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Two prominent Indiana Republicans launch early campaigns in 2024 primary for governor [1]
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Date: 2022-12-12
We’ll start with a look at Crouch, who made her announcement hours before Braun. But the lieutenant governor, who would be the first woman to lead the Hoosier State, has been preparing for this campaign for years, and she predicts she’d finish 2022 with $3 million on-hand. She also says that she won’t self-fund, explaining that she’d financed her failed 1986 bid for Vanderburgh County auditor with money she didn’t have. “If I cannot convince Hoosiers that I am a good investment for them and for Indiana, then I don’t deserve to win,” she declared.
Crouch bounced back from that loss, which is her only electoral defeat, by winning the auditor’s job in 1994, and she went on to win more campaigns in the Evansville area. She was serving as a state House member in 2013 when then-Gov. Mike Pence appointed her state auditor months after his first choice abruptly resigned, and Crouch easily claimed a full term the next year. Her next promotion came in 2016 after party leaders chose Holcomb as the new gubernatorial nominee when Pence dropped out to become Trump’s running mate: Holcomb picked Crouch as his candidate for lieutenant governor, and their ticket went on to win in the fall.
Holcomb himself hasn’t said who he’d prefer to succeed him, but Indiana Legislative Insight editor Ed Feigenbaum argues that Crouch’s association with her boss could be a liability in a primary. Holcomb, as Howey Politics recently noted, has pissed off members of the party’s base over his decision to veto a bill to ban trans girls from playing in girls' sports, which the legislature overrode, as well as some of the pandemic health measures he adopted in 2020. However, Feigenbaum argues Crouch could benefit if several hardliners run in the 2024 primary.
Braun, who supported NRSC chair Rick Scott's failed effort to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, conversely may be a better fit for the party’s Trump-era electorate. The senator also made the case he’d be the clear frontrunner last week when he released an internal last week from Mark It Red showing him dispatching Crouch 47-10 in a primary, with Doden at 5%.
In a surprise, though, Braun said Monday that he would also not be self-funding even though he’d poured millions into his successful 2018 primary bid for the Senate seat he now holds, telling Wren he couldn’t finance his campaign even if he wanted to. It’s not clear why Braun, who is one of the richest members of Congress, feels he can’t repeat the strategy that propelled him to the nomination last time.
While Braun’s victory over Democratic Sen. Mike Donnelly instantly made him one of the Hoosier State’s most prominent politicians, he faces one lingering problem from that four-year-old contest: In June, an FEC audit concluded that he’d overstated how much he’d both raised and spent by $6 million, though it dropped an earlier and more serious claim alleging he’d taken $8.5 million in "apparent prohibited loans and lines of credit." The FEC has not announced any penalties, and Braun is contesting the findings.
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