Mike Braun

Michael Kent Braun (born March 24, 1954) is an American businessman and politician serving as the 52nd governor of Indiana since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he served from 2019 to 2025 as a United States senator from Indiana and from 2014 to 2017 as the representative for the 63rd district in the Indiana House of Representatives.

Born in Jasper, Indiana, Braun graduated from Wabash College with a degree in economics and subsequently earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. After serving in the Indiana House of Representatives from 2014 to 2017, he was elected to the United States Senate in 2018, defeating Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly. He was elected governor in 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Jennifer McCormick and Libertarian nominee Donald Rainwater by a margin of 13.3%, the highest margin in an open seat election for governor since 1980.

Braun opposes the Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, abortion, and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He has called on the Republican Party to take climate change more seriously. He supported President Donald Trump's trade and tariff policies, although he was previously an advocate of free trade. Braun voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial related to the Trump–Ukraine scandal.

Michael Kent Braun was born in Jasper, Indiana, on March 24, 1954. He graduated from Jasper High School. He attended the all-male Wabash College, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in economics, and Harvard Business School, where he earned a Master of Business Administration.

After graduating from Harvard, Braun moved back to Indiana and joined his wife's family business manufacturing truck bodies for farmers. The business subsequently grew from 15 employees to more than 300. In 1986, Braun and Daryl Rauscher acquired Meyer Body Inc., a manufacturer of truck bodies and distributor of truck parts and equipment. Braun fully acquired the company in 1995 and renamed it Meyer Distributing in 1999. Braun is its president and CEO. In 2018, Braun's personal finance disclosure listed assets worth between $35 million and $96 million.

Braun was formerly a member of the Democratic Party, but switched to the Republican Party in 2012. He said that he has always considered himself a conservative Republican, but voted in Democratic primaries for years because his home county, Dubois County, historically voted heavily Democratic downballot. According to Braun, until a massive Republican wave in 2016, even Republican-leaning voters voted in the Democratic primary to have a say in local elections. There is no formal party registration in Indiana, but primary ballot history is used to determine partisan affiliation.

Braun was a member of the Jasper School Board from 2004 to 2014. He was succeeded by Arlet Jackle on the school board.

In 2014, Braun was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives, in the 63rd district. He resigned from the state House on November 1, 2017, to focus on his U.S. Senate campaign.

In July 2018, Braun called for the Indiana attorney general, Republican Curtis Hill, to resign amid allegations that Hill had drunkenly groped a lawmaker and three legislative staffers.

Braun won the Republican primary for the United States Senate in the 2018 election, defeating U.S. representatives Todd Rokita and Luke Messer by over 56,000 votes. He received 208,520 votes, or roughly 41% of the total. Braun ran as an outsider, emphasizing his career in business. He defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly in the November general election with 51% of the vote to Donnelly's 45%; the Libertarian candidate, Lucy Brenton, tallied less than 4%. In late 2019, the Indianapolis Star reported that Braun's 2018 campaign was the beneficiary of $2.8 million in spending by a political action committee with strong connections to indicted money launderer Lev Parnas and one of his shell companies. Parnas supplied photographs of him and Braun embracing at a 2018 campaign event to the House of Representatives as part of his cooperation with the impeachment of President Trump. They were made public in January 2020.

On January 3, 2019, Braun was sworn in as the junior United States senator from Indiana by Vice President Mike Pence.

In May 2019, Braun was one of eight senators who voted against a $19.1 billion emergency aid package for states and territories that endured hurricanes, floods and fires. Braun said the disaster assistance process was "just another path for runaway spending on unrelated projects." Despite his opposition, the package was enacted with bipartisan support and President Trump's approval.

Braun supported Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria in October 2019. As a result, in that month, Turkey launched a military offensive against the American-allied Kurds in that area. After that, Braun called Trump "smart"; questioned why the U.S. should "be in the crossfire" between Turkey and the Kurds; and called the idea that ISIS would recover strength as a result of the conflict "an assumption".

In December 2019, Braun said that the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump had been a "disaster for Democrats."

On November 30, 2022, Braun filed papers with the Secretary of State of Indiana to run in the 2024 Indiana gubernatorial election, following speculation since September that he would run for the office.

Braun, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, won the Republican primary on May 7, 2024. On May 8, he announced his choice for lieutenant governor, state representative Julie McGuire. In June, delegates nominated Micah Beckwith for lieutenant governor at the Republican state convention.

On September 30, 2024, the Braun for Governor campaign released an ad that contained an image altered to show Democratic opponent Jennifer McCormick leading a rally with people holding signs stating "No Gas Stoves." The image actually showed people holding "McCormick for Governor" signs. Running an ad with an altered image may be illegal under Indiana State Law HEA 1133. Later that day, the Braun campaign released an updated version of the ad with a disclaimer noting the use of an altered image which complies with the law.

On November 5, Braun won Indiana's gubernatorial election by the largest margin for an open governor's seat since 1980. He ran on a campaign of "Freedom and Opportunity", promising to address rising property taxes, make healthcare more obtainable and affordable, and implement universal school choice.

Braun became governor on January 13, 2025, sworn in by Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush.

Braun opposes abortion. He tweeted in support of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Braun voted with Donald Trump's position 90.9% of the time between Braun's inauguration and Trump's departure from office two years later.

During Trump's first impeachment and impeachment trial, regarding the Trump–Ukraine scandal, Braun became one of Trump's most prominent defenders, defending him in many media appearances. He voted to acquit Trump, and when asked whether it is acceptable for Trump to withhold U.S. foreign aid to coerce a foreign leader to investigate Joe Biden, he said that he did not believe that such behavior was proper but that "it didn't happen." Braun also said that Trump did what he did out of a desire to reduce corruption in Ukraine. After Trump was acquitted, Braun said that Trump "hopefully" learned something from the trial.

Braun opposes earmarks. He introduced an amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 to remove all earmarks from the bill, saying: "Earmarks give representatives, give senators the incentive to be big spenders. We should cut every earmark out of this bill and ban them permanently and quit loading up our kids and grandkids with the debt to pay for all this." The amendment failed.

After Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Trump refused to concede and made baseless claims of election fraud. Braun defended, and joined in, Trump's attempt to overturn the election results. He wrote a Washington Examiner editorial criticizing the media for not taking accusations of voter fraud seriously. Along with 10 other Republican senators, Braun initially pledged to object to the counting of the electoral votes in several key states. After the storming of the Capitol by violent pro-Trump rioters, Braun reversed himself and voted against objections to the election results, saying that he "didn't feel comfortable with today's events."

Braun and his wife, Maureen, have four children. He is Catholic. Braun's late brother, Steve Braun, was also a politician in Indiana.