Former Meyer Exec Braun Wins Ind. GOP Governor Primary – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
Although his linkage to the nation’s RV industry was never a central theme in his primary election campaign, well-known RV industry executive Mike Braun, a conservative Republican affiliated for decades with Jasper, Ind.-based Meyer Distributing Inc., won Indiana’s six-candidate, Indiana Republican primary election yesterday (May 7) for a chance to succeed popular term-limited GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb.
In what was arguably the most expensive primary in Indiana history with about $20 million spent largely on ads in the first three months of 2024 alone, Braun won about 40% of the Hoosier State’s GOP vote – well ahead of second-place finisher Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch’s roughly 22% – and is expected to be the front-runner in November’s general election race with former Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick and Libertarian Donald Rainwater.
And although he’s a familiar personality within the RV industry, Braun, the endorsed candidate of former President Donald Trump, told RVBusiness that he has retained only a minor share of equity in Meyer after his election to the U.S. Senate in 2018 before assuming Democrat Joe Donnelly’s Senate seat in 2019.
Braun said he also stepped away from his managerial duties at Meyer while three of his family members still have full-time positions at Meyer, an aftermarket distributor with which Braun has affiliated for 37 years, including son Jeff, now CEO, son Jason, chief technology officer, and daughter Kristen, head of Human Resources and Real Estate.
Looking at yesterday’s primary for which he was the front runner all along, Braun says he feels that both his business and political backgrounds are playing key roles in his so-far-successful pursuit of Indiana’s governorship.
“Because I’ve built a career as a successful entrepreneur and business owner, I’ve applied those techniques to government,” said Braun, who opted to run for governor rather than becoming a “career” D.C. politician. “I was a successful state legislator for three years and took a year off running for the Senate and have become one of the most effective U.S senators on passing legislation.
“Now, most people expect you to be here (in Washington D.C.) three terms if not three decades,” he added. “If you’re good at business, government’s a lot easier. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you can do a lot of good things in government and do it running a business well. And that is what I became after I came back home (to Jasper) after business school at Wabash College (in Crawfordsville, Ind.). So, it’ll be because I learned a lot in the real world before I decided to get into government.”
When he returned to Jasper in southern Indiana after getting an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, Braun says he “went with a little business that was struggling selling mostly to the farm market.” And to keep the doors open, he started selling bumpers and running boards and all kinds of componentry made up in the Elkhart area, which, he said, wasn’t all that much at the time.
The end result of all that, however, was Meyer Distributing.
“And over 17 years, we built that into a kind of regional business,” he recalled. “And now it’s (Meyer) a national business – a company that I started from scratch, a distribution business selling auto and truck accessories, then moving into RV parts and accessories. And now we do a host of other things. And I had one little office in a used mobile home for 17 years. And now we have 90 locations in 40 states and three in Canada. So that’s the American dream. It took a while to really get going, though.”
