"Hoo Owns the Candidates?" Mike Braun, Part 4

Extractive Industries

This is the fifth in a series entitled “Hoo Owns the Candidates?” wherein we look at the money flowing into the coffers of Hoosier political candidates as they gear up for 2024. Today, we take another look at Senator Mike Braun, who is vacating his seat in Washington to run for Governor. Previous installments have looked at Braun’s big donors in the RV industry, medicine, and agriculture. The first installment of the “Hoo Owns” series was on U.S. Senate candidate Jim Banks, and can be found here.

Photo by Chad Peltola on Unsplash

Rolling with the theme from my last piece, consider this installment and the next a continuation in the ongoing examination of a certain subset of Mike Braun’s big donors: polluters.

While many may think of agriculture as “natural” and therefore not dirty or polluting, no sane or honest person could make such a claim about the extractive industries. According to a comprehensive UN study released in 2019, “extractive industries are responsible for half of the world’s carbon emissions and more than 80% of biodiversity loss, according to the most comprehensive environmental tally undertaken of mining and farming.”

Though we rightly spend a great deal of time thinking about the transition away from coal, oil, and gas for power and transportation, the 53% of all carbon emissions that come from the mining and drilling industries don’t even consider the eventual BURNING of those fuels. This is just from extraction and primary processing. The production of cement and concrete alone is responsible for nearly 10% of annual human CO2 emissions.

Going all the way back to John D. Rockefeller, the Republican Party and the fossil fuel industries have been intimately aligned, increasingly so since Reagan. Mining industry contributions, though not as prolific, have been even more partisan in favor of the GOP. Braun doesn’t boast a great number of donors in this sector, perhaps signaling their interest in another Republican candidate. Perhaps signaling nothing at all. We’ll find out in the months ahead as we dive into the other GOPers running for governor. For now, let’s profile Braun’s business daddies in the extractive industries:

---

Jay Ricker, Pendleton, $50,000 - Semi-retired founder/CEO/President of Ricker Oil Company and Ricker’s convenience stores. Ricker’s entire operations were acquired by Pittsburgh-based grocer Giant Eagle in 2018 for an undisclosed amount. Given the acquisition included 56 convenience stores and a wholesale fuels distribution business of approximately 80 branded supply accounts, and that Giant Eagle turned around and sold just four of the c-stores for $19.5 million in 2023, the deal must have run into the hundreds of millions. Ricker has also chaired several lobbying groups: the National Association of Convenience Stores, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, the BP Marketers Association, and the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. Additionally he served as chairman of the Fuels Institute (recently rebranded greenwashed as the Transportation Energy Institute), a nonprofit research-oriented think tank that gives a scientific sheen to the oil and gas industry.

Family Express PAC $20,000 - Another member of fossil fuel trade groups like the National Association of Convenience Stores, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, and the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, Family Express was founded in Valparaiso by CEO Gus Olympidis in 1975, operating 81 units in Northern Indiana. Between the company PAC (state/federal) and Ol’ Gus (state/federal) himself, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on political contributions, overwhelmingly to Republicans.

Richard Rechter, Bloomington, $20,000 - Retired Chairman of the Rogers Group. Founded in Bloomington by Ralph Rogers in 1908, Rogers Group is now headquartered in Nashville, TN and “is the largest privately owned construction aggregate company in the country.” In addition to crushed rock, the company also handles hot mix asphalt, heavy construction, underground utilities, concrete, excavation, grading, and specialty products. Under financial duress, they mined coal for several years in the 1980’s to get by. According to their website, “noteworthy projects over the decades include: Oak Ridge, TN (home of the ‘Manhattan Project’ nuclear research); Fort Campbell, KY (home of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division); Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division near Indianapolis, IN; Interstate 40 in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas; and Interstate 24 in Kentucky and Tennessee.” Ralph Rogers’ son-in-law, Ben Rechter, was killed in a plane crash in 1951. His sons, our protagonist Rick and his twin brothers, inherited the company upon the death of their grandfather in 1976. Rick has been a prolific Republican donor, spending over $200,000 in Indiana alone. That number grows considerably when zooming out nationwide, and further still when you consider other members of the Rechter family.

---

As the most consistent and prolific funder of the Republican Party, the extractive industries have been an enemy to Americans who value a livable environment - as well as to those who value civil rights, women’s liberation, LGBTQ acceptance, a robust social safety net, and democracy itself - all the things the GOP stands against. And this is not just an American issue, but a global problem.

Natural resource wealth, corruption, and authoritarianism go hand-in-hand.

Equatorial Guinea? Corrupt authoritarian petrostate.

Venezuela? Corrupt authoritarian petrostate.

Saudi Arabia? Corrupt authoritarian petrostate.

Russia? Corrupt authoritarian petrostate.

Texas and Oklahoma? You think the United States is immune from this phenomenon? Also corrupt authoritarian petrostates. Read Rachel Maddow’s Blowout for a thoroughly fun, yet terribly depressing, account of oil’s corrupt influence at home and abroad.

This graphic comes from Dave Troy. If you aren’t following his work, you absolutely MUST.

Big oil, gas, and mining provide much of the funding that powers the global authoritarian movement, from Putin’s Russia all the way down to state-level races in the U.S. The Center for Global Development describes the “resource curse” better than I can, stating “large oil revenues and lucrative foreign contracts give incumbent leaders both an incentive to stay in office and the resources to bribe voters and stifle dissent.” I will further add that wealth of such magnitude allows foreign oligarchs undue influence in Western democracies, our very freedoms and open markets weaponized against us.

Sure, Russian mobsters and Arab sheiks provide sexy antagonists in the war extractive wealth perpetrates on the great mass of the people, but political action committees and campaign contributions serve as the legal means by which these same forces fight democracy here at home. Oil, gas, and mining pollute our politics as well as our planet.