The Evan Bayh interview

The Hoosier is returning to his Indiana roots this week as he'll gather with Indiana Democrats at their French Lick confab.

Good Sunday afternoon, and welcome back to IMPORTANTVILLE. I’m back from Des Moines where I covered Mike Pence’s two-day barnstorming of the fair. While there, I ate two pork burgers that were good but not as good as those available at the Indiana State Fair, biscuits and gravy, pork belly burnt ends, deep-fried sweet corn, and a corndog. I need a nap.

The Bayhs with Joe Biden. Courtesy of White House.

Evan Bayh still lives in Washington, D.C., but he’s spending more time back home again in Indiana these days.

The 46th governor of Indiana, former U.S. senator, and one-time presidential candidate-turned Barack Obama veepstakes shortlister will return again this weekend to French Lick, where he’ll huddle with Hoosier Democrats at their annual IDEA confab—it’s a storied event in Hoosier politics, a kind of a cross between a family reunion and a locker room talk. For political reporters, it’s a chance to source up and pick up tidbits and scoops.

In an interview with IMPORTNATVILLE, Bayh talked about whether Democrats can ever win statewide in Indiana again, the Indianapolis mayoral race, how he almost landed at the NCAA, and his newfound friendship with his former 2016 Republican opponent Sen. Todd Young.

You can read more about his bond with Joe Biden as he grieves his late wife Susan here in my piece for POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook.

You’re planning to visit French Lick along with other Indiana Democrats this year. What brings you back?

I come back regularly. As a matter of fact, I was home in Carmel Monday and Tuesday for some business meetings. And my son Nick is living in Indianapolis and working for the Colts.

And so I try and see him. We have some ice cream together. He was taking his girlfriend to the John Mayer concert Tuesday, so I didn't get to see him—I can understand why John Mayer and the girlfriend would take precedence over me; that's kind of an age-appropriate thing for a 27-year-old young man.

I just finished a two-year teaching arrangement with IU that brought me home regularly, and when my son Beau finishes law school next May, he’ll be moving to Bloomington. One will be in Indy and one will be in Bloomington, so I’ll be coming home as much as I can.

We still have our place on 86th Street.

The last time we talked, Nick was interning for the Indianapolis Colts.

He spent all last year and he got a promotion. He’s a strategic football analyst. He does projects for Chris Ballard, mostly involving analytics. He may do a couple salary-cap things. He started off at the bottom picking up players from the airport. But he’s got an economics degree so he’s a numbers guy. He could tell you chapter and verse about what the numbers say about just about any player in the league.

Does Nick have a solution to the Colts’ Jonathan Taylor predicament?

Well, we’d have to go off the record to talk about that, because it’s my son’s responsibility, not mine.

But I think he would obviously tell you that Jonathan Taylor is clearly a great talent. But sure. It's a quarterback-driven league. So the future of the team really depends upon the development of Anthony Richardson and the kind of talent you'd put around him.

As for Beau, will he be tagging along with you to French Lick this year?

Yeah. It’s a walk down memory lane for both of us. My parents took me there when I was a boy. Beau has no memory of this, but he and his brother were at French Lick at about one year old. And we had him in our laps in the kiddie pool there. It’s a family tradition, and it’s just nice to see people there.

There’s widespread speculation that Beau might get involved in Indiana politics. Do you think he will, continuing the tradition of public service from your father, the late Sen. Birch Bayh?

You know, Adam, I don’t know. You'd have to ask him that question. He just got voted to be captain in the Marine Corps. He just got back from Guyana and jungle warfare training there. He’s been on active duty for a chunk of the last five years, so I’m proud of him for that, and wanting to serve our country.

But what I’ve tried to emphasize to him, Adam, is that there are many ways to try and make the world a better place and to serve your fellow Americans and fellow Hoosiers besides running for public office—thank goodness. That’s one way to do it. We have a regressive gene that runs in our family. That absolutely should not be what he does, unless he wants it. So I think that’s something they’ll kind of figure out as he goes forward.

The last time I checked, you have roughly a million dollars or so in your campaign account. Is that earmarked for Beau?

