Indiana Republican congressman Todd Young will replace retiring GOP Sen. Dan Coats, a GOP victory that will give Republicans a real shot at maintaining control of the Senate.
Young defeated former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who entered the race late as part of a push to help Democrats win back the Senate. A closing surge from Young wrecked Bayh’s hopes of winning back his seat.
When the race was called shortly before 9 p.m., Republicans had held held seven of the seats they currently hold, and had just lost one to a Democrat in Illinois.
In the final days of the campaign, multiple projections gave Young a slight advantage over Bayh. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Howey Politics Indiana, non-partisan political analysts, each predicted a Young victory.
“We have witnessed the destruction of the Bayh brand,” Brian Howey wrote on Monday. “[W]e found a tone deaf Evan Bayh, dressing his Harvard-educated sons in Hoosier collegiate t-shirts for TV ads, and tossing basketballs into hoops. There was the classic Bayh symbolism and air war, but no ground game. He collided head-on into a Hoosier electorate leery of Washington, voters seeking fracturing change, and either highly educated or miseducated. Bayh was a symbol of the beltway, an onerous relic that Bernie Sanders supporters found offensive.”
Young, a veteran of the Marine Corps, benefited mightily from support from the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Several Republican headliners fundraised and stumped for Young in the campaign’s waning stages, including former President George W. Bush, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst.
The Hoosier Senator-elect painted his Democratic opponent as a Washington insider who lost touch with his home state and became a lobbyist. Bayh vehemently disputed that he ever technically worked as a lobbyist, and suffered from some self-inflicted wounds that included misstating his Indiana home address. At 44, Young will serve as one of the Senate’s youngest members who will draw on his military experience as a legislator.
While Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, served as Donald Trump’s running mate, the presidential race did not factor in as a campaign issue between the candidates. Both Young and Bayh avoided talking about the presidential race when trading barbs on the debate stage in October. Whether Young gained an advantage from split-ticket voting remains to be seen.
Keeping Indiana red was crucial to Republicans’ strategy to keep control of the Senate in 2017. How much of a factor Indiana will play into the balance of power in the Senate is unclear.
