Coats clearly favored for Senate

Commentary By Sylvia A. Smith

WASHINGTON – The conventional wisdom is Hoosier Republicans will pick Dan Coats as their nominee for the Senate race.

Does conventional wisdom always hit the mark? Of course not. And you’re right to be suspicious when the subject is politics and the words are “conventional” and “wisdom.”

Nonetheless, unless something unexpected happens, the expected result will occur. That’s true in most endeavors, it’s true in politics generally, and it’s true in the Indiana GOP Senate primary.

When political handicappers look at any campaign, they ask a few basic questions: How well known is the candidate among voters? How much money does the campaign have? A subset of the money question includes questions about the competence of staff, the experience of an advertising team, the ability of the candidate to travel around the state. Does the candidate have voter appeal (a clear and memorable answer to “why should I vote for you?”)? What kind of baggage does the candidate have?

For most of those questions, Coats has the advantage over the four other candidates in the Republican primary.

He’s been a statewide officeholder, albeit more than a decade ago, and a lot of people may have a “Dan who?” reaction. But none of the other candidates has run or won a statewide race. They may be well known in pockets of Indiana – John Hostettler in the Evansville area he represented in Congress, Marlin Stutzman in the northern area he represents in the statehouse – but none has solid name recognition statewide.

So even if Coats’ recognition factor has dimmed in the years he’s been removed from Indiana, he has more of it than the others.

The other candidates could erase that advantage. But it takes money.

We won’t know until late this week how well the candidates have done in fundraising. But only three of them raised any money last year, and none of them had even $7,000 to start 2010 with. Seven grand would be nice in your bank account or mine, but it is diddlysquat in a statewide election.

Coats and Hostettler got into the race after Jan. 1, so they have not yet had to disclose how much money they have raised and from whom.

From his past campaigns and from his years as a lobbyist, Coats has a list of past donors to tap and plenty of D.C. connections. A political action committee controlled by Sen. John Kyl, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent Coats $10,000, and Sen. John McCain’s PAC contributed $5,000.

The other candidates simply don’t have those inroads into the money set. Even if they have fervent and generous individual donors, it takes twice as many individual donors giving the legal maximum ($2,400) to come close to the maximum contribution from a PAC ($5,000). Note: If Coats loses, he will have to send back half of the $10,000 that Kyl contributed.

There’s another clue that the other four candidates are not setting records in fundraising. None of them has aired a commercial. One proven way for an unknown candidate to become known is through commercials, TV in particular.

Because they are not spending money in the one sure-fire way to generate name identification, it suggests they don’t have the cash. Coats may also not have the name recognition he once had, but unless the other candidates are making inroads, he doesn’t have to spend money on TV commercials to stay ahead in that category.

It’s a guess – but an educated one – that when the candidates report how much money they raised in the first three months of this year, Coats will be in a better position than the other candidates.

Any of the four other candidates could make this election rough on Coats. So far, however, they largely seem to have taken a pass.

Hostettler has been the most hard-hitting, criticizing votes Coats made in 1993 on gun restrictions, confirming Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg and on a foreign-affairs spending bill that Hostettler said allowed tax money to pay for overseas abortions.

Hostettler’s ad might have some resonance these days. In the mid-1990s, senators tended to vote on Supreme Court nominees on the basis of the nominee’s “character, experience, qualifications and intelligence – not politics,” as Coats said at the time. Politics and ideology take a front seat in judicial confirmations these days.

But potent though Hostettler’s 2-minute video is, it will have no power because it is seen only on his campaign Web site. If Hostettler had the money, he’d air that video on TV.

Conventional wisdom could be turned on its ear in Indiana this year. The electoral mood is sour, and tea party activists – voters who seem more engaged than other GOP constituencies – have not warmed up to Coats and his establishment connections.

But that’s not enough. None of the four non-Coats candidates is a runaway favorite among the tea partiers, and it’s not yet clear how sizable that group is, anyway.

Hostettler has demonstrated he is willing to challenge Coats on his record. But until he has the money to be more visible in his attacks, and until the other candidates have the moxie – and the money – to go after Coats, conventional wisdom will prevail.

Sylvia A. Smith has worked at The Journal Gazette since 1973 and has covered Washington since 1989. She is the only Washington-based reporter who exclusively covers northeast Indiana. Her e-mail address is sylviasmith@jg.net. Her phone number is 202-879-6710.

Share this story