McCormick, a Democrat and career educator who pledged to focus on school funding and academic freedom, lost by a wide margin — — with 92% of precincts reporting. 

Braun, 70, will succeed Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who was unable to run again because of term limits. 

A former school board member who cited faith, family and community as his central concerns, Braun said Tuesday that serving in government is far easier than running a business, as he had for decades: He was founder and CEO of Meyer Distributing, an auto parts and equipment company he built in his hometown of Jasper. 

“In government, you just have to be smart enough to not spend more than you take in,” he told supporters. 

Braun served as a state representative from 2014 to 2017. He resigned in November 2017 to concentrate on his run for U.S. Senate. 

His multi-point plan for education focused on expanding the state’s popular school voucher program, which grew to encompass more than — a 31% increase from the year before.

Braun is also a staunch supporter of parents’ rights and has, in the past, . He said parents should be informed if their child seeks to use a different name or pronouns and that transgender girls — whom he calls biological males — should not compete in girls’ sports. 

His new lieutenant governor, pastor Micah Beckwith, co-hosts a podcast called “Jesus, Sex and Politics.” He raised ire when he said in 2021 that God had . Beckwith wasn’t Braun’s first choice: Indiana’s GOP delegates chose him in a stunning vote at the party’s convention in June, rejecting Braun’s pick, first-term . 

Despite the shakeup, the pair trounced McCormick and running mate , a former school superintendent and state representative. 

Among his many pledges, Braun has vowed to create an Indiana Office of School Safety to streamline several departments and implement age-appropriate cyber safety training for students. 

He also said the state should limit cellphone use in schools and favors curtailing some speech in classrooms.  

“We need to protect our children by making sure divisive theories like [critical race theory] or discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity have no place in our public schools,” his campaign website said. 

Braun also wants to increase the base salaries for Indiana’s public school teachers and financially reward educators whose students perform well. 

Indiana has not elected since 2000. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump won the state handily over Democrat Kamala Harris 58.9% to 39.4%. 

Polling released this week by the Democratic Governors Association shows Braun just three points in front of McCormick, 44% to 41%. That’s a dropoff from the Sept. 17 results of an that had Braun with roughly 45% of the vote and McCormick with 34. Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater also picked up more support but less dramatically so, going from 5.8% to 8%.

Indiana has not elected since 2000 and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds a comfortable 14 percentage point lead, 57% to 43%, over Democrat Kamala Harris, according to an

If elected to succeed Gov. , Braun and his running mate, pastor, podcaster and far-right , have pledged universal school choice for every Indiana family while focusing on parental rights and school safety. 

McCormick, a career educator, was the last person elected to the superintendent of public instruction’s office before it became an appointed position in 2021. She seeks to expand affordable child care, fight what she believes is excessive state-mandated testing and call for an equitable school funding formula. 

She also wants to place limits on the state’s private school voucher initiative: The grew to encompass more than , a 31% increase from the year before. The state allocated $439 million in tuition grants to private parochial or non-religious schools last year — up from nearly $312 million the year before.

McCormick said the program, which might have been intended for lower-income children, is often utilized by white suburban families and is too expensive. 

“We can’t afford it,” she told The 74, “and it is sucking the resources out of our traditional schools.” 

Braun, 70, wants to expand school choice by annual family income cap from the voucher program, known as the Choice Scholarship Program, and allocated to the state’s Education Scholarship Account Program. The program, which has also in participation, gives special education students and their siblings funds for tuition and support services. 

Braun did not make himself available for an interview and attempts to reach various supporters were not successful.

“School choice programs put parents in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose schools that prioritize their children’s needs,” he states in his education plan. “Providing universal school choice will ensure every Hoosier family has the same freedom to choose their best-fit education.”

A former school board member, Braun also wants to create an Indiana Office of School Safety to streamline the efforts of several departments, including the state police — and implement age-appropriate cyber training for students regarding online safety. He said, too, that the state should limit cellphone use on campus. 

Braun wants to increase Indiana’s public teacher base salary — and financially reward educators whose students perform well. 

