A new Freedom Partners Action Fund ad slams Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Evan Bayh (D.) for conducting a "taxpayer-funded job search" at the end of his last tenure in the chamber in 2010.
"When Evan Bayh should have been serving Hoosiers, he was serving himself," the narrator says.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that he spent "substantial time" during his last year in office searching for a private sector job, "even as he voted on issues of interest to his future corporate bosses."
In June 2010, Bayh was among a small group of Democrats who helped kill a tax increase on private equity gains known as carried interest that was opposed by Apollo Global Management. That fall he stayed overnight three times at one Apollo executive’s Central Park South residence in Manhattan, and met twice with the company’s chief executive, Leon Black.
Weeks after Bayh left the Senate, Apollo announced he had been hired as a senior adviser.
When asked about the meetings, according to the Indianapolis Star, his campaign lied.
The timing of the new job prompted IndyStar to ask Bayh’s campaign about a half dozen taxpayer-funded trips Bayh took to New York City during the last half of 2010. The flurry of travel was unusual for Bayh–he hadn’t used taxpayer money to travel to New York City since 2002.
In response to IndyStar’s inquiries, the campaign said in early September that Bayh didn’t meet with anyone from Apollo during those trips.
Turns out, that wasn’t the case.
Politico reported that Bayh’s net worth "soared" between leaving office and seeking his seat back in 2016, going from a net worth of between $2.1 and $7.7 million to between $13.9 and $48 million in assets.
He served two terms before dramatically announcing he was leaving the Senate in 2010, complaining that rigid partisanship had forced his hand. Progressives seemed happy to see him go.
"The Democrats are going to miss Evan Bayh’s Senate seat in Indiana," MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said on Election Night in 2010. "I cannot believe they are going to miss Evan Bayh." Former MSNBC host Cenk Uygur once called him a "joke" and a "corporate hack."
The Washington Free Beacon reported liberals do not want him to be in charge of the Banking Committee should he win back his seat.
Bayh has also struggled with perceptions that he is not truly a Hoosier any longer. One of his own ads included someone referring to him as a Hoosier in the past tense, and his claim that he never left Indiana was contradicted by records showing his primary residences were in Washington, D.C.
He holds a small lead in the Real Clear Politics average of polls against Republican Todd Young.