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The three Republican candidates already lining up to become Indiana’s next governor in 2024 are setting up what is expected to be a fierce battle for votes and campaign cash in a hotly contested GOP primary.
All three enter the race with at least $1 million in their campaign coffers, with more than 17 months left to raise substantially more before the May primary in 2024.
Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, 70, said she will finish off the year with around $3 million in the bank, and U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, 68, has $1.2 million in cash from his Senate campaign committee that can be used to support his gubernatorial bid, according to campaign finance records.
They both formally jumped into the race on Monday, holding competing launch events. They join Fort Wayne businessman Eric Doden, who announced his candidacy last year. Doden, former president of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. under then-Gov. Mike Pence, has $3 million in the bank and said he expects to have $5 million by year’s end.
Unlike his bid for Senate in 2018, Braun, a wealthy businessman who founded an auto parts distribution business, told Politico he won’t self-finance his campaign, which means he’ll be competing with Crouch and Doden for donors.
Kip Tew, former chair of the Indiana Democratic Party, said Braun’s decision not to self-fund should be a comfort to the other candidates.
“I think that should probably give Suzanne Crouch, Eric Doden and anyone else who is looking at running a little bit of encouragement,” said Kip Tew, former chair of the Indiana Democratic Party. “They’ll be on even footing with money.”
Regradless, the competition is expected to drive up the cost of the primary campaign.
“It could be the most expensive primary ever,” said Bob Grand, a partner at Barnes and Thornburg and a longtime GOP fundraiser who is backing Crouch. “There will be a number of people raising money, but I’m not sure it’s going to be all about money.”
Becoming the most expensive GOP primary for governor might be a relatively low bar to cross. Only two of the six GOP primaries since 2000 have been contested and neither of them was all that competitive. The last was in 2004 when Mitch Daniels drew 66% of the vote to defeat conservative activist Eric Miller.
Still, fundraising for the 2024 GOP primary has a ways to go before it rivals what has been spent on general election campaigns. In 2016, Republican Eric Holcomb and Democrat John Gregg spent a combined $20 million on a race that ultimately gave Holcomb his first term as governor.
For the 2024 race, Braun has hired Emily Daniels, of Daniels Spaulding Consulting, to be his campaign finance director, according to two people familiar with the campaign. Daniels was Braun’s finance director during his Senate campaign and U.S. Sen. Todd Young’s finance director during his recent re-election bid.
Doden has largely managed his own fundraising efforts thus far, he told IBJ, though he has retained Cam Savage’s Limestone Strategies, a consulting firm, and WPA Intelligence, a conservative polling firm, to assist his campaign.
His platform includes supports increasing teacher pay and incentivizing colleges to graduate more educators, implementing zero-cost adoptions and establishing regional development authorities to work with local leaders to spur economic development.
“We’re going to make this about ideas that really help people,” Doden said of his campaign strategy. “That’s what you’re gonna see from us.”
Asked in an interview with IBJ how she plans to set herself apart from the field, Crouch pointed to her signature red glasses before offering a more serious answer: In 1986, early in her political career, Crouch ran for Vanderburgh County auditor. She and her husband put thousands of dollars of their own money into her campaign, but losing the race taught her an important lesson about fundraising.
“I was pretty naïve. I thought if you were the best candidate and worked the hardest, you would get elected,” Crouch said. “I didn’t realize I needed to get people to invest in me.”
Holcomb, a two-term governor who is prohibited by law from seeking a third consecutive term, is holding off on endorsing a candidate.
“I don’t feel any rush to get politically involved,” Holcomb told IBJ. “I’m gonna look at what their plans are and their policies. One thing that kind of wears on me is where rhetoric actually meets the road. It’s good to say you’re for something, but what have you done, and how are you going to take us there?”
While no Democrats have officially announced plans to run, former state superintendent and ex-Republican Jennifer McCormick has said she is exploring a bid, and Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, who ran against Sen. Todd Young in November and lost by 21 percentage points, is also mulling a run, according to a person close to his campaign.
Other names being floated include Shelli Yoder, a state senator from Bloomington; Ryan Hatfield, an attorney and state representative from Evansville; and Christina Hale, a former state legislator who now works in the Biden administration.
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Anyone but Braun….
Haha – I just came on here to say the same thing. You beat me to it!
AMEN!!
Braun accomplished NOTHING for IN as senator. Don’t make him governor, IN, just because he wants it. Enough with the endless string of rich, malignant narcissists.
Eric Doden has very solid ideas that we can afford to implement. Out with the old guard. Indiana needs fresh leadership.
Doden’s idea to increase teacher pay was to not have them pay income taxes.
Sorry, that isn’t a solid idea. A solid idea to increase teacher pay would be to … wait for it … pay them more money.
It’s not as though we don’t have the money. We just don’t want to give it to teachers.
Joe the problem with that is local school corporations control teacher salaries. Despite being given increasing amounts of money over the years it never quite seems to make it to the teachers as much as other places. The tax credit is a way to actually ensure the benefit gets to the intended recipient.
Define “other places”. Also, you do know that schools aren’t allowed to raid teacher salaries to pay for a shiny new gymnasium, right?
The state of Indiana is quite prescriptive at the state level as far as the uses of money and what services that schools must provide. The state of Indiana – legislators – have been quite clear that they are in charge the past decade. I don’t buy the suggestion that it’s all the fault of local school boards.
Just pass increased funding and mandate it goes to the fund that pays salaries. Schools that still don’t pay teachers will find that their teachers move on to schools that pay better.
Ms. Hale is not a former member of Congress. She did, however, serve two terms as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.