Four attorneys join Braun’s transition team

Just hours after winning the race for Indiana governor, Mike Braun took to the podium to announce the senior appointments to his transition team and inaugural committee, who will help prepare him to take office on Jan. 1.

Of the 12 appointees named by the governor-elect, four are attorneys, including transition chair Victor Smith.

Bringing on so many attorneys with a wide range of knowledge is necessary to make sure the switch in administrations goes off without a hitch, experts say.

“There’s just so many legal aspects to that transition that, if not handled properly, can cause a lot of embarrassment or massive legal trouble,” said Chad Kinsella, an associate professor of political science at Ball State University.

Smith brings experience in law, government service and government relations to the team. He is a partner in the business services and government services at Bose McKinney & Evans LLP, a principal of Bose Public Affairs Group and a former secretary of commerce under then-Gov. Mike Pence.

Other attorneys appointed to the senior transition team are:

• James Bopp, a Terre Haute attorney who has a national reputation as an expert in conservative legal causes, particularly the anti-abortion movement.

He also is general counsel for Hoosiers for Opportunity, Prosperity & Enterprise, or HOPE, a nonprofit organization that partnered with Braun’s campaign to develop policies during his campaign run.

• Randy Head, a member of Krieg DeVault’s governmental affairs and public advocacy practice, chair of the Indiana State Republican Committee and a former state senator.

• Dan Dumezich, a retired partner with Deloitte Tax LLP from Schererville who is also the former chair of the Indiana Election Commission and a former state representative.

Braun said that the transition team and inaugural committee will begin its work immediately by developing policy proposals, conducting state agency reviews, and planning inaugural events, according to a news release from his team.

Attorneys typically fill several crucial roles on a government transition team, particularly in providing legal guidance when hiring staff members who will work for the governor throughout his term.

“They have to work fast and furious in order to get all of those people in place as quickly as possible, and they don’t have a whole lot of time to do it,” Kinsella said, referencing the tight turnaround between election night in November and the inauguration in January.

In their roles, these attorneys typically pore over the list of applicants to fill open roles, performing background checks and other human resources-type tasks to ensure anyone who’s hired won’t bring bad policy or publicity to the governor’s team, Kinsella said.

He pointed to former Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher as a cautionary tale on how a governor’s team can go south if attorneys aren’t in place to make sure hiring laws are followed.

Fletcher was elected governor of Kentucky in 2003 and was almost immediately embroiled in a hiring scandal. Eventually, authorities dismissed charges that he violated hiring laws in a scheme to reward supporters with state jobs, but scandal percolated for years.

“They made a lot of mistakes, and they paid dearly for it,” Kinsella said.

While some staff members hired onto the transition team will stay on in permanent positions, others will eventually go back to their law firms.

But their time on the transition team will have a lasting impact by allowing them to build relationships with other team members and giving them access down the line to potentially influence decisions made within the Braun administration.

“In participating in this, they’re going to have access, and they’re going to have met a whole lot of people in terms of thinking about lobbying the executive branch,” Kinsella said. “They’re just well-connected at that point because they have met all of the key people that are in key positions across the state.”

HOPE group’s role in Braun transition

In addition to Bopp, several non-attorney transition team members are part of HOPE.

HOPE’s mission is to bring conservative policy proposals to the government’s attention with the goal of lobbying for those proposals to become law, Bopp said.

HOPE had been working independently on advocacy for certain issues when Braun asked the non-profit to partner with his campaign to develop policies.

These policies are posted on HOPE’s website and lay out plans for health care, education, inflation, and public safety.

Most notably, the campaign’s Freedom and Opportunity Agenda health care plan seeks to address six goals to bring better health care to Hoosiers across the state, including lowering health care costs, enhancing the transparency of health care prices, and increasing competition in the health care field.

In his Nov. 6 press conference, Braun said one of the biggest issues the state is facing right now is its high infant and maternal mortality rate.

The preliminary infant mortality rate in Indiana in 2023 was estimated at 6.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to March 2024 data from the Indiana Department of Health. Despite the number being significantly lower than 2022’s rate of 7.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, the estimation is still a ways from the Healthy People 2030 Goal, a national data-driven plan established by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

The HP 2030 Goal aims for a national average of 5 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030.

“Our general health as a state, and the cost of it [is] something that, if we get that correct, that will singly be better than what we’ve probably done collectively over many generations of past governors,” Braun said during his press conference.

For his role, Bopp will help maintain the boundaries in which Braun and his team can operate, including determining which policies can be implemented via executive order and which need legislative approval.

“Part of our role is to get him as much information as we possibly can and make recommendations so that he can be prepared,” Bopp said.

This is not the first time he’s worked on the transition team for a new governor: Bopp previously served on former governor Mitch Daniels’ campaign and transition team. He said HOPE’s work on Braun’s team mirrors Daniels’ campaign, Aiming Higher.

The transition team will take what was learned from Daniels’ and other Republican governors’ transitions and apply it to Braun’s move as needed.

Once the transition is complete and inauguration day comes and goes, Bopp and the rest of HOPE will continue raising money to support Braun’s legislative agenda through legislative and
grassroots lobbying.•