions of the existing law. It’s no wonder.
“I love his ideas,” said Lynda Pitz, 55, a supporter who took time out of her schedule running a nanny agency to hear Braun in Westfield. “The idea of including pre-existing conditions — I have a friend who was in a horrible car accident.”
