Evan Bayh

Evan Bayh

Birch Evans "Evan" Bayh III (born December 26, 1955 in Shirkieville , Vigo County , Indiana ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . He was governor of the state of Indiana from 1989 to 1997 and represented it in the United States Senate from 1999 to 2011 . Since then he has been active as a political lobbyist and commentator and is repeatedly in conversation for political leadership tasks. He lost in the November 2016 election in an attempt to regain his former Senate seat.

Family, education and work

Bayh was born in Shirkieville, a small town in western Indiana. His father, Birch Bayh, was also a US Senator from 1963 to 1981 and ran for nomination as Democratic presidential candidate in 1976 . In the primary he was defeated by the future President Jimmy Carter . Birch Bayh was considered a liberal voice in the Senate and represented positions that were much more left-wing than later his son. Evan Bayh studied business administration and political science at Indiana University (he graduated with honors in 1978) and law at the University of Virginia until 1981 . He began working as an assistant to a judge and became a lawyer. In 1997/98 he worked again as a lawyer in the major law firm Baker & Daniels .

Evan Bayh is married to Susan Bayh, with whom he has twin sons.

Political career

As Secretary of State , Bayh was first elected to public office in 1986. As such, he was a member of the Indiana state government until 1989.

Governor of Indiana

Bayh was elected governor of Indiana in 1988. After he had prevailed in the primary against Steve Daily and Frank O'Bannon , who later became his lieutenant governor , he won the actual election against the Republican John Mutz. In 1992, he was re-elected for a second term with the highest percentage of votes ever received by any state-wide candidate in Indiana. The work of his government was judged to be level-headed and successful even by Republicans. The Wall Street Journal wrote in 1992 that Bayh's record was that of a "truly fiscal conservative Democrat." In the spirit of a “lean state”, it lowered taxes, increased spending efficiency and created an environment in which jobs are created. He achieved the highest budget surplus in the history of the state. Leading the way in reintegrating people into the labor market , during Bayh's tenure, spending on education and the level of performance of educational institutions increased every year. At the end of his second term, 79 percent of Indiana people were positive about Bayh, according to a poll.

After his second term in office, he temporarily accepted a position as a lecturer at the Indiana University School of Business in Bloomington .

United States Senator

Bayh was elected to the US Senate in 1998 . He defeated his Republican rival Paul Helmke with 64 percent of the vote, the best result ever achieved by a Democrat in an election to the Senate in Indiana, whereupon he replaced the no longer running Republican Dan Coats on January 3, 1999 . In the 2004 election, he was re-elected. Bayh served on six Senate committees: Banking, Real Estate, and Urban Development; Armed Forces Committee ; Secret services; Energy and natural resources; Special Committee on the Aging Population and the Committee on Smaller Enterprises.

In conversation for higher tasks

Evan Bayh has repeatedly been brought up for political leadership roles; Former US President Bill Clinton called him in his autobiography "a talented leader who could one day be president". The potential that the Democratic party leadership saw in him was shown when he was allowed to appear as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention for the nomination of Bill Clinton before the 1996 presidential election ; Bayh remained politically close to the Clinton family. In 2000 and 2004 he was traded as a running mate and possible vice- president of the presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry and briefly toyed with the idea of ​​applying for US president himself before the 2004 election.

Shortly after the 2004 election , Bayh prepared a possible presidential candidacy in 2008 apart from the public . His advantage was the wide acceptance he found in the entire electorate, but especially among supporters of the Republicans, while more left-wing potential candidates such as Hillary Clinton or John Edwards polarized more strongly. In the 2004 election he received more votes than President George W. Bush in structurally conservative Indiana . In the last few months of 2006, Bayh's activities increasingly indicated a candidacy, including fundraising events and speeches in the so-called swing states , but also trips to the states of New Hampshire and Iowa, which were voting at the beginning of the primary . After Bayh had founded an Exploratory Committee on December 3, 2006 , ie made a first formal step towards "exploring" the possibility of a presidential application, he unexpectedly announced his retirement on December 15, 2006; his chances turned out to be insufficient. Bayh was considered as a possible running mate by the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during the summer of 2008 ; Obama's advisors David Axelrod and David Plouffe later described that Bayh's prospects were excellent until the very end and that it had come down to a "coin toss" between him and the later Vice President Joe Biden .

