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WASHINGTON - Nobody knows whose name will follow Barack Obama's on the Democratic ticket, but Hoosier Sen. Evan Bayh is on almost all the speculation lists.
"The Indiana senator is the safest choice available to Obama," wrote a key Washington Post political analyst. Chris Cillizza ranked Bayh the No. 1 likeliest choice two weeks in a row.
But all speculation is just guesswork, cautioned Charlie Cook, publisher of the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
"There are hundreds of factors that go into this," he said. "Nobody else can possibly know how much weight each candidate puts on each factor. How much of it is personal compatibility? How much of it is ideology? How much of it is carrying a key state? How much is having some strategic reason behind the pick?
"Obama has to feel like a kid going into Baskin-Robbins," Cook said. "Dozens of choices, many intriguing, some safer, others more daring. He has to weigh so many different factors, 10 different people would weigh the factors 10 different ways."
Bayh was an active supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign. Even so, after she dropped out, Bayh popped up on most lists as a potential Obama running mate.
As others have taken themselves out of contention - Virginia Sen. James Webb and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, for instance - the speculation spotlight has shown on a smaller and smaller group of Democrats: Clinton, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed and former Sen. Sam Nunn.
Bayh has deflected direct questions about whether he wants to be selected, calling it flattering speculation while at the same time clearly receptive to a "will you join the ticket" phone call.
Campaigning with Obama in Indiana this month, Bayh said: "Any questions about the vice presidential thing are understandable and it's good for my ego. But I should probably let Sen. Obama and his campaign address those kinds of questions."
On a Fox News interview last Sunday, Bayh said, "Well, that's the kind of thing you do say ‘yes' to." But he would not say whether the team that is vetting potential running mates has asked Bayh for any information. "I'd love to answer your question, but I think I really can't," he said.
Birch Evans Bayh III, 52 - known as Evan - grew up in a political family, the son of a senator and unsuccessful presidential candidate. He learned political lessons early from his father's campaigns.
When he was a sophomore, Bayh took a semester off from Indiana University to work on his father's 1976 presidential campaign, which he called "a transforming experience."
In his book, "From Father to Son," Bayh described making speeches and giving press interviews on behalf of his father, Birch.
"I had discovered how exhilarating it could be to work for a cause and a candidate in whom you believe," he wrote. "There's a saying about people who've been bitten by the political bug: ‘The politics doesn't come out until the formaldehyde goes in.' I hope it's not true of me, but I understand how it happens."
When he was in second grade, 7-year-old Evan moved to Washington with his mother and newly elected senator father and attended private school. During his teens, Bayh spent four summers at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Ind., and earned a business economics degree from IU in Bloomington. He attended law school at the University of Virginia.
Bayh practiced law briefly before running for Indiana secretary of state in 1986, an office he won. Since then, he has been in a government job except for a two-year period between his second term as governor and his election to the Senate in 1998.
When he won the first of two terms as Indiana governor in 1988, Bayh was the youngest governor in the country.
Asked during his first Senate race why he is a Democrat, Bayh said:
"I believe that the government can play a positive role in helping to create opportunity for people in our society. Not the dominant role; I still think that's the private sector, but I do think that collectively we can do things that will make our nation a better place with more opportunity than if we just had anarchy."
He said that differs from some "Republican extremists who think it should be a completely Darwinian world, survival of the fittest."
"If you happen to be a loser in the marketplace, that's too bad. If you happen to be born to the wrong side of the tracks, that's too bad, and there's no role for the rest of us to play," he said of that approach.
"Each of us has a responsibility to society," Bayh said in the 1998 interview, "but then I think society also has some responsibilities to each of us, and that's to try and guarantee some minimum threshold of opportunity, even if you happen to be born to a very humble home."
For most of his 10 years in the Senate, Bayh has served on the Banking and Armed Services committees.
He has drawn attention to the skimpiness of the Humvees initially used in Iraq and inadequate care given by the Pentagon and Veterans Administration to soldiers with the signature wound of that war, traumatic brain injury.
The second bill Bayh introduced when he entered the Senate - a 1999 proposal to promote responsible fatherhood - drew growls from some women's groups that said Bayh's approach advocated marriage as a goal in and of itself, disparaged single mothers and didn't guard against forcing women to remain in abusive marriages. The bill did not pass, and Bayh has reintroduced it four times with revisions.
Bayh's latest version refers to "healthy relationships" as well as "marriage" and makes clear that the government wouldn't encourage people to stay with an abusive spouse. Obama is one of two co-sponsors of Bayh's 2007 version.
Bayh's demeanor in the Senate is one of collegiality; his occasional instances of sharp rhetoric are a contrast to his typical style.
He's likely to refer to Republican senators as "my good friend." If their terms coincided with his father's career, Bayh typically mentions that to suggest a long-standing family relationship with the GOP lawmaker.
On rare occasions he's thrown a sharp elbow: When he was exploring an initial presidential campaign, Bayh publicly announced his opposition to Bush's first attorney general nominee. The Justice Department under John Ashcroft "will perpetuate divisiveness, partisanship and gridlock," Bayh wrote in a Washington Post column.
But Bayh is generally not a flashy politician and has never been embroiled in a scandal.
His Midwestern roots would enhance the Democratic ticket, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said. He said he doubts Obama would beat John McCain in GOP-leaning Indiana, even with Bayh on the ticket, but the Hoosier might influence neighboring Ohio, a swing state.
Indiana has supported the GOP presidential candidate in the past 10 elections. The last time a Democrat won in Indiana was 1964, when Lyndon Johnson drew more votes than Barry Goldwater.
Before he abandoned his presidential campaign, Bayh frequently said one of his advantages was that he's a Democrat who knows how to win in a Republican state.
Bayh has won five statewide elections in Indiana as senator, governor and secretary of state. His strong showing at the ballot box - he won re-election in 2004 with 62 percent of the vote - is considered a plus.
Cook, the political analyst, said one thing in Bayh's favor is his appeal to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans.
"For someone who's having a hard time relating to middle-class, white voters over 50," he said of Obama, "Bayh would not be a bad choice at all."
Bayh and Obama are not ideological mirrors of each other. But on an issue that will feature prominently in the fall campaign - the war - their views have grown closer.
Bayh voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war. Obama, who was not in Congress at the time, vocally opposed it.
Last year, Obama was one of 14 senators who voted against a bill to provide money for the war. Bayh and most Democratic senators voted for it. But Bayh has also said that he would not have voted to go to war if he knew then what he knows now.
Bayh was on Al Gore's short list for consideration as a running mate in 2000. But Bayh's vote in support of a ban on a late-term abortion procedure drew the wrath of pro-choice organizations.
Bayh and his wife, Susan, have twin sons who will turn 13 five days after the November election. When Bayh explored a '04 presidential campaign in 2001, he said his boys were too young then to endure the amount of time they would be separated from their dad because of a campaign.
If Obama picks Bayh, it would be the second time in a generation that a Hoosier landed the No. 2 spot on a presidential ticket. In 1988, then-Sen. Dan Quayle was chosen to run with George H.W. Bush on the Republican ticket.
sylviasmith@jg.net
