In the mid-1980s, Hoosier Democrats had not held the governor’s office for nearly 20 years. Republicans dominated Indiana politics at every level. They even controlled the state’s largest city, Indianapolis, where the late Bill Hudnut was roughly midway through his four-term run as Indy’s longest-serving mayor.
Much of the steam had gone out of state Democrats’ strides when U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Indiana, fell to Republican Dan Quayle in the 1980 Ronald Reagan walloping of President Jimmy Carter. That smackdown cost five John F. Kennedy-era Democratic senators, Bayh among them, their seats and sent the entire party on a search for identity that, in some ways, continues to this day.
Hoosier Democrats hoped for a time that Birch Bayh would mount a comeback—he was just 52 when he lost his Senate seat—but that never happened.
Every election cycle after his 1980 defeat, he came back to Indiana to campaign for other Democratic candidates, tantalizing the party faithful with his sleeves-rolled-up brand of charisma and plainspoken eloquence.
But he never appeared on a ballot again.
State Democrats, though, gained new hope when Birch Bayh’s eldest son, Birch Evans “Evan” Bayh III, opted to carry the party flag.
Handsome as a male model and married to a wife with a beauty queen’s smile and a scholar’s brains, Evan Bayh in those days seemed more like a fairytale prince coming home to reclaim the family castle than a politician.
But a skilled politician he was.
More cautious and centrist than his father, he ran some of the most disciplined campaigns the state has ever seen. His gift was for staking out the middle of the road in the last era—up until now, anyway—in which a majority of voters still valued consensus.
He presented himself always as a kind of updated version of the Henry Fonda character in “12 Angry Men”—the most reasonable guy in a room in which everyone else was blinded by either rage or blatant self-interest.
That was enough to get him elected Indiana secretary of state in 1986, governor in both 1988 and 1992 and to the U.S. Senate in 1998 and 2004 before he chose not to run for re-election in 2010. He also inspired a brief Democratic Party renaissance in Indiana that led to aides or allies capturing the offices of secretary of state, attorney general and even Indianapolis mayor, along with short stints narrowly controlling the Indiana House of Representatives.
That was then.
This is now.
Hoosier Democrats once again look with yearning eyes at another Bayh—Birch Evans “Beau” Bayh IV, son of Evan—they hope will lead them yet again out of the wilderness.
The speculation is that this latest Bayh will follow his father’s path and take aim at the Indiana secretary of state’s office, which is currently occupied by Republican Diego Morales, a career political opportunist who never met a grift he didn’t like and never passed up a chance to put a family member on the payroll.
In a normal time, a guy like Morales would be as vulnerable as a newborn rabbit in the company of a pack of wolves, but these are not typical days.
Hoosiers, like most other Americans, have become increasingly partisan.
And not in ways that favor Democrats.
All of Morales’ ethical liabilities were on display in 2022, when he still defeated the gifted Destiny Wells, who in any state with a viable Democratic Party would be a rising star.
For that matter, when Evan Bayh attempted a political comeback in 2016, he discovered that Hoosiers’ appetites for consensus leadership had dissipated considerably, if not disappeared altogether.
There’s also this possibility.
Indiana Republicans aren’t eager to create any openings for a Democratic resurgence. They know Morales is the most vulnerable GOP statewide officeholder and they’re exploring ways to replace him in 2026.
If they do, then the challenge for Beau Bayh—or any other Indiana Democrat—will become much greater.
And possibly even insurmountable.
It’s easy to understand the longing Hoosier Democrats have for another Bayh to walk them out of the darkness once again.
But the reality is that reboots are rarely as successful as the original.
And we’ve seen this show before.