Resign from the US Senate

On February 15, 2010, Bayh, whose re-election was due in the same year, announced that he did not want to run for election . In his declaration of resignation, he said that he was frustrated by the increasingly party-tactical considerations on both sides in important legislative proposals. His need to serve his fellow citizens is unbroken, but his desire to do so in Congress has dwindled. Bayh continued his criticism of the Washington political system in principle. It has been suggested that Bayh, who by then had won most of his election campaigns with over 60 percent of the vote, saw poor re-election chances this year of the rise of the tea party movement and difficulties for the nationwide ruling Democrats. He was criticized for having left in this difficult time his party in the lurch because Bayhs announcement for problems with other political candidates in the state caused (domino effect) and thus shortly before the upcoming redistricting of electoral boundaries ( English "redistricting" ) a permanent favored Republican dominance in Indiana.

Political lobbyist and commentator

After retiring from the Senate 3 January 2011 Bayh joined as partner and strategic advisor at the service of policy-advisory law firm McGuire Woods in Washington, DC In addition, since Bayh was lobbyist for the investment firm Apollo Global Management . Shortly thereafter, Bayh began working as a commentator for the conservative television channel Fox News . These career decisions were criticized as hypocritical against the background of his loud criticism of politics.

Bayh is still regarded as the biggest political star of his party in the conservatively dominated state of Indiana, which is why there has been repeated speculation about his return to politics. In September 2014, he announced that he would not be available to run for governor again in 2016 . His possible running for the US Senate in 2016 was also publicly discussed, but he stated in June 2015 that he was not interested, even though he still had over 10 million US dollars in unused funds for the election campaign from his senatorial time. In April 2015, he declared his support for Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy and was traded as her possible running mate .

Candidate for the US Senate in 2016

In mid-July 2016, it became known that Bayh was seeking a return to his former seat in the US Senate. After Bayh turned down a bid for the November 2016 election the year before, former Congressman Baron Hill had won the party primary; his chances of winning had been assessed as slim. Hill withdrew his candidacy on July 11, 2016 on the grounds that he would do everything possible to ensure that the mandate comes into democratic hands. On July 13, Bayh announced that he was running for this Senate seat, which he held until 2011 and which Republican mandate holder Dan Coats left. The party had to hold a caucus to designate Bayh - or another candidate - as its candidate. Bayh's fame, his existing and prospective financial resources, and his centrism in this Republican state were cited as virtues, while observers at the national level and Republicans criticized Bayh's interim profit orientation as a lobbyist and his departure from Indiana. Left observers mostly commented on Bayh's return with reluctance or rejection, as he would make it more difficult to implement progressive politics. His return is also linked to the hope that, instead of the strong polarization in the Senate, a culture of cooperation in the political center could return. The announcement significantly improved the outlook for the Democrats; the election campaign against the Senate candidate of the Republicans Todd Young , the previous MPs of the 9th Congressional constituency of Indiana, was seen as an open race, sometimes with slight advantages for Bayh. The first independent poll in August 2016 saw Bayh in the lead with 48 to 41 percentage points, with 16 percent of supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump also voicing their preference for Bayh, while several Democrat-commissioned polls saw Bayh in the lead by a large double-digit percentage gap . After Bayh's lobbying work and his rare presence in Indiana were discussed during the election campaign, he lost his lead in the polls. In the election he was clearly defeated by Young with 42.4 to 52.5 percent.

Political positions

Evan Bayh advocates centrist positions that are more conservative than the mainstream Democratic Party, particularly on fiscal and foreign policy issues. Bayh was one of the main supporters of the George W. Bush Cabinet in getting Congress to approve the Iraq war . According to a report of the New York Times about the alleged ability of Iran to build a nuclear bomb Bayh said in 2009: ". We need tough sanctions, and we need them now," After the conclusion of the international negotiations which led to a compromise on the Iranian nuclear program out In July 2015, Bayh founded the lobbying group Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee together with other former democratic mandate holders , which mainly works within the Democratic Party against President Obama's negotiation result.

