A Braun presidential run? ‘No interest.' Plus thoughts on Purdue trustees, SK hynix incentives

Gov. Mike Braun was on Purdue’s campus Thursday to help open Indiana FFA convention. Plus, more on the delay on vote for solar project in western Tippecanoe County.

Gov. Mike Braun (Photo: Dave Bangert)

Gov. Mike Braun put a pin into ballooning speculation in recent weeks that he’s toying with the idea of running for president in 2028.

Stepping out of Elliott Hall of Music Thursday morning, where he and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith addressed more than 3,000 high schoolers on Purdue’s campus this week for the Indiana Future Farmers of America convention, Braun scoffed at the notion of a presidential bid.

“I’m concentrating on being governor and have no interest in that,” Braun said outside Elliott Hall. “I don't know who came up with that, but it’s had nothing to do with anything I've said.”

Questions have swirled since Politico reporter Adam Wren had a mention June 6 that Braun, a former U.S. senator elected as governor in 2024, “has privately discussed the idea of mounting his own presidential campaign, according to three Republicans familiar with his thinking.”

Braun has been able to avoid much of that conversation since then. (Not that the idea didn’t gain some steam on its own, including this passage from Indianapolis Star columnist James Briggs: “Braun is bored with being governor, just like he got bored early in his Senate term. We're stuck for three and a half years with someone who pursued the governor's office for a dopamine rush and now would prefer to be elsewhere.” Read the rest of Briggs’ take here.)

“I get asked that often by people that are good supporters, especially from the time I spent out in the Senate,” Braun said Thursday. “But when I came back here and gave up another term there, this was about a job that looks like you're going to get a lot more done with the time that you're spending at it.”

After a keynote welcome to the Indiana FFA – in which he encouraged the blue-jacketed crowd with bullet points from his own entrepreneurial resume, telling them that “if you get up each day and view it with opportunity, you work hard, you never know where life might take you” – Braun touched on these, too:

Were recent moves targeting IU a warning shot for Purdue? Earlier in June, Braun wasted little time with the authority given to him by the General Assembly – courtesy of provision slipped into last-minute legislation during the 2025 session – to remove three Indiana University trustees elected by alumni in favor of his own picks. Braun appointed James Bopp, Jr., a lightning rod attorney on anti-abortion, same-sex marriage and other conservative causes; Sage Steele, a former ESPN anchor known for controversial comments on vaccines and race; and Brian Eagle, an Indianapolis estate attorney.

“I think what you saw at IU was, as one of our flagships here, issues that I think many would say need maybe different group of governance,” Braun said. “And that’s one of the options.”

Braun said that the idea of taking away the IU alumni’s input on three trustees came from the legislature – “I really knew nothing about it, had not discussion of it.”

But he bought in once he had that power and made the changes in the weeks after the legislative session instead of waiting for trustees’ terms to be up, correct?

“Once it was there, I didn’t object at all,” Braun said. “To me, it's because there's a lot of resources that go into running our public schools, K through 12 and post-secondary. I'm going to tell you, most Hoosier families are straining at the cost of it.”

Braun pointed to Mitch Daniels-era changes at Purdue – including an ongoing tuition freeze and a push for three-year degrees, among them – as business-style, return-on-investment practices he’d like to see other state campuses take on.

Does he see a need to shake up Purdue’s Board of Trustees and replace any Eric Holcomb-era appointments there?