China land grabs, skipped budget vote: Fact checking Indiana Republicans' gubernatorial ads
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Campaign ads only have space for flashy, to-the-point claims. And Indiana's competitive race for the Republican governor nomination has no shortage of these.
Four of the six Republican candidates have collectively produced about 40 unique television ads, plus a handful of digital-only ads ― and counting. These last two weeks before the primary, Hoosiers are likely to see another blitz, both on TV and on social media.
The candidates have attacked front-runner U.S. Sen. Mike Braun in these ads, but they've also made claims about their own records. In addition to Braun, former Secretary of Commerce Brad Chambers, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Fort Wayne entrpreneur Eric Doden, former Attorney General Curtis Hill and Indianapolis mother Jamie Reitenour are vying for the post. Hill and Reitenour have neither bought nor been the subject of video advertising.
More fact checks: What the candidates for governor got right or wrong during this week's debates
Here's our fact-check analysis of some of the claims made in these TV and digital ads.
CLAIM: Braun skipped a $1.2 trillion budget vote "to attend a fundraiser for his campaign," then went home to sleep.
Source: Doden.
Braun did miss the 2 a.m. spending vote on March 23. He was at home in Jasper. And he did attend a fundraiser hours before at his sister's home in Indiana. But the spin on this ad suggests an intent that the Braun camp says is not true.
The fundraiser ended at 7 p.m. Friday March 22. Braun's team says he was prepared to fly to D.C. on a 9:30 p.m. flight, but that Senate staff told him a vote would likely not happen until Saturday, so he opted to fly out Saturday morning. Then, the roll call ended up happening at 1:51 a.m.
CLAIM: Braun "tried to end legal protections for law enforcement" and "supported a radical defund-the-police group."
Source: Doden.
The first phrase refers to Braun's 2020 bill that would have limited qualified immunity, a policy that protects police officers from being sued for alleged misconduct. His bill would have limited the use of qualified immunity to cases where the officer's conduct is already protected by existing law or a previous court case.
Braun has repeatedly said that his bill was an attempt to compromise. Democrats were the ones prepared to eliminate qualified immunity altogether, as this ad accuses Braun of trying to do. Nonetheless, after much backlash from police organizations and right-wing news media, Braun changed his mind on this issue.
On supporting a defund-the-police group, the ad refers to Braun's appearance on a podcast during the height of the 2020 racial justice protests and riots, during which he was asked whether he supports the Black Lives Matter movement. Braun said: “I support that movement because it’s addressing an inequity that has not been solved from a grassroots level, and that’s why it’s a big issue here now. And to me, that is totally intertwined with police reform.”
In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News that June, Carlson asked Braun about those comments. "I support anybody that does have a grievance to be able to air it, and that's it," Braun said. "That doesn't mean all lives don't matter, it just means that if you think a certain sector of society has a grievance, it ought to be through transparency and the willingness [to] debate it and get it out there."
Profile: Mike Braun is leading the race for governor. But is his record a liability or benefit?
CLAIM: "Doden ran a government agency that spent millions of Hoosier tax dollars on China."
Source: Braun.
The Braun campaign is referring to the Indiana Economic Development Corporation's awarding incentives during Doden's time as president from 2013 to 2015 to companies that have outsourced jobs to China. Such contracts include awarding $1.75 million in tax credits to Vera Bradley in 2014, about a year before the company shut down its last remaining U.S. manufacturing facility; $150,000 in tax credits to Elkhart-based CTS Corporation; and about $1 million in workforce training grants to General Motors. However, these tax credit amounts are the maximum these companies were allowed to claim, and only if they met certain performance metrics. For example, according to the IEDC's transparency portal, the IEDC has only actually approved $300,000 in tax credits for Vera Bradley and none for CTS Corporation.
Does this count as spending "on China?" That seems like a stretch. In the case of Vera Bradley, the money was for a project to expand the distribution and design centers at the company's Allen County campus. CTS was to add a new production line at its headquarters in Elkhart; the money for General Motors was for training works in assembly plants near Fort Wayne and Bedford.
CLAIM: Doden opposed President Trump's tax cuts.
Source: Braun.
The Braun campaign sources its claim that Doden opposed President Donald Trump's tax cut package in 2017 from a Fort Wayne Journal Gazette article at the time. In the article, Doden argued against eliminating the Historic Tax Credit, which he said was vital for the renovation of the General Election campus in Fort Wayne. He didn't comment on whether he supported or opposed the tax cuts as a whole. The tax cut package was introduced the following month.
Profile: Doden has been campaigning for governor the longest. He thinks he finally has momentum.
CLAIM: Crouch prevented China from buying up land near Indiana military sites.
Source: Crouch.
Crouch played a key role in securing money in the 2023 state budget for a land conservation project near the Crane naval base, according to an email from the project's organizers shared by Crouch's campaign.
She secured $1.9 million in the budget for the Busseron Creek Conservation Project, a project of the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape, a federally designated area anchored by the region's four defense installations: Naval Support Activity Crane, the Lake Glendora Test Facility, Atterbury-Muscatatuck Training Center, and the Indiana Air Range Complex.
The primary purpose of the federal and state coalition, founded in 2022, is "preserving and protecting military mission readiness, operations, testing and training capabilities," according to its website, though it also has a general land conservation mission.
While preventing a Chinese land-grab is not explicitly stated as part of that mission, it's a politically convenient outcome for Crouch to tout.
CLAIM: Crouch voted for the largest property tax cut in state history.
Source: Crouch.
She's referring to former Gov. Mitch Daniels' property tax reform package that the state legislature passed in 2008. The new law instituted the 1% caps we have today, meaning property taxes are limited to 1% of the assessed value of your home. The cut was widely talked about at the time as the largest in state history; Ball State professor Michael Hicks confirmed this for IndyStar using property tax levy data going back to 1973.
In 2008, the Legislative Services Agency estimated property tax bills would be 28% lower as a result. (But to help pay for this, the state increased sales tax from 6 to 7%.)
Profile: In governor run, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch hopes voters will choose experience over politics
CLAIM: Chambers "broke records for job growth" as commerce secretary.
Source: Chambers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures job growth through non-farm payroll numbers. The farming industry is excluded because these jobs are seasonal.
Chambers was commerce secretary from July 2021 to August 2023. The number of non-farm jobs in Indiana climbed back to pre-pandemic levels around March 2022 and have reached record peaks ever since, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development's data dashboard.
CLAIM: "Brad Chambers is the only outsider running."
Source: Chambers.
This depends on one's definition of "outsider." Chambers is certainly the highest-profile candidate who hasn't held elected office before, but neither has Jamie Reitenour, the Indianapolis mother also running as a Republican.
Profile: Brad Chambers never aspired to run for office. Then he joined the Indiana governor's race
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter@kayla_dwyer17.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fact checking the ads in Indiana's Republican governor's race