Keith Gambill, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said his group , 54, because of her commitment to funding traditional public schools. 

He noted she did not have the group’s endorsement when she initially ran for the state superintendent’s office as a Republican. But, Gambill said, after filling the role and understanding the state’s educational needs, and her values more closely aligned with the union’s. 

“She really stood up to members of — at that time — her own party in working toward what was best for our schools,” he said, speaking of her time in office. “And, of course, as soon as they were challenged, they didn’t like that. She realized that if she was going to make a difference in public education, she would have to move in a different direction.”

McCormick aims to secure a minimum base salary of $60,000 for pre-K-12 educators, and adjust veteran teacher salaries to reflect their non-educator peers. She wants to increase academic freedom, safeguard university tenure and protect the ability of teachers unions to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. 

Her running mate, , a former state representative, was a teacher, assistant principal and public school superintendent at Crothersville Community Schools.

Braun, in his education plan, said he wants schools to notify parents about their child’s request to change their name or use different pronouns on campus. He has for minors and opposes . Braun has the backing of Americans for Prosperity and CPAC — and maintains high ratings from the NRA. 

Braun was endorsed in 2023 and won his party’s nomination for governor in May after beating out a crowded field of GOP contenders. He acknowledged last month, that Harrris’s presence at the top of the presidential ticket has complicated down-ballot races, including his own.

“I think that’s had an impact,” he said, “but I’m going to plow through that because this is a lot about kitchen table issues once you’re starting to run for governor.”

But that wasn’t the case in Loudoun County where former schools chief Scott Ziegler was indicted last week in a high-profile case in which a teen boy assaulted two female classmates months apart — with no warning to the greater school community after the first attack.

This time, it was Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, elected last year on a pledge to empower parents, who spearheaded the investigation into the district’s handling of the case: Acting on his state Attorney General Jason Miyares impaneled a special grand jury to investigate the school system’s alleged coverup and mishandling of the assaults. Its findings were released earlier this month in a .

Ziegler was fired after the grand jury found he lied to the public about the first incident, which took place in a girl’s bathroom. 

The location sparked outrage among those who believed the assault was tied to the district’s decision to allow students to use the bathroom of their choosing rather than the one that corresponds with their sex assigned at birth. The attacker was wearing a kilt at the time. Despite early rumors, he is not transgender and the bathroom policyuntil long after the first assault.

Both Ziegler and the district spokesperson were with the former superintendent facing multiple misdemeanors, including false publication, and his colleague, Wayde Byard, accused of felony perjury. Ziegler was also charged in connection with a special education teacher who said the district failed to take action after she complained of being and then retaliated against her for speaking out.

Ziegler, in a statement to The Washington Post last week, spoke about the grand jury investigation and said, “I am disappointed that an Attorney General-controlled, secret, and one-sided process — which never once sought my testimony — has made such false and irresponsible accusations. I will vigorously defend myself. I look forward to a time when the truth becomes public.”

Youngkin’s intervention, while unusual, is no surprise. Conservative parents in Loudoun County, riled by the district’s COVID policies, teachings about systemic racism and alleged sexualization of children through LGBTQ literature, have been among the most vocal in the country since the pandemic began. Youngkin capitalized on that during his campaign and came through with his promise to give parents statewide a greater say in the goings-on at their children’s school — starting with Loudoun County.

After the grand jury report was released, Youngkin addressed the backlash to his direct role in setting the investigation into motion.

“I do believe that part of my job as governor is to make the decisions to shine light on circumstances like this,” he told . “And at the end of the day, we were going to … make sure that the facts were clear, and that those that had, in fact, violated their duty would be held accountable. And that’s exactly what happened.”

The grand jury’s recounting of the case seemed to shed more light on the disturbing series of events than the political heat they generated.

The offender, just 14 years old at the time of the first attack on May 28, 2021, arranged to meet a classmate in the bathroom for a consensual encounter only to forcibly sodomize her. The victim’s father, who drove to campus soon after, was chastised by school officials for causing a ruckus at the front office. Administrators alerted parents to his behavior that day — not to the sexual assault. 

