Mike Braun is the Indiana businessman running for U.S. Senate. Send him to Washington, he tells voters, and he will drain the swamp.
It’s a standard political shtick post-2016 but it’s about to become that much more difficult to deliver.
During his brief stint as a state lawmaker, the Indianapolis Star reports, Braun pushed tax breaks for the logging and timber business, an industry where he just so happens to be a major stakeholder. Braun owns more than 5,000 acres of timberland in southern Indiana, a hardwood crop valued at more than $5 million. That makes him one of the largest logging landowners in Indiana, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of the tax breaks he pushed.
Braun denies any wrongdoing. “I viewed it as something I was simply familiar with by association, but didn’t have any direct economic benefit from it,” the candidate told the Indy Star.
His Republican primary opponents, Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita, won’t let that answer slide. Neither will Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., if Braun makes it through the Republican primary. And the Indiana electorate might not look kindly on a candidate who promises to clean up Washington but has his own conflicts of interest at home.