No, it’s not earmarked for anything. It was just unspent from the last campaign. And, you know, I can use that to help a variety of political things.

These days, that’s a relatively modest amount of money when it comes to, you know, campaigns. Look how much money is being spent on the current Indianapolis mayor's race.

You were one of the first people to encourage Joe Hogsett to run for mayor. How do you assess his race against Jefferson Shreve?

I’ve not seen any polling data, but I know that his opponent is spending a lot of money principally on negative ads. Never, never a pleasant thing to have to endure. But I think, you know, Adam, I’m so old, that I remember when Marion County was a solidly Republican county, but now now it’s overwhelmingly democratic. So I think, based upon the hard work that Joe has done—I’ve never seen anybody work as hard as that man—he’s out at four or five events every day. And he’s got good connections with his constituencies in the communities. He had to deal with COVID. That certainly wasn’t his fault, and every major urban area is dealing with issues of gun violence. But he's done a good job. And I would expect that he’ll win. But anytime somebody with unlimited resources can run millions of dollars of negative ads against you, it means you can’t take anything for granted.

[Publisher’s note: Hogsett has also released negative ads on Shreve].

Zooming out, how do you think Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Mike Schmuhl has done in trying to turn around the party’s fortunes?

I'm a big fan of Mike’s. I think he's doing about as good a job as anyone could. He's been dealt kind of a tough hand because of circumstances beyond his control. So I personally am very grateful to him. We have someone who’s honest, who’s smart, who’s hard-working, heading the party.

I don’t have to tell you, but these are challenging days.

If you just kind of want to look at it from a 30,000-foot level, sort of a macro level, the basic challenge that we face as a party in our state is that Indiana is a conservative state. About twice as many Hoosiers describe themselves as conservative, as do a number who call themselves liberal— about two to one. So the challenge is that the national Democratic Party is generally viewed as being a more liberal party. That means that you start off with sort of an image problem unless you can differentiate yourself from the view that many Hoosiers have of the two national parties.

“It’s just harder being a Democrat in Indiana than it is being a Republican in Indiana.”

—Evan Bayh

What does the path out of the wilderness look like for Indiana Democrats?

I guess one of two things can happen: either the national party can project a somewhat more moderate image. Or you can try and project your own set of values and your own policy proposals, and distinguish yourself that way. But it’s just hard because many people really are just voting on the basis of party preference, rather than on perceived ideological differences as opposed to the individual merits of the specific candidates.

It’s just harder being a Democrat in Indiana than it is being a Republican in Indiana.

Anytime that [one-party control] goes on for a period of time, people tend to look for an alternative. And the party in power sometimes has fractures starting to develop within itself. If the party that’s not in power can offer a compelling candidate who presents a good alternative then you got a shot.

In what year could you imagine an Indiana Democrat winning statewide again?

I don’t know, you’d have to ask people like [former chief deputy mayor for the city of Indianapolis] Thomas Cook or [former Indiana Democratic Party Chairman] Dan Parker or other observers about that.

But I do know that if it’s going to be in a presidential election year, whoever our presidential nominee probably needs to lose our state by no more than 10 or 12 points. In the last race I ran [against Todd Young in 2016], I was unsuccessful. Donald Trump won the state by about 20. And I was able to make up about 10 of that. So you know, not nearly enough, and I don't think much more than 10 or 12% is probably doable.

As you look back at that 2016 race, what do you think of Todd Young as an incumbent senator?

As fate would have it, he and I would actually become friendly. It’s a little bit like my father and Sen. [Dick] Lugar. They ran against each other in 1974. But they became friendly, and they served together. Now, I never served with Todd, but we’ve become friendly. I’ve been with him on a couple of occasions. Matter of fact, I can’t remember where I was going. But I looked up in the airport the other day, and there he was, and I said, “Hey, Todd,” and he looked at me said, “Hey, friend, how are you?”

I gotta be careful about what I say to you in print because it could end up in a political ad someday, right? Look, I think he’s doing a good job.

You gave Pete Buttigieg some advice, as he was looking at running for president. How do you think he's doing at the Department of Transportation?