Even worse, parents said, school officials were warned more than two weeks earlier about the boy’s troubling behavior: A teaching assistant, writing to a superior at Stone Bridge High School about his infractions, ended with, “I wouldn’t want to be held accountable if someone should get hurt,” the grand jury found.

Parents were even more enraged by what came next: The boy was merely transferred to another school — rather than placed in a more secure setting — where he sexually assaulted and nearly asphyxiated another girl at his new campus on October 6, 2021.

The grand jury blamed the district for the second assault, attributing it to a “remarkable lack of curiosity” and “adherence to operating in silos.” Among the more surprising revelations: A special education teaching assistant walked into the bathroom during the first assault, saw two sets of feet in one of the stalls and did nothing about it.

The report also noted a June 22, 2021, school board meeting in which the superintendent said, in response to a question, “to my knowledge, we don’t have any records of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” He was lying, the grand jury found: He and other school staff had already discussed the offense. Ziegler has said he thought he was being asked if they had records of any transgender or gender-fluid students assaulting other students in school bathrooms.

And there was a lead up, too, to the second assault. On Sept. 9, the boy grabbed a girl aggressively, tapped her head with a pencil and asked if she posted nude photos online. He asked another boy in his class “if his grandmothers’ nudes were posted online,” according to the report.

The superintendent, deputy superintendent and chief of staff were alerted to these incidents and knew this was the same boy involved in the earlier assault, the grand jury reported. 

“Despite having a 12-page disciplinary file, wearing an ankle monitor, being closely monitored by the Broad Run principal, knowledge of this incident by the highest administrators in LCPS … the individual received nothing more than a verbal admonishment,” they wrote. 

A juvenile court judge found sufficient evidence to sustain the charges in the first assault in October 2021 and the teen pleaded no contest to the charges in the second assault a month later. The judge to receive treatment, counseling and full rehabilitation at a locked residential facility until he turns 18, noting, “This one scares me.”

Erin Poe, who has three sons in the district, said she was devastated upon learning the scope of school administrators’ dishonesty and ineptitude. 

“I cannot imagine what this has done to the girls’ lives,” she said, adding she laments the district’s “unconscionable” decision to hide this news from families and move the offending student to another campus. “The entire situation was handled so poorly, from the victims to the child who committed these acts. All the way around, things need to change.”

Poe, co-founder of , an activist group, told The 74 she’s grateful for the Republican governor’s intervention: She voted for Youngkin and hopes he’ll help expose the district’s wrongdoings. 

“I was happy to see Youngkin was going to make Loudoun County an example,” she said, adding his involvement, “would make it harder for them to do things the way they want — rather than the way it should be handled.”

But Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, said Youngkin’s role has gone “above and beyond.” He said the investigation into the district’s handling of the case could have happened without him. 

“I think it’s just part of his politics to continue to come across as the champion of education in Virginia — and a champion of parents’ rights,” said Domenech, who lives in Virginia and has closely watched Youngkin’s ascent and the scandal plaguing the Loudoun schools.

He said both Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — alongside Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who during the pandemic — are “out of line.” 

He cited DeSantis for removing board members from Broward County schools this summer after a grand jury accused them of related to their role in managing a campus security program. DeSantis ordered the grand jury to investigate the district after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. 

That probe also resulted in the 2021 indictment on felony perjury charges of former Broward County schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, of the hardline governor. Runcie has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

“DeSantis has gotten himself involved in education to a level we have never seen,” Domenech said. “He’s, in a number of school districts, removed board members, appointed board members — which is really a local election process. I’ve been in this business for 55 years and have never seen anything like this.”

In Loudoun County, the parents of the second victim had little use for school leadership across the board, according to a statement they issued after the release of the grand jury’s report.

“The senior leaders at both high schools, along with the Loudoun County Public Schools and the School Board members, should be reminded that our fifteen-year-old daughter displayed more courage and leadership when she reported what happened to her to the Sheriff’s Resource Officer than any of them ever did,” they said. “The ineptitude of all involved is staggering.”

Disclosure: Andy Rotherham is a member of the Virginia Board of Education and sits on The 74’s board of directors. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this story.