Evan Bayh’s Goodbye

Evan Bayh, sen­a­tor from Indi­ana, today announced that he is not going to run for re-elec­tion. Although Bayh is a Demo­c­rat, he has always been on the con­ser­v­a­tive side of the tent. The most recent exam­ple of this was the Mass­a­chu­setts spe­cial sen­ate elec­tion. The moment it was clear the Repub­li­can won the race, Bayh was mak­ing state­ments sup­port­ing the idea that health care reform was dead.

To the end (not that this nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sti­tutes the end), Bayh has been less than help­ful to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. He drops out of the race with a cou­ple of days left to file to run in the pri­ma­ry. This isn’t enough time for some­one to jump in and gath­er the nec­es­sary sig­na­tures to get on the pri­ma­ry bal­lot, so the can­di­date for the fall would be picked by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

Except there was one per­son already out gath­er­ing sig­na­tures to run in the pri­ma­ry against Bayh. Tamyra d’Ip­poli­to, a cafe own­er in Bloom­ing­ton, claims to be 1000 sig­na­tures away from the num­ber need­ed to get on the ballot.

I’m not con­fi­dent she will make it, but it might have been bet­ter if Bayh had wait­ed a day or two. It is like­ly that Bay­h’s absence real­ly ener­gized d’Ippolito.

If Tamyra d’Ip­poli­to gets the sig­na­tures she will be the only sen­ate can­di­date on the pri­ma­ry bal­lot. So she will be the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date in the fall. Judg­ing by her web page, she has no polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence and she has an uphill bat­tle to win.

I think the Democ­ra­t’s chances for win­ning in the fall would be much high­er if the par­ty could pick the candidate.

With luck d’Ip­poli­to fails to get the sig­na­tures and it will make no dif­fer­ence. In any event, thank-you Evan Bayh.

Hat tip to TPM.