In an interesting reversal, Indiana Democrats will now have to formally place Bayh’s name on the ballot after nominee Hill announces he is stepping out of the race – something Hill did on Facebook on Monday morning. He would replace former U.S. Rep. Baron Hill, who announced Monday he was withdrawing as the Democratic Senate nominee.
Advertisement
Democrats need to net four or five seats to win back Senate control – four if they hang onto the White House and can send the vice president to break ties in the Senate; five if they don’t.
Democrats have been courting Bayh for over a year to run for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Dan Coats, a Republican, announced previous year he would not seek re-election.
The latest federal reports show that Bayh had almost $9.3 million in his campaign account at the end of March. I do not want to stand in the way of Democrats winning in and the U.S. Senate. But Rep. Young is not Murdock, as PPD’s senior political analyst said in a reaction on Twitter.
Baron Hill Indiana Democratic Part chair John Zody issued a statement shortly after Hill’s announcement.
To those of you who have been with me from the very beginning and who have contributed to this campaign or any of my previous campaigns, I can not thank you enough for the support you have given to Betty and me. A Bayh victory would mean the seat has alternated between Republican Dan Coats and Bayh since 1988, with Coats retiring in 1998, then reclaiming the seat after Bayh’s 2010 retirement.
“And has more name ID without having run for office since 2004 than Todd Young has been congressman for a couple of terms and running for U-S Senate in the primary”, Feigenbaum said.
The Democratic and Republican state committees would have 30 days to select new candidates. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada also has been involved. Bayh comes packaged with almost 10 million dollars in unspent campaign money left over from his previous Senate run, along with significantly higher name recognition.
“It is obvious that the Indiana Democrats have lost faith in the people’s choice of the Democrat Senate Candidate”, said Indiana Republican Party Chairman Jeff Cardwell. Evan Bayh speaks in Indianapolis. Birch Bayh, has been an adviser to private equity firm Apollo Global Management in NY and a partner in the law firm McGuireWoods in Washington. That move left the decision in the hands of the party, who selected Brad Ellsworth to replace Bayh.
Advertisement
Odds are that Bayh is today a lot more popular with Senate Democrats than he was six years ago, when he penned a dyspeptic op-ed in the New York Times lamenting the passing of the productive, bipartisan Senate of yore when his father served in the upper chamber.
