Campaign Diaries

If I had told you yesterday morning that Indiana’s deadline for Senate candidates to deposit signatures would pass without a single Democrat qualifying for the ballot, you would surely have thought I was insane. But that is exactly what happened: Senator Evan Bayh chose not to file his candidacy, overnight sensation Tamyra d’Ippolito fell well short of the threshold she needed to meet, and there was no truth to the rumors that Rep. Baron Hill was attempting to put together a last-minute effort to collect 4,500 signatures and become the de facto Democratic nominee.

Of course, we now know the situation is not quite as dramatic for Democrats as the lack of any candidate would initially seem to entail: The vacancy allows the Democratic Party’s executive committee, made up of 32 state officials to place a candidate directly on the general election ballot. While someone cannot be officially designated until after the May 4th primary, since there will technically not be a vacancy on the general election ballot until that date, state Democrats have indicated they will have agreed on a nominee within the next six weeks.

Meanwhile, five Republicans appear to have qualified for the ballot: former Senator Dan Coats, state Senator Marlin Stutzman, former Rep. John Hostettler, plumbing company owner Richard Behney and Don Bates Jr.  This morning, some questions remained as to whether Coats would have the signatures ready, since he only decided to attempt a political comeback two weeks ago; but his camp insisted today he had filed more than the requisite number of signatures. We shall know in the days ahead if they have fallen short after all.

As such, the timing of Bayh’s retirement probably helped his party’s prospects after all, and as such it is understandable that the GOP is now crying foul. While state Democrats will be able to appoint the politician they feel has the best shot at defending the seat, the Republican field is undeniably weaker than it would have been had Bayh indicated he would retire two weeks early. Indeed, it’d be hard to envision the GOP failing to pick-up the seat if Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence and Todd Rokita were in the race, and one of them most probably would be if Bayh had given advance notice. But by the time they heard yesterday, it was too late and none of them even tried to put together the 4,500 signatures they would have needed to qualify by today’s deadline.

Coats, Stutzman and Hostettler are all credible candidates, and whoever wins the GOP primary will have a great shot at becoming a U.S. Senator. But a politician-turned-lobbyist who hasn’t faced voters since 1992, a first-term state Senator and a former congressman with strained ties to his party’s leadership and who lost his re-election race by 22% is probably not the field the GOP would dream of for an open Senate seat in a conservative-leaning state in a favorable environment.

Instead of having their chances in Indiana be akin to those in Delaware, the GOP will probably have to deal with it remaining competitive; of course, that alone is a huge improvement for Republicans over the situation as it stood yesterday morning.

Beyond the question of who will hold the seat, the financial stakes are huge, and this is where Bayh’s retirement could come to bite his party well beyond Indiana: However competitive this race risked becoming, the DSCC was not planning on spending a dime in Indiana since Bayh had a massive $13 million in the bank ready to be used over the next seven months. Now, not only will the Republican nominee for this seat no longer be at a financial disadvantage, thus improving his own prospects, but the DSCC will have to spend heavily on promoting whomoever the party committee decides to appoint, money that could have been used to bolster Paul Hodes and Robin Carnahan or to protect Patty Murray and Russ Feingold.

The Plum Line looks into what will become of Bayh’s $13 million. The short answer: He can make of it pretty much what he wants. He can transfer as much of it as he wants to the DNC, the DSCC or the Indiana Democratic Party, which could then use it to help the new Senate nominee; he can transfer it to his own political PAC; or he can leave it where it is in case he decides to run for president at some point in the future. (I don’t believe he would be able to use the money directly if he were to run for Governor in 2012, though he could wait until next year to transfer it to the state party so they use it to help him in the next cycle.) Given that Bayh stll appears to be nurturing some political ambitions, I find it unlikely the new Democratic Senate candidate will see most of this $13 million, though it is possible the senator will try to cultivate the party establishment’s good will by transferring at least some of it.

The looming question now is: Who will be the Democrat who benefits from the vacancy on the ballot? Since Bayh announced his retirement, the two names that are mentioned most often are Reps. Baron Hill and Brad Ellsworth, both conservative Democrats who are prominent members of the Blue Dog Coalition.

There has been some speculation that Hill will not be the candidate because two other Democrats (John Bottorf and Lendall Terry) have also filed to run in red-leaning IN-09, which means the party would have to run one of them in the fall rather than get to appoint a new and more experienced contender.  But I don’t believe this would be an issue: The party committee will not officially designate a Senate nominee until after May 4th, at which point Hill will have won his House primary (even if he has already made it clear he intends to run for Senate, this shouldn’t pose much of a challenge for him). As such, for Hill to move from one race to the other would vacate the Democratic spot in IN-9, thus allowing party officials to choose a replacement, perhaps from the bench of state legislators.

The same situation exists in IN-1, where Democrat Woodrow Wilcox is running against Rep. Peter Vislosky and in IN-7, where Pierre Pullins is running against Rep. Andre Carson. On the other hand, Rep. Joe Donnelly and Rep. Brad Ellsworth are the only Democrats who have filed in IN-02 and IN-08 so their is no ambiguity as to whether a party committee would get to annoint a candidate.

While Hill is the Blue Dogs’ co-chair for policy, he would not be any further to the right than Bayh and might even be more of a reliable vote for the leadership than the incumbent. Brad Ellsworth, meanwhile, could easily become the chamber’s most conservative Democrat: He was one of only 11 Democrats to oppose the stimulus, he voted against funding stem-cell research, supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, was one of only 14 Democrats to oppose adding sexual orientation to federal hate-crime laws. While a truly progressive Democrat would probably have trouble winning statewide, though there is obviously something to be said for populists in Sherrod Brown’s mold, that does not mean the party needs a candidate this far outside of the party’s mainstream to defend this seat, and 2009 showed what they’d be setting themselves up for.

Evansville Mayor Jon Weinsapfel, the third most frequently mentioned potential contender, has the reputation of being less conservative than his predecessor Ellsworth, and as such could be an ideological compromise who can also run as an outsider since he hasn’t served in Congress. Yet, he appears to have taken himself out of consideration yesterday. Party officials are likely to try to appoint him to to the House ballot if they place Ellsworth on the Senate’s, though Weinsapfel is reportedly interested in the Governor’s race (the twist: so are Baron Hill and possibly Evan Bayh). Other names that are mentioned are state Senator Vi Simpson and businessman/architect Jim Schellinger, who lost 2004’s gubernatorial primary.