The junior senator from Indiana is Republican Dan Coats, elected in 2010 to a second stint in the Senate. He had served from 1988 to 1999, and then was a lobbyist and diplomat before running for the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh. Read More
The junior senator from Indiana is Republican Dan Coats, elected in 2010 to a second stint in the Senate. He had served from 1988 to 1999, and then was a lobbyist and diplomat before running for the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh.
Coats grew up in Jackson, Mich. When he was 9 years old, his mother, a Swedish immigrant, took him to see President Dwight Eisenhower. Coats still remembers touching the president’s sleeve, and cites him, along with Winston Churchill, as his political idols. In college, he considered becoming a doctor, but decided against it. He joined the Army, went to law school, and worked for an insurance company. In 1976, he turned down a job offer from a bank to work for a young, Republican member of Congress named Dan Quayle. Four years later, Coats was elected to succeed Quayle in the House. In 1988, he was appointed to succeed him in the Senate when Quayle was chosen as the GOP vice presidential nominee. Coats was elected in his own right in 1990 to serve the remaining two years of Quayle’s term, getting 54% of the vote. In 1992, he was elected to a full term with 57%.
One of the causes he championed while in the Senate was the line-item veto, which he said would help curb federal spending. Coats served on the Armed Services Committee, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, and, starting in 1997, the Intelligence Committee. He compiled a conservative voting record. He strongly opposed abortion rights and was a leader on a ban on research using fetal tissue. He sponsored a law allowing parents to block the numbers of “dial-a-porn” phone-sex lines and one restricting “indecent or lewd” material on the Internet. Coats did occasionally buck his party. He voted for the assault weapons ban and for the Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires companies to provide paid leave to their employees to care for a newborn child or a sick family member.
In December 1996, he announced he would not seek re-election in 1998. At the time, most polls showed him trailing outgoing Democratic Gov. Bayh, who went on to win the Senate seat. Coats joined the lobbying firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand. In 2001, President George W. Bush considered him for Defense secretary before choosing Donald Rumsfeld. But he appointed Coats the U.S. ambassador to Germany. Disagreement over the Iraq war strained U.S.-German relations during Coats’ tenure, but in 2005, he told National Journal that visits by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had helped to ease tensions. He left that post in 2005 and joined lobbying firm King & Spalding. He tried to help Bush rally Senate support for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, although she withdrew after members of both parties questioned her qualifications.
In early 2010, with public opinion turning against incumbent Democrats, Bayh appeared vulnerable, and Republicans were searching for a top-tier candidate. Just two weeks after Coats announced his candidacy, Bayh declared that he would not seek re-election.
Coats faced a crowded GOP primary field that included former Rep. John Hostettler and state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, both of whom appealed to tea party groups. Coats was the only candidate to go on the air with significant advertising, and national Republicans backed him. He won the primary with 39% of the vote to 29% for Stutzman and 23% for Hostettler. Coats benefited from tea party Republicans splitting their votes between Stutzman and Hostettler.
In the general election, Coats honed a message that he returned to politics to combat President Barack Obama’s agenda, and he accused his Democratic opponent, Rep. Brad Ellsworth, of being in lock-step with the national Democratic Party. Democrats, in turn, hammered Coats for his lucrative career as a lobbyist who did the bidding of special interests. They labeled him as a Washington insider, a strategy used widely in 2010 to appeal to recession-battered voters.
Republicans, meanwhile, went after Ellsworth as a rubber stamp for liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic agenda, parts of which were unpopular with conservative voters. They criticized his votes in favor the $787 billion economic stimulus bill and the health care overhaul. He also may have fallen out of favor with the anti-abortion rights voters who had been in his camp in the past because he voted for the health care bill even though the abortion restriction they favored had been dropped from the legislation.
In the final weeks before Election Day, Coats maintained a double-digit lead over Ellsworth. But he took no chances. With his coffers running low after the expensive primary, he put $200,000 of his own money into his campaign. Altogether, Coats raised $4.4 million, far more than Ellsworth, who had $2.4 million. Coats won 54.6% to 40%.
Coats’ first major speech upon returning to the Senate was a call to reform entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In some ways, Coats was picking up right where he left off. After Coats proposed increasing the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67, a National Journal story pointed out that Coats made a plea for the same adjustment back in 1997. National Journal noted that austerity was more in vogue by 2011 and even Democratic President Obama has tacitly supported raising the age of Medicare eligibility. Coats has pushed for tax reform and more radical debt reduction measures. The August 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut $2.4 trillion in spending passed the Senate, 74-26. Arguing that the spending cuts weren’t sufficient, Coats voted against the bill and broke with his Indiana Republican colleague Richard Lugar.
During a March 2012 fight over the surface transportation bill, Coats offered an amendment to reimburse states for money they pay in federal gas taxes. Coats said his measure would give Indiana a greater share of federal gas tax revenue. The amendment was soundly defeated, 28-70.
