United Senator Senator Mike Braun To Keynote CCO Annual Awards Luncheon On September 20, 2024
AUGUST 16, 2024
United States Senator Mike Braun will be the keynote speaker at the City-County Observer Community Service Awards Luncheon on September 20 at Bally’s in Evansville.
Braun grew up in Jasper, married his high school sweetheart, Maureen, and built a successful business that employs 1500 hundred of people nationally.
Under Braun’s leadership, Myer Distributing has become one of the industry leaders in auto parts distribution, and the company has averaged 22 percent growth since 2009. Throughout the growth of the business, Braun has insisted on keeping the headquarters in his hometown.
Before his successful run for the United States Senate in 2018, Braun served on the local school board and served as a State Representative. He is known as an advocate for conservative values. After graduating from Harvard, Braun moved back to Indiana and joined his father’s business manufacturing truck bodies for farmers. When the economy of the mid-1980s hit farmers hard and his father’s business nearly went under, Braun steered the business in the more lucrative direction of selling truck accessories.
The business subsequently grew from 15 employees to more than 300.[ In 1986, Braun and Daryl Rauscher acquired Meyer Body Inc., a manufacturer of truck bodies and distributor of truck parts and equipment.[Braun fully acquired the company in 1995 and renamed it Meyer Distributing in 1999. Braun is its president and CEO.[]In 2018, Braun’s personal finance disclosure listed assets worth between $35 million and $96 million.
On January 3, 2019, Braun was sworn in as the juniorUnited States senator from Indiana by Vice President Mike Pence.
In May 2019, Braun was one of eight senators who voted against a $19.1 billion emergency aid package for states and territories that endured hurricanes, floods, and fires. Braun said the disaster assistance process was “just another path for runaway spending on unrelated projects.” Despite his opposition, the package was enacted with bipartisan support and President Trump’s approval.[22]
Braun supported Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria in October 2019. As a result, in that month, Turkey launched a military offensive against the American-allied Kurds in that area. After that, Braun called Trump “smart”; questioned why the U.S. should “be in the crossfire” between Turkey and the Kurds; and called the idea that ISIS would recover strength as a result of the conflict “an assumption”.[24]
In December 2019, Braun said that the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump had been a “disaster for Democrat
Committee assignments
For the 118th United States Congress, Braun was named to four Senate committees:
- Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
- Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
- Committee on the Budget
- Special Committee on Aging (Ranking)
- The annual City