Well, I can tell you more in about 10 days, because I think we’re having lunch. I had lunch with Rep. Frank Mrvan last week. I try and stay in touch with the Hoosier diaspora.

I think you're not going to find a smarter, more honest person than Pete Buttigieg, and I think he’s doing a fine job.

Do you think that there will ever again be a senator like your father Birch Bayh, given how the Senate finds itself mired in dysfunction? Someone who can claim authorship to two constitutional amendments?

Ever is a long time time. Now, that seems like it would be a very hard thing to do. To answer your question, it depends on whether you’re optimistic about the future of America and our democracy. I personally am optimistic, in spite of all the current evidence to the contrary. I think a time will come when this illness of partisanship and divisiveness that is currently afflicting us will pass.

And Americans will pull together again and realize that we have way more in common than we do that divides us. So when that day comes, yes, I think someone like my father could serve again and helped bring Democrats and Republicans together.

I currently serve as a member of the Intelligence Advisory Board the president appointed me to. We meet monthly and we focus a lot as you might expect on China and Russia. And I contend this is important. And I hope you'll print this. The only people who are happy about the current political fighting—this madness and anger in our politics—are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Hey, they love it. Because there’s nothing that makes them happier than Americans fighting Americans.

So we need to wake up here at some point and realize that we have real adversaries in the world. And we should stop. Now we're always gonna have disagreements, but we ought to put them in perspective. We're talking about my father who worked to build bridges across our political divide so that we can make progress together. As divided as we are it seems like we're serving an endless feedback loop of acrimony and political partisanship, and that's just not healthy.

I heard you once were a finalist for president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association.

I was one of the two or three finalists before they picked Mark Emmert.

Do you wish you would’ve landed there?

Given what’s happened in college sports? No, that almost makes politics look calm and rational by comparison.

I love sports. And I love being an executive and it was headquartered in Indianapolis. So that would have made me happy. But my grandfather will remain the sports legend in our family. He's in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. He was a famous referee.

He refereed something like seven or eight consecutive boys’ championship games back in the 30s. Matter of fact, when John Wooden came back, they built a new gym down at Martinsville High School, where he played his high school ball before going to Purdue. And so I went down there for the dedication, and he came back for it. And when I was introduced to him, he just looked at me and all he said was, “Your grandfather blew a fair whistle.”

That’s a pretty good legacy.

He had nothing whatsoever to do with politics. But then again, he tried to make sure the games were fair and square and everybody played by the rules, and there was good sportsmanship and that sort of thing. So I don’t know—maybe that seems kind of anachronistic today to the partisanship in our politics.

You announced a presidential exploratory committee in 2006. And spent some time in New Hampshire and Iowa. Mike Pence, your fellow former Indiana governor, is doing the same thing. What do you make of his campaign so far?

I like Mike personally. If I say anything nice about him here, it probably won’t help him in a Republican primary.

Mike and I have always had a good personal relationship going back to my days as governor. And Karen was very nice. She always admired Susan very much. So I wish him well. And I will say this. And how should I put it? There’s an old saying that character is destiny. And when the chips were down, and the fate of our republic was on the line, Mike Pence demonstrated character.

Do you have fond memories of your own brief presidential bid?

I love New Hampshire and Iowa because it reminded me of politics in Indiana in the sense that you're going to a lot of living rooms, coffee shops, small businesses, you're out meeting real people. It just wasn't all about raising money and running 30-second television commercials. And I really enjoyed that.

I made a lot of friends. I met a lot of really nice people. But concluded that in a field that included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards—who we forget today had a following back then—that would have ended up being more a race about my vanity and ego than anything else. And I didn't want to put people through it.

When my father ran for president in 1976, I took a semester off from IU. I went to Iowa and New Hampshire and stayed in people’s homes. And that was really a transformative experience. I'd always been interested in politics, but really, I had no idea that I might do that myself until that experience, and I just kind of, I fell in love with retail.

This interview has come full circle here, Adam. I fell in love with retail politics, meeting people, making friends, and politics in the good sense, kind of sitting down together and thinking about how can we make the country a better place? How can we resolve our differences? How can we move forward together and emphasize our commonality? And I find that’s a lot of what French Lick is about, too.