Braun, think tank join forces to chart conservative path

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, the Republican and front-runner in Indiana’s gubernatorial race, has faced criticism throughout his campaign that his policy proposals are vague.

Critics and reporters have said his plans, with the exception of his property tax plan, lack a legislative road map to achieve the goals he’s laid out.

A conservative policy think tank has recently gone public and is changing that.

Not-for-profit Hoosiers for Opportunity, Prosperity & Enterprise, or HOPE, seeks to become a major player in Indiana’s political ecosystem by developing a framework of conservative policy that lawmakers can deploy across the spectrum of issues dealt with at the Statehouse.

Partnering with Braun’s campaign, the group has bolstered the candidate’s goals with pages of policy specifics detailing how Braun and the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority can achieve a more conservative future for Indiana.

The group’s legislative efforts have a “champion” in Braun, said James Bopp Jr., a prominent conservative lawyer with a long legal resume that includes arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bopp helped create HOPE and is the board’s treasurer and secretary and its legal counsel.

“It was perfectly obvious that Sen. Braun running for governor was a very logical vehicle for our activities,” he said. “It was great to find somebody who we felt would be a serious advocate for a serious conservative reform.”

The Braun campaign has said in recent news releases that HOPE is working with the candidate “to develop policy proposals detailing how he will implement his bold agenda for Hoosiers when he becomes Indiana’s next Governor.”

The campaign declined to comment further on what inspired the partnership, the alignment of policy goals and the potential collaboration if Braun wins the office.

The partnership with Braun grew out of prior relationships, Bopp said. HOPE was working independently on its advocacy goals, he said, when the senator asked the organization to partner with his campaign on legislative proposals.

With each policy announcement, Braun’s campaign now links to HOPE’s white page detailing specifics. While his campaign releases a page of bullet-point objectives, HOPE releases several, expanding upon each goal and detailing a plan of action.

For example, when Braun announced he wants to reduce the tax burden on farmers, HOPE laid out details for a new tax credit and suggested specific tweaks to the farmland base-rate formula in addition to tax-bill caps. Braun said he wants to better prepare students for life beyond high school, and HOPE recommended linking student success with the school-funding formula and increasing the state’s investment in the Career Scholarship Account program, which gives students paid apprenticeship opportunities.

Several more Braun policy proposals are in the pipeline, Bopp said. He declined to provide IBJ details.

But several policy areas listed on the HOPE website that Braun has yet to detail include economic development, health care, public safety and shrinking the size of state government.

Although the organization is still in the policy-development phase, Bopp said the group plans to start lobbying for its initiatives in next year’s legislative session.

“They’ve done a number of good things, but we would like to see them do more,” Bopp said of the Republican supermajority.

Currently, he said, HOPE is primarily soliciting feedback from lawmakers about the issues they are concerned about and what reforms they’d like to see.

Neither House Speaker Todd Huston nor President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, both Republicans, responded to IBJ messages seeking comment about HOPE and whether they have a relationship with the organization. Messages left with a spokesperson for the Indiana Republican Party were not returned.

HOPE is growing its staff as well, hiring policy, administrative and fundraising employees. Adam Battalio, the group’s new policy director, worked in Braun’s Senate office for five years.

The not-for-profit is funded by contributions from individuals and corporations, Bopp said.

Indiana has no conservative policy advocacy group that provides guidance on a wide range of issues, he said, so HOPE wants to fill that gap in the political environment. During former Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration, Bopp was involved in not-for-profits Aiming Higher, an Indiana-focused political action committee, and the Indiana Opportunity Fund, which sought to enact right-to-work policy.

He said HOPE is a more comprehensive and long-term effort. It aims to be more action-focused than the Indianapolis-based think tank Sagamore Institute and will have a wider reach than the dozens of single-issue or single-industry lobbyist organizations.

“We’re a broad-based conservative advocacy group that is going to be proposing major initiatives both for executive action by the governor and by the Legislature to significantly reform government and how we approach problems,” Bopp said.

One benefit to the wide breadth of issues HOPE seeks to address is the potential for more balanced proposals than a single-issue organization can offer, said former longtime Indiana Sen. Luke Kenley, a Republican. That could foster less-combative relationships with lawmakers who disagree with the organization on a specific policy, he added.

HOPE’s six-member board is stacked with former lawmakers and conservative leaders. Bopp said he and board President Ryan Black came up with the idea for HOPE, then recruited board Vice President Scott Schneider, a former Indianapolis city-county councilor and state senator. Board members Betsy Wiley, Daniel Dumezich and James Purucker were added after the primary this May.

“These are the people that are involved—very respected people—that have been very active in government and politics and conservative advocacy for many years,” Bopp said.

The group is still relatively unknown to many politicos. It was registered as a not-for-profit with the state in July 2023.

The beauty of the country’s free speech and enterprise, Kenley said, is that politicians see significant engagement from a number of stakeholders and groups. What’s important when evaluating whether to work with a new group is who’s in it, he added.

Kenley said Bopp is more conservative than he is but carries a significant amount of credibility, specifically as an honest and straightforward person.

“It really depends on the people,” Kenley said. “It depends not only on what their value systems and their goals and their objectives are, but it depends on their flexibility—whatever they do, they need to feel like it’s good for all Hoosiers, not just somebody who maybe agrees with them from their perspective. And that’s where you achieve the most success.”•