Why Republicans are Upset with the Timing of Bayh's Announcement

The Hill reports that Republicans, yes Republicans, are upset with the timing of Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-IN) retirement announcement. I think overall, Republicans are obviously happy with his decision. However, there are a few good reasons to be upset with the timing.

First is fairness. Indiana has onerous ballot access requirements for primaries in statewide offices. State law (IC 3-8-2-8) requires that candidates for U.S. Senate, governor, and U.S. President gather 4,500 signatures of registered Indiana voters, including 500 from each of Indiana's nine congressional districts. The Hill notes that Republicans have four candidates who have officially made the ballot and a fifth whose signatures are currently being validated. Senator Bayh, although an incumbent, still had to file the nominating petitions.

As Ed Morrissey wrote, the worst thing about the timing of Bayh's retirement is the fact he gave potential Democrat successors around 24 hours to gather 4,500 signatures by Tuesday's noon deadline imposed by state law. This task would have been near impossible. I spent several weeks working on Indiana ballot access for the McCain Campaign in early 2008 and the signature gathering is quite difficult. First, the true number of signatures needed to get on the ballot is greater than 4,500. A candidate should have a cushion of at least a few thousand signatures to have a comfortable margin of error in the event someone challenges the validity of the candidate's filing. It is quite possible that many signatures will be thrown out for being illegible, because the person signing was not registered to vote, or because he or she was registered to vote in a different county. (The county voter registration office checks each petition to ensure the signers are registered in that county.) Needless to say, this is a very difficult task that's made worse by the fact the signature gathering has to be done in the dead of an Indiana winter. A campaign needs to devote considerable resources to get this done. In our case, we had three full-time campaign staffers gathering signatures around the state and help from many Indiana volunteers and local and state party leaders. We barely made it.

The point in all of this is that these five Republicans had to devote the resources to collect the thousands of signatures to get on the ballot and the Democrats did not. (However, Tamyra d'Ippol, a café owner, who was challenging Biden from the left for the Senate nomination insisted she received enough signatures, however, it now looks like she wasn't even close.)

Realizing there was less than 24 hours to collect signatures, none of the other potential challengers bothered collecting even a single signature. Instead, "the party's executive committee will meet in the next six weeks to decide on a nominee." Democrats are already conducting polling to determine who runs best against likely Republican nominee, former Senator Dan Coats. In sum, the nominee of the party will be chosen in some smoke-filled backroom, something you would expect to see from Indiana's neighbor to the west, not in the Hoosier state. Moreover, two likely contenders for the seat are current House Democrats, leaving open the likelihood that Democrat leaders will also get to choose the nominee from the Senate nominee's district. comes from. This is not a victory for democracy.

Reports are that those close to Bayh were unaware that he was going to make the announcement until immediately before hand. Apparently, Bayh did not inform Harry Reid until the rumors were all over the web. Based on these facts, it seems quite possible that there's nothing nefarious going on here. However, the alternative isn't pretty: Bayh negotiating to ensure that Democratic Party leaders would be able to handpick his successor instead of the voters. Why risk a divisive and expensive primary? Why spend thousands to get on the ballot like the Republicans?

NRSC Chair John Cornyn (R-TX) released a statement urging Bayh to call for the state party "to extend the candidate filing deadline — both for this Senate candidacy and for any House candidacy that is left open by a Democrat House member who runs for the Senate nomination." This is unlikely to happen since the deadline is imposed by state statute. I am guessing special legislation would be needed to extend the deadline.