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By BRIAN A. HOWEY
ANGOLA, Ind. - Barack Obama’s coming Wednesday visit to Elkhart has renewed speculation that U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh could be added to the Democratic ticket. But there’s far more we don’t know than what we do. This is a speculator’s game at this point. No one outside the Obama inner circle really knows what’s happening.
Bayh will be there to introduce Obama, his spokesman Eric Kleiman confirmed for Howey Politics Indiana this morning. What 
we don’t know is the time. The Obama campaign said doors will open at 7:15 a.m., but there is no starting time established. If it’s before 10 a.m,, it’s highly unlikely this would be a veep rollout. Anything after 10 a.m. would allow West Coast viewers to watch on the Today Show, Good Morning America or Morning Joe. Most vice presidential rollouts tend to come in the afternoon (i.e. George H.W. Bush announced Dan Quayle’s selection at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday during the Republican National Convention in 1988).
We know there is a long press flight layover in South Bend, with the Obama media arriving at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and not leaving until 3:25 p.m. Wednesday. It seems like a long layover, but an explanation could be that Obama will be at his Chicago home for the night. Democratic media consultant Chris Sautter was at Obama’s Chicago headquarters and spent time with David Axelrod last weekend. " He seemed to me more a like a guy who was going to finally get some rest over the weekend rather than someone gearing up for a major rollout the next week," said Sautter. "I could be completely wrong, but everyone seemed a little loose for a VP announcement. Larry Grisolano told me he was going away for the weekend. On the other hand, David perked up when I told him that Indiana had the highest jump in unemployment in the month of June. So anything is possible, I guess."
The national press speculation was that Obama would make the choice prior to the Beijing Olympics which start Friday and go through Aug. 24, with the Democratic National Convention commencing two days later. Obama is also scheduled to take a vacation week in Hawaii mid-month, so it’s going to happen either this week or the last two in August. But many veepstakes winners have been announced near or on convention week. There don’t appear to be other similar events in the planning stages this week in places like Virginia, Kansas, Delaware, or New Mexico, home to other veep short listers like Tim Kaine, Nancy Sebelius, Joe Biden or Bill Richardson.
With Bayh in attendance and with the town hall format, the elephant … er, donkey in the room will be the veepstakes, Obama will take questions from the audience. He almost certainly will be asked about an Obama-Bayh ticket. That will be an interesting moment if there is no grand announcement to begin with. Then again, perhaps Obama and his team want to size up Bayh one more time as well as get a view on the ground in a state that no Democrat has carried since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide. The Obama visit appears to be aimed at the dramatic jump in the jobless rate with the 1,400 Monaco jobs that were lost last month in part due to the skyrocketing gasoline prices.
Does Bayh have any historic ties to Elkhart? The answer is yes, though not as vivid as, say, his hometown of Shirkieville, which might not play so well in the national press. In some of the first acts as a public official, 30-year-old and newly-elected Secretary of State Bayh in 1987 presided over the recounts of the 3rd CD race between U.S. Rep. John Hiler and Democrat Tom Ward, as well as two legisltive seats. Many of the decisions Bayh made angered local Democrats because they favored the Republicans. In retrospect, Bayh’s decisions were based soundly on Indiana election law, were fair, and helped establish him as a "bipartisan" voice. That has also been an emphasis of the Obama campaign.
Finally, the event will be held in the Concord HS basketball gym. Veepstakes usually aren’t rolled out in a basketball gym. To which we respond: yes, but this is Indiana.
Photo: Bayh and Obama appeared at Purdue University together in July. (HPI Photo by Ryan Nees)
Tags: Barack Obama, Dan Quayle, Evan Bayh, George H.W. Bush, John Hiler
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This entry was written by and posted on August 4, 2008 at 11:13 am and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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