INDIANAPOLIS – Rep. Braun is in Washington this week to build relationships with the special interest donors he’ll depend on for the next six months, and in true swamp fashion, the details of his visit are being hidden from the Hoosiers he hopes to represent.
Just after Rep. Braun wrapped up a primary campaign railing against swamp creatures and special interest politics, the Washington Examiner last week reported that he already had set up a trip to Washington to meet with the wealthy establishment donors whom he’ll now depend on to bankroll his Senate campaign.
A trip to meet with the wealthy, D.C.-based donor network that makes up Senator Young’s steering committee “is being arranged for Braun to coincide with a scheduled trip to the nation’s capital [this] week… Two PAC fundraisers for Braun have already been scheduled, and a third is in the planning stages,” the Examiner wrote.
The fundraising junket to Washington is a remarkable turnaround from a candidate who spent much of the last year self-funding his campaign in part because he thought Hoosiers would believe it would mean he’d only be accountable to them. As he heads to the Washington swamp, it seems clear instead that Hoosiers may not be able to hold him accountable at all if they don’t know whom he’s meeting with this week.
“Hoosiers need to know little more than that one of Rep. Braun’s first moves as the GOP nominee is to head to the swamp to take special interest money on a secretive trip,” said Michael Feldman, spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party. “If Rep. Braun were truly interested in showing Hoosiers that he was only accountable to them, he’d make clear which special interests were lining up to bankroll his campaign. Otherwise, he’s a hypocrite who has more in common with the wealthy D.C. donors and swamp denizens than working Hoosier families.”
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