Hoo Owns The Candidates: The Smoligarchs

Donor profiles on the people who REALLY run Indiana

Now that I’m done writing my 6,000-word opus (part I | part II) on how Joe Biden and the Democrats’ should message around this year’s general election, I can get back to focusing on Indiana politics. Last year, I began the Hoo Owns the Candidates Series by looking at the early maximum donors to Jim Banks’ Senate campaign and some of the big contributors to Mike Braun’s gubernatorial run. We even took a peek at the fundraising disparity between Republicans and Democrats by examining Jennifer McCormick’s (two) benefactors.

As I mentioned in that piece on McCormick, I had started the Hoo Owns series by profiling donors that gave $10,000 or more. In doing so, I gave myself well over 100 individuals and entities to profile - and that was just for Braun. There are still four other major Republican candidates running for governor against the resigning US Senator. I promised to change up the format and give you more frequent, shorter posts. With just over a month until the Indiana primary election, I’d better get on that.

So, beginning today, I’m going to start pushing out donor profiles one at a time. I’ll jump around between different candidates to make sure we cover all of the highest-dollar contributors, Indiana’s smoligarchs.

What the hell is a smoligarch? Did you just make this word up?

Yes. Yes I did.

If you live in a hole and haven’t been on social media in the last ten years, smol is internet slang for something really tiny, preferably a cute baby animal.

A couple of heckin' smol bois

Now, there’s nothing cute about the real estate developers, auto dealership owners, agribusiness farmers, and private manufacturing tycoons that overwhelmingly dominate political spending at the state and local levels. They may not be as rich and powerful as multi-billionaire oligarchs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates. They may not own a corrupt Supreme Court justice like Harlan Crow or Paul Singer do. But they might be even more dangerous. A 2022 piece in Dissent magazine by Melinda Cooper explains that even more than large, publicly-traded corporations, “small business conservatives have always rubbed shoulders with the nativist, theocratic, and white supremacist currents of the American far right,” and that reactionary movements like the Tea Party and MAGA have been funded largely by the scions of “privately held, unincorporated, and family-based capitalism.” Two Republican megadonors in Texas have moved that state’s politics far to the right almost by themselves. Wisconsin politics have been dominated by the Uihlein and Bradley families. Indiana may not have such singularly-powerful individuals, but we certainly have our share of big spenders pouring money into state politics. Stay tuned to this space as we look at Hoo Owns our statehouse.