What won’t happen in a couple years isn’t, generally speaking, too worthy of comment; but I guess the announcement from Evan Bayh that he won’t run for Governor bears mentioning. To me, this is only significant inasmuch as it affects who actually does end up running. Bayh could have won and – depending who runs – kept someone worse out of the office; but beyond that I don’t think he has much to recommend himself for the job.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him prior to his becoming Senator. Mostly what I know is that he used his family name and connections to become Indiana’s Secretary of State, use that as a launching ground to become Governor, and then get into some pissing matches with the state Senate. Speaking of which, I’d be hard pressed to say that former Gov. Bayh was a better influence on Indiana government than his rival at the time, Senator Bob Garton.
But, like I said, I didn’t pay much attention to him as Governor – I was in college for most of that period. I’m sure my luke warm memory of him is colored a great deal by my recollection of him as a Senator. And a great deal of that has to do with my disappointment in him for voting in the Bush tax cuts back in 2001. The federal budget was in pretty good shape back then, and I regarded these tax cuts as wasting a great chance to continue making progress paying down the national debt. At the time, if you’ll recall, the rationale for the cuts was that the government was just bringing in too darn much money. One advocate at the time addressed my concerns about the debt by saying that we ran the risk of paying it down too quickly.
Anyway, Bayh voted for the tax cuts and repealing the estate tax. Since then, I’m at a bit of a loss to say what he got up to during his tenure other than appear on news shows from time to time to make solemn noises about the deficit, so long as there was no threat of imposition on the wealthy or interruption of the flood of money into military expenditures.
I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention and have the guy all wrong. But, it’ll be interesting to see what impact this has on his wife’s board member gigs with pharmaceutical and insurance companies and whatnot.
In my opinion — if that counts for much — Bayh is nothing more than a Republican in Democrat’s clothing. That being said, he would have been a vast upgrade on the probable Repub candidate — Mike Pence.
All Hoosiers should wail and gnash their teeth if that recidivist lunatic is elected to the office of Governor. Which he will be if the morons in the Democratic Party decide to run another weak candidate such as Jill Long Thompson.
He will make us long for the days of Mitch Daniels.
Given the bowl of nuts that is Greg Walker, I miss Bob Garton.
Hmm. Does this mean that Dan Coats will announce he is running for Governor sometime next week? :-)
You got him right. Not much of a democrat. And now the dems have no viable candidate so the office is Pence’s if he wants it. Sad.
Why do you guys say that there are no viable Democrat candidates? You haven’t heard of Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez or Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott? ;)
Buzz, did you say that with a straight face? Really?
A candidate from the region (most especially, Lake County) will have a difficult time convincing any voter who doesn’t vote straight ticket.
Good thing I didn’t have a mouthful of coffee when I read your post. It might have ended up sprayed all over my cubicle. ;)
You obviously missed the ;) at the end of my post.
;)
I’m very curious: how do we pick these lists anyway? I’ve seen and heard suggestions of McDermott and Dominguez heading for higher office for at least a couple years now. Yet, I know nothing about either one. Are they really good candidates, really ambitious ones, or something else?
Paul, Dominguez is Sheriff of Lake County, the second most populous County in Indiana and the most heavily Democrat one by a large margin. And he has stated ambitions to at least be Lt. Gov.
So, yeah, you have to take him seriously. He also has a nice war chest and is an excellent fundraiser. And he is rather conservative as Democrats go (he’s an NRA member, for example).
Now, why haven’t you heard about him? Downstate bias.
Regarding McDermott, he is the Lake County Democrat chairman in addition to being Mayor of Hammond. He has an extraordinary war chest for someone just going into a Mayoral election (you don’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars to run for Mayor of Hammond, especially if you are a Democrat).
McDermott was a Republican as recently as 8 years ago. He is also rather conservative, perhaps not as much as Dominguez is. McD is ambitious, he put his name in for Bayh’s Senate seat too.