Joe Donnelly remembers reactions to his decision four years ago to take a shot at a U.S. Senate seat that had been in Republican hands for 36 years.
“Nine out of 10 people I talked to said, 'Don’t do it,'" said Donnelly, who at the time held a safe seat in Congress.
He ignored their advice. The Democrat knocked off Tea Party Republican Richard Mourdock, who'd ended the long Senate career of Richard Lugar in the primaries, winning his seat in 2012.
Democrats had been feeling down and out. Indiana had turned reliably red, evidenced by the super-majority hold on the General Assembly that Republicans gained that year.
“It was like somebody in our dugout finally hit one over the fence,” Donnelly said of joy over his victory. “And now, we’re looking up and seeing the whole team on the field.”
For Democrats, it could be a field of dreams.
The Nov. 8 election has the potential to redefine the state’s political identity as purple. The Democrats' two star candidates, John Gregg and Evan Bayh, are leading, though only by a few points, in recent opinion polls in the races for governor and U.S. Senate, respectively. The lone statewide Democratic office holder, Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, seems on a surer path to victory.
Donnelly doesn’t want to jinx it and is loathe to talk about what might happen, but he's hard at work. He'll devote much of the next week to a statewide bus tour with Gregg, Bayh, Ritz and a long list of down-ticket candidates, helping to energize an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort.
“We’re not counting on anything. We’re working non-stop,” he said.
Still, Donnelly allowed just a little of what it would mean for the party to recapture the governor’s office after 16 years out, and to hold both U.S. Senate seats – a feat not seen since the 1970s: “It would be big."
Brian Howey, publisher of Howey Politics Indiana, employs a similar description: “It would be huge."
Electing Democrats to the governor's office and Senate seat being vacated by Republican Dan Coats would expand a leadership base for the party now anchored by mayors of the state’s biggest cities - Joe Hogsett in Indianapolis and Tom Henry in Fort Wayne, said Howey.
It would create more slots for Democratic activists – especially young ones – to get jobs in government. And, combined with a Bayh victory, it would it make it easier for the state Democratic Party, on a tight budget, to raise big dollars to back competitive candidates in the future.
Recruitment is key: When Gregg was first elected speaker of Indiana's House of Representatives in 1996, Democrats held 50 of 100 seats. They’re now down to 29.
“A Gov. Gregg would be in a much better position to recruit state House candidates and push for redistricting reform,” Howey said.
Carmen Darland, a Democratic party leader in the rural 3rd Congressional District, said redistricting has been a big power lever. Past gerrymandering has created safe GOP districts.
Both Gregg and his Republican opponent, Eric Holcomb, have endorsed the idea of an independent redistricting commission that could end the partisan redistricting process that favors the party in power.
Gregg has promised to use the bully pulpit of the governor’s office, Darland said, to pressure a reluctant Legislature to push through reform.
“It’s been so hard to recruit good candidates when they have an almost-zero percent of winning,” she said. “No one wants to enter a race they know they’re going to lose.”