TERRE HAUTE — Partisan bickering and inaction by Congress led Evan Bayh to leave his U.S. Senate seat in 2010 after two terms.
The division hasn't gotten any better, Bayh said Wednesday in a phone interview after he announced — as expected — he would seek the seat again.
"It's worse today than it was six years ago," Bayh said, emphatically.
Yet, he's ready to return to the upper chamber of Congress. Bayh's announcement came two days after lesser-known Baron Hill withdrew as the Democratic candidate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat. Bayh believes the us-versus-them culture in Congress can only change through setting an example of bipartisanship.
"I retired because I was fed up with the partisanship and the gridlock, and I wanted to spend some time with my sons as they finished growing up," he said. "And the challenges that face America today are even greater, and so the consequences of inaction in Washington are even greater. And I feel a responsibility to do something about that if I can. And I think that together we can, primarily because I think that the American people are now fed up with the partisanship, with the brain-dead ideology.
"I think what people are hungry for are solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives and political leaders who will try to bring us together instead of further dividing the country," Bayh said. "And it's that kind of positive leadership I've always tried to provide."
Still, barely two months ago in the Indiana primary, Hoosier voters favored two presidential candidates who bill themselves as "anti-establishment" outsiders to Washington — Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders.
When Bayh was asked how his centrist, consensus-building style can appeal to those same voters, he responded, "I think most Americans are unhappy with Congress and the direction the country is going in. The challenge is not just to appeal to that anger but to channel it in a productive way that will actually help us create more jobs, make college more affordable, protect our country against the threat of suicidal terrorism. That's the kind of leadership that I have traditionally provided and want to provide again, and I think that's perfectly consistent with the outcome of the primaries."
Bayh last campaigned as a candidate in 2004, receiving 61.6 percent of the votes as an incumbent against Republican challenger Marvin Scott. He won by an even larger margin in his first Senate race against Republican Paul Helmke in 1998, backed by 63.7 percent of Hoosier voters. By 2010, the political atmosphere had shifted, with a tea party backlash underway against President Obama's Affordable Care Act and Republicans and Democrats in Congress stood deeply divided. Bayh announced in February 2010 that he wouldn't seek re-election, and Republican Dan Coats came out of retirement and won back the seat. Democrats lost the majority in the Senate, too.
It wasn't because Bayh expected to lose. "I had every expectation of winning that race," he said.
Six years later, many political observers sense that Democrats may retake the Senate majority in November, especially with the well-known Bayh replacing Hill as the party's candidate for the Indiana seat left open by Coats' impending retirement. Bayh. who has a leftover $9 million campaign fund, refuted criticism that he's an opportunist, leaving the Senate when Democrats were down and then returning during a possible resurgence.
His decisions in both 2010 and this year "had nothing to do with the politics of it," Bayh said. "I do think there's an opportunity to make progress in Congress today that didn't exist six years ago," largely because, "the public is going to insist on it."
The nation will have a new president and new leaders in Congress, Bayh added, "and I think that gives us an opportunity that we must take to try and make progress in Washington. It won't be easy. It won't be as quick as any of us would like, but Lord knows it needs to happen."
Democrats must win four Senate seats nationwide to regain the majority, or five if Trump wins the presidency. News that Bayh would pursue the Indiana seat fueled speculation that Democrats could actually pull off that turnaround. Bayh dismissed the presumption that he is running to help give his party control of the Senate.
"No, that's not on my mind," he said. "What I care about is representing the people of Indiana, trying to do what I can to address the challenges they face in their daily lives. That's the only reason to run for public office, and that's the only reason I'm running. All the rest of those political things, that'll be whatever it's going to be."
The political reaction to his candidacy came fast, though. The campaign of his Republican opponent, Rep. Todd Young, labeled Bayh a "gold-plated lobbyist" and called him "a part of the problem." The criticism referred to Bayh's post-Senate work as an attorney for a Washington law firm, an adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a private-equity firm.
"That's just not true. I've never been a lobbyist, period," Bayh said in response. "Secondly, I think it's good to try to create jobs and grow businesses, and that's what I've done."
Since Hill dropped his candidacy Monday and speculation began about Bayh stepping in, media reports have suggested that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and potential Senate leader Charles Shumer of New York, both Bayh friends, had urged Bayh to run. Others influenced Bayh's decision, he insisted.
"The only people that mattered to me in making this decision were my wife (Susan) and my sons (twins Beau and Nick) and the people of Indiana," Bayh said. "Nobody can talk me into doing this, and nobody did. I'm only doing this for one reason and one reason alone — I think at the end of my days, however many they may be, I have an obligation to try to do as much good to help people as I can."