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INDIANAPOLIS (NETWORK INDIANA) – U.S. Senator Mike Braun, R-Ind., is leading the Indiana gubernatorial race with less than 50 days until Election Day, according to a new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted earlier this month, shows that over 45% support Braun for governor in November.

Braun announced his candidacy in December 2022 and is running with Micah Beckwith, a local pastor and podcast host, as his running mate.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When it comes to Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s name, it’s complicated.

The senator from Ohio introduced himself to the world in 2016 when he published his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” under the name J.D. Vance — “like jay-dot-dee-dot,” he wrote, short for James David. In the book, he explained that this was not the first iteration of his name. Nor would it be the last.

Over the course of his 39 years, Vance’s first, middle and last names have all been altered in one way or another. As Vance is being introduced to voters across the country as Donald Trump’s new running mate, his name has been the source of both curiosity and questions — including why he no longer uses periods in JD.

He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, on Aug. 2, 1984, his middle and last names the same as his biological father, Donald Bowman. His parents split up “around the time I started walking,” he writes. When he was about 6, his mother, Beverly, married for the third time. He was adopted by his new stepfather, Robert Hamel, and his mother renamed him James David Hamel.

When his mother erased Donald Bowman from his and her lives, the adoption process also erased the name James Donald Bowman from the public record. The only birth certificate for Vance on file at Ohio’s vital statistics office reads James David Hamel, according to information provided by the state.

Beverly kept the boy’s initials the same, since he went universally by J.D., Vance explains in the book. He didn’t buy his mother’s story that he was named for his uncle David, though. “Any old D name would have done, so long as it wasn’t Donald,” he wrote.

Vance spent more than two decades as James David “J.D.” Hamel. It’s the name by which he graduated from Middletown High School, served in Iraq as a U.S. Marine (officially, Cpl. James D. Hamel), earned a political science degree at The Ohio State University and blogged his ruminations as a 26-year-old student at Yale Law School. Those facts are borne out in documentation provided by those entities upon request, or otherwise publicly available, and were confirmed by campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk.

But the situation gnawed at him, particularly after his mother and adoptive father divorced.

“I shared a name with no one I really cared about (which bothered me already), and with Bob gone, explaining why my name was J.D. Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments,” he writes in “Hillbilly Elegy.” “Yeah, my legal father’s last name is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see him. Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures.”

So he decided to change his name again, to Vance — the last name of his beloved Mamaw, the grandmother who raised him.

It didn’t happen on his wedding day in 2014, as the book implies, but in April 2013, as he was about to graduate from Yale, Van Kirk said. It felt right to take the name of the woman who raised him before dying in 2005, as he was putting the struggles of his early life behind him and launching into this new phase.

“Throughout his tumultuous childhood, Mamaw — or Bonnie Blanton Vance — raised JD and was always his north star,” Van Kirk said in a statement. “It only felt right to him to take Vance as his last name.”

Claiming the Vance name also served to tie JD more clearly to what he writes was “hillbilly royalty” on his grandfather’s side not long before he would release a book opining on hillbilly culture. A distant cousin to his Papaw, also named James Vance, married into the McCoy-hating Hatfield family and committed a murder that “kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history,” Vance wrote in his book.

Vance achieved a clean slate of sorts with his new name, just as he was entering his career as a lawyer and author. Besides being the name on his book, it’s the name he used to register for the bar, to marry, to enter the world of venture capital in the Silicon Valley and as he became a father.

But there was one more name alteration to come.

When Vance jumped into politics in July 2021, he had removed the periods from J.D. He’d often used this shorthand, JD, over his lifetime.

Asked by The Associated Press at the time if this was a formal change, or merely stylistic, his campaign said it was how Vance preferred to be referred to in print. He has maintained the usage as a U.S. senator, referring to himself as JD Vance on his Senate website, in press releases and in certain campaign and business filings.

The nominee’s legal name today is James David Vance. The AP, whose industry-standard AP Stylebook advises to generally call people by the name they prefer, honors his request to go by JD with no periods.

INDIANAPOLIS (NETWORK INDIANA) — Property tax increases have been something Hoosiers have been dealing with for the last couple of years.

Some Hoosiers, especially senior citizens who are retired, have been priced out of their homes due to massive increases based on the latest appraisals of their property by the state.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is running for governor, told WIBC’s “Kendal and Casey Show” on Friday that he has a plan to give Hoosiers a lot of relief from rising property taxes.

“Government, at the local level, should never grow faster than the ability of a taxpayer to pay for it,” Braun said. “This is to acknowledge that (property taxes) got completely out of hand.”

Braun has released what he calls a blueprint for property tax reform in the state of Indiana. At the core of the plan is a push to return property tax rates, as well as bills, to 2021 levels. Furthermore, he wants to cap property taxes at no more than two-percent of a home’s assessed property value for senior citizens and no more than three-percent for younger homeowners.

“This is going more than just attacking a rate or the assessment,” Braun clarified. “It is the bill that everyone is interested in. This is going to take your tax BILLS back to that level.”

Braun’s plan would also allow homeowners to “deduct 60-percent of their home’s assessed value from their tax bill.”

Overall, he said these reforms will result in an immediate 21-percent tax cut for Hoosiers.

Finally, Braun said his plan would also help ensure more transparency when it comes to the referendum process on the local level when it comes to property tax increases. The plan would require that referendums, such as those pushed by local school boards, only take place during “high-turnout elections”. Braun said many property tax increases are passed during low-turnout elections when transparency about them is lacking.

“Nothing is more important than ensuring Hoosiers can afford to live in their homes without being overburdened by rising property taxes,” Braun said. “My plan focuses on capping property tax increases, updating deductions, increasing transparency, and reforming the referendum process.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.

The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.

It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.

“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.

Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.

“This is going to be historic,” she added.

Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.

“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.

The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.

According to an Associated Press survey, Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.

Biden endorsed Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.

The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the president’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.

Barack Obama’s initial statement after Biden’s announcement did not mention Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.

Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Harris’ campaign.