I had a chance to talk yesterday with former and would-be future Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, who won the Republican nomination in the May 4 primary with 41% of the votes, to 30% for state Senator Marlin Stutzman and 24% for former 8th district Congressman John Hostettler. This was not an overwhelming margin for a candidate who was elected to the House four times from 1980 to 1988 in the old 4th district and who was elected to the Senate twice, in a 1989 special election to succeed Vice President Dan Quayle and in 1992 for a full term. Coats served as Ambassador to Germany in George W. Bush’s first term and has worked since as a Washington lobbyist—not exactly an ideal resume in this anti-insider electoral cycle.
“It’s a different mood out there,” Coats says. While in the 1980s and 1990s “I’d get 12 to 15 people in town meeting,” this year the candidate’s joint appearances and debates would attract 500 to 600. Hoosiers are upset about taxes, spending, the budget deficit and bureaucracy, he said. “The imposition of more of Washington is really upsetting people. Every household has had to make cuts, everyone is tightening his belt except the federal government.” Coats thinks that voters are ready for what most politicians have considered drastic measures; he told debate audiences that “we have to address mandatory spending, entitlements. We need long-term structural changes along the lines suggested by Congressman Paul Ryan” in his road map proposals. It helps, Coats said, that Indiana’s Republican Governor Mitch Daniels has managed to cut spending without inflicting major pain. Daniels was reelected by a solid 58%-40% margin even as Barack Obama was carrying Indiana 50%-49% in the biggest Democratic swing in any state from the 2004 election results.
