Last Tuesday, I blogged (also here) about rumors swirling about a potential challenge to Evan Bayh by Lake County attorney Dan Dumezich. Yesterday, Frugal Hoosiers followed up with a post discussing the perilous political position of Birch’s boy and going into more detail about Dumezich’s background.

The weakened political position of Evan Bayh is difficult to overstate. The mighty Bayh machine, forged by sixteen straight years of Democrat governors and held together by the boundless personal ambition of a man that sought to be President, has been smashed.

Bart Peterson, Bayh’s protege, went down to defeat to a Marine that came from nowhere in the greatest political upset in Indiana history. Bayh spent his political capital heavily and only narrowly delivered Indiana in a hotly-contested primary, only to find that he had backed the losing candidate. Hopes for a vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket did not materialize. His establishment’s pick in the gubernatorial primary went down to defeat, even as Indiana’s members of Congress went their own separate ways in terms of presidential endorsements; Bayh could not sway them. The string of defeats suffered by the state Democratic Party of having not won an election for statewide office since 2000 continues unbroken.

(Read more after the leap)

Not so long ago, Evan Bayh’s future prospects were boundless and the stock of the party he had built was skyrocketing. What a difference fourteen months makes; those prospects have now plunged back to earth and cratered. Evan Bayh’s political future is now limited to warming a back bench seat in the Democratic Senate caucus, overshadowed by Lugar and Daniels in Indiana and outshone in the Senate by virtually everyone. The party he built has lost the mayorship of Indianapolis, holds no statewide offices, Bayh’s influence among Indiana’s Congressional delegation would only be weaker if it had more Republicans on it, and Pat “The Hair” Bauer always goes his own way.

It used to be that Evan Bayh was a rising star. Now he is all but a fading light.

I’ve been poking around some, and have heard mixed things about a Dumezich candidacy.

On the one hand, I am told that a candidacy by Dan Dumezich would be, as Rex Early would put it “a Grand thing” and one with “green painted all over it.” The theory goes that Dumezich, an articulate attorney who served as a judge and then briefly in the legislature, could raise a sizable war chest to fund a competitive campaign, enough money to make Evan Bayh start hiring the best political consultants money can buy.

Bayh’s diminished influence and the weakened status of his own party helps to make him a target. On top of that, he is running in a traditionally conservative and Republican state in a year that will historically favor the party out of power (in this case, the Republicans). Better still, Birch’s boy will have spent two years voting in line with his party on a wide variety of liberal agenda items from tax increases to vast expansions of government to card check to a wide variety of litmus-test social issues guaranteed to make rural Hoosier conservatives (Democrat or Republican) howl.

In such an environment, an articulate, well-funded, and viable candidacy will likely find generous national support and result in a battle royale. One need only look to a wide variety of recent Senate elections from both parties to find once-popular incumbents losing to good campaigns and good (even just decent) candidates. Virtual nobodies have managed to run competent campaigns and have unseated incumbents (like Elizabeth Dole or George Allen, for example) previously thought to be untouchable.

Dumezich, if I recall correctly, sits on the board of Indiana Right to Life (which gives him an in with social conservatives) and could potentially raise a lot of money from his big money legal friends.

At the same time, a Dumezich candidacy is not without its critics. Several individuals I spoke with don’t think he will have much appeal in rural Indiana (though if Mitch Daniels could find broad appeal in rural Indiana, I think that a road map exists for anyone). Others suspect a Dumezich candidacy is a cipher to ensure that Evan Bayh does not face a serious general election opponent (thus escaping all of the aforementioned weaknesses).

These theories revolve around the Democratic-leanings of the clients of Dumezich’s law firm, Mayer Brown, and the position of Bayh allies (like Bill Moreau) at Indianapolis law firms like Barnes & Thornburg. Would such allegiances, they say, preclude serious support for a Dumezich candidacy from those corners? Maybe, maybe not. But the supposition, put forward by Advance Indiana’s Gary Welsh in the comments at Frugal Hoosiers, that Dan Dumezich would only run for the Senate to ensure that he would lose and Bayh would win seems a bit far-fetched to me. Any conspiracy of law firms that clever would find someone less prominent to be their patsy candidate.

If there is no such conspiracy (and I seriously question whether one exists), then Dan Dumezich has the potential to be a serious threat to the much-weakened Evan Bayh. And Bayh seems to recognize that he’s vulnerable. He wouldn’t be hiring high-powered political consultants if he thought that Dan Dumezich (or his eventual challenger) was going to roll over and play dead.