Web links

Commons : Evan Bayh  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Evan Bayh in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Evan Bayh in the National Governors Association (English)
• Indiana Historical Bureau (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Steve Kornacki: Not His Father's Son. In: Salon.com , February 15, 2010 (English).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Bayh, Evan. In: OpenSecrets.org (English).
3. ^ ^{A b} Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh Compares '08 Presidential Prospects to 'David and Goliath'. In: Fox News , December 16, 2006 ( AP report).
4. ^ Bill Clinton: My Life. Random House, New York 2004, p. 96 (English).
5. ↑ Chris Cilliza: Bayh Considers Presidential Bid. Indiana Senator Forms Exploratory Committee for 2008 Run. In: The Washington Post , December 4, 2006.
6. ↑ Maureen Groppe: Book Explains Why Obama Picked Biden over Bayh for VP. In: USA Today , February 10, 2015.
7. ↑ Bernie Becker, Jeff Zeleny: Bayh Decides Against Re-election Bid. In: The New York Times , February 15, 2010 (English).
8. ^ Evan Bayh: Why I'm Leaving the Senate. In: The New York Times , February 20, 2010 (English).
9. ^ ^{A b} Brian Howey: Howey: Evan Bayh, Our $ 10M Man. In: Lafayette Journal & Courier , May 7, 2015 (English).
10. ↑ Evan Bayh. Partner. In: McGuireWoods.com (English).
11. ^ FOX News Signs Former Senator Evan Bayh to Contributor Role. In: Finanz.net , March 14, 2011 (English); On air personalities. Evan Bayh. ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Fox News . 
12. ↑ Ezra Klein : The Sad, Hypocritical Retirement of Evan Bayh. In: The Washington Post , March 15, 2011.
13. ↑ Tarini Parti: Evan Bayh Won't Seek Third Term for Indiana Governor. In: Politico.com , September 12, 2014 (English).
14. ↑ Harry Enten: Democrats Could Put Indiana Senate Seat In Play In 2016 - Especially If Evan Bayh Runs. In: FiveThirtyEight , March 24, 2015 (English).
15. ↑ Jonathan Easley: Bayh Won't Seek Indiana Senate Seat. In: The Hill , June 11, 2015 (English).
16. ↑ Dan Carden: Bayh Endorses Clinton for President. In: NWI Times , April 23, 2015 (English).
17. ↑ Howard Koplowitz: Who Will Be Hillary Clinton's Running Mate? 10 Possible Vice Presidential Nominees. In: International Business Times , May 11, 2015 (English); Clinton 'Prepared' to Deal with Email Controversy on Campaign Trail, Bayh Says. In: The Hill , June 2, 2015 (English).
18. ↑ Tom LoBlanco: First on CNN: Evan Bayh mounting Senate return. In: CNN , July 11, 2016 (English).
19. ↑ Maureen Groppe: Bayh makes Senate bid official. In: IndyStar , USA Today , July 13, 2016 (English).
20. ^ Lauren Slavin: Indiana Democrats must hold caucus to replace Baron Hill. In: Herald Times , July 13, 2016 (English).
21. ^ Dylan Matthews: Evan Bayh is running for Senate, significantly boosting Democrats' odds of retaking it: He's a throwback to a much more conservative Democratic Party. In: Vox , July 11, 2016 (English); Alex Pareene: Evan Bayh Is Done Making a Lot of Money and Would Like to Return to the Senate Now, Please. In: Gawker , July 12, 2016 (English).
22. ↑ Editorial: A welcome re-entry into state politics. Bayh's moderate record badly needed in today's US Senate. In: Tribune Star , July 13, 2016 (English); Patricia Murphy: Could Bayh and the Reruns Reboot the Senate? Veterans understand process, type of give-and-take. In: Roll Call , July 13, 2016 (English).
23. ↑ 2016 Senate Race Ratings for July 11, 2016. In: Cook Political Report , July 11, 2016 (English).
24. ^ Nathan L. Gonzalez: Ratings Change: Indiana Senate Moves to Toss-Up / Tilt Democratic. In: Rothenberg & Gonzalez Political Report , July 11, 2016.
25. ↑ Steven Shepard: Poll: Trump, Bayh lead in Indiana. In: Politico , August 17, 2016 (English).
26. ↑ Alexander Bolton: New poll shows Bayh with 18-point lead. In: The Hill , August 22, 2016 (English).
27. ↑ Mitch Smith: Todd Young Tops Evan Bayh in the Indiana Senate Race. In: The New York Times , November 8, 2016 (English); Indiana Senate - Young vs. Bayh. In: RealClearPolitics (English).
28. ↑ US senators are calling for new sanctions against Iran. In: Die Welt , October 6, 2009.
29. ^ Julie Hirschfeld Davis: Pro-Israel Aipac Creates Group to Lobby Against the Iran Deal. In: The New York Times , July 18, 2015.