Baron Hill

This article describes the US politician Baron Hill, for the British title of the same name see Baron Hill (title of nobility) .

Baron Hill (2007)

Baron Paul Hill (born June 23, 1953 in Seymour , Jackson County , Indiana ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . From 1999 to 2005 and from 2007 to 2011 he was a member of the US House of Representatives for the 9th constituency of the state of Indiana. He won the preselection for the local, far from Dan Coats held US Senate seat in the election in 2016 , but withdrew his candidacy in favor of Evan Bayh in July 2016 back.

Family, education and work

Hill grew up in the small town of Seymour in southern Indiana and attended high school there until 1971 , where he played on the football team with John Mellencamp and has the highest number of hits on the basketball team to date. He played on the first team of the all-state football and basketball team and was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 . He then studied with a sports scholarship at Furman University in South Carolina , where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1975 . His father had worked in a local shoe factory and after his dismissal founded his own insurance and real estate company, which he later ran with his son. Hill stayed with the company for a total of 15 years.

He lives in Seymour and is married to a math teacher. You have three daughters.

Political rise

The Democrat began his political career when he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1982 , to which he was a member until 1990. Since the 1980s, Hill worked within the party to ensure that the Democrats in Indiana, which was previously clearly dominated by the Republic, would become competitive. In 1990 he ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in an extraordinary by-election against the Republican Dan Coats , who ran as the successor to the former incumbent Dan Quayle, who was chosen by Governor Robert D. Orr ; most recently in the state of Birch Bayh won a US Senate election as a Democrat in 1974. After Hill had been behind with up to 30 percent in the polls, he was relatively narrowly defeated with about 46 to 54 percent of the vote. During the election campaign, the outsider Hill had become known for traversing the state of Indiana on a 20-mile day-long hike to get into conversation with the voters and to take a stand against the money fixation of established election campaigns.

In 1992, Governor of Indiana Evan Bayh appointed Hill director of the Indiana State Student Assistance Commission , which provided government assistance with student funding. He then worked as an analyst for the financial services company Merrill Lynch .

Congressman

In 1998 he was first elected as a member of the US House of Representatives and represented there from January 3, 1999 to January 3, 2005 the interests of the ninth congressional electoral district of Indiana. In the 2004 congressional election, he was defeated by his Republican challenger Mike Sodrel . He was able to defeat this in the following congressional election in 2006 with 50 percent of the vote, so that from January 3, 2007 he again represented the 9th District of Indiana in Congress .

Most recently in the House of Representatives he was a member of the Committee on Energy and Trade . He was vice chairman of political content for the Blue Dog Coalition , a financially and socially conservative alliance within the Democratic Party, as well as a member of the Democrats for Life of America , an advocacy group of Democrats that belongs to the rights- to- life movement and advocates a ban on abortions begins. Hill had withdrawn his opposition to abortion shortly before the 1990 Senate election, but later opposed the extensive approval of the decision for pregnant women ( Pro-Choice ). Hill campaigned intensively for the promotion of renewable energies and an active climate policy. In 2009, for example, he supported the failed Clean Energy and Security Act , which would have made it possible to limit CO ₂ emissions comparable to the European Union .

He lost his seat in the 2011 election to Republican Todd Young . During the election campaign, Republicans attacked Hill's commitment to renewable energies, which among other things allowed Chinese manufacturers to benefit from American financial aid, by asking in commercials the question: "Is Hill running for Indiana or for China?"

After leaving Congress

After his mandate in the House of Representatives ended on January 3, 2011, Hill worked as a lobbyist for the public relations and lobbying agency APCO Worldwide , which mainly works for the Chinese company COSCO . Since leaving APCO in 2014, he has worked as a freelance lobbyist, primarily for the Indiana-based medical technology manufacturer Cook Industries . He considered running for the Democrats in the 2012 and 2016 gubernatorial elections, but ultimately decided against it.

Application for the US Senate 2016

On May 14, 2015, Hill announced that he would run for the seat of the resigning Republican incumbent Dan Coats in the November 2016 election in the US Senate. When he announced his application, Hill named the most important political goal of campaigning for higher wages and salaries, which had fallen significantly after the global economic crisis from 2007 onwards. Socio-politically, he changed his attitude towards same-sex marriage . After he had described the marriage between men and women as “sacred” in an election advertisement for his congressional candidacy in 2006, he now presented himself as a champion for the recognition of same-sex partnerships . After same-sex marriage was permitted in Indiana in 2014 and Governor Mike Pence suffered a political defeat because of a law that was perceived as discriminatory ( Religious Freedom Restoration Act ), the Democrats in the structurally conservative state gave up their previous reluctance to deal with sociopolitical issues, which Hill left Opposing candidates in the party's internal primary could have brought.

Political observers saw his chances of success as slim; Hill would have been given opportunities, especially in the event of a Democratic victory in the simultaneous presidential election and in the case of a lengthy Republican primary with many candidates, which could have led to personal damage and financial exhaustion. On the Republican side, Congressman Todd Young prevailed in the party primary against his fellow mandate Marlin Stutzman and the former party leader of the state Eric Holcomb . Hill relied on a strong democratic tradition in the underdeveloped southern part of the state, where the party has long been considered the advocate of the common people; Political observers doubt whether this traditional position will continue at a time when regional party strongholds and the alignment with national trends are being lost. Hill withdrew his candidacy on July 11, 2016 on the grounds that he would do everything possible to ensure that a Democrat could win the seat. On the same day, CNN reported that the former mandate holder, centrist and nationally known Evan Bayh , is running as the Democratic candidate, who is credited with significantly better odds than Hill.

Web links

• Baron Hill in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

supporting documents

1. ^ ^{A b c d e} Maureen Hayden: Former Congressman Hill Mulls Run for Governor. In: News and Tribune , December 3, 2014.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Michael Tackett: Indiana Hopeful Takes Race In Stride. In: The Chicago Tribune , August 19, 1990.
3. ^ Baron Hill. In: Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame .
4. ↑ Recruiting Payoff by Coach Is Reported. In: The New York Times , February 20, 1982 ( AP report).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Baron Hill (D). In: 14News.com .
6. ↑ Dallas L. Dendy (editor): Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 6, 1990. US Government Printing Office, Washington DC 1991, in: Clerk.House.gov (PDF) , p. 12.
7. ^ ^{A b c} Timothy P. Carney: Democratic Former Rep. Baron Hill Now Officially Working for China. In: San Francisco Examiner , June 16, 2011.
8. ^ Byron Tau: Baron Hill strikes out on his own - JGE Consulting inks BMW. In: Politico.com , October 16, 2014.
9. ^ Ex-Congressman Baron Hill to Join Indiana US Senate Race. In: The New York Times , May 15, 2015 ( AP report).
10. ^ ^{A b} Karyn Bruggeman: Indiana Democrats Are Worried Their Candidates Aren't Pro-Gay Marriage Enough. In: National Journal , June 4, 2015.
11. ↑ Amanda Terkel: Conservative Democrat Baron Hill Rebrands Himself As Pro-Marriage Equality In Indiana Senate Race. In: Huffington Post , June 19, 2015.
12. ^ Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik,: A Small Senate Battlefield. In: Sabato's Crystal Ball , University of Virginia Center for Politics, July 23, 2015.
13. ^ Southern Indiana Development Commission. 2013 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy Update. In: SIDC.cc , February 2013 (PDF) .
14. ^ HPI Analysis: A Southern Indiana Realignment. In: Howey Politics Indiana , December 22, 2010.
15. ↑ Tom LoBlanco: First on CNN: Evan Bayh mounting Senate return. In: CNN , July 12, 2016 (English).