In lieu of the potential Coats candidacy, Rothenberg has an update:

Former Sen. Dan Coats’ (R) likely entry into the Indiana Senate race puts another seat into play for Republicans.

Coats last served in the Senate a decade ago and Democrats are already attacking him for living in Virginia since then, but the Republican should be a credible alternative for voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and the party in power. Coats will need to put together his campaign quickly in order to compete with the $13 million Sen. Evan Bayh (D) had in the bank at the end of the year. But this has suddenly become a very interesting race. Move from Currently Safe to Narrow Advantage for the Incumbent Party.

I’m interested to see that Coats’ entry got this rating to move, but nothing else did.

Bayh’s bad polling against both Pence and Hostettler didn’t move it.

The national environment didn’t move it.

It was moved by a former Senator living outside of Indiana who now has a dozen days to get on the ballot.

That’s placing a lot of faith in the political abilities of a candidate relative to the political abilities of Evan Bayh. And the last time that Coats had to face Bayh, he ran away. I know it’s harsh to say that, but it’s what happened.

So I went and hunted for information on past election campaigns run by Senator Coats.

There are, to my count, seven such elections.

1980 4th District Congress
–Dan Coats: 120,055
–John Walda (D): 77,542

1982 4th District Congress
–Dan Coats: 110,115
–Roger Miller (D): 60,054

1984 4th District Congress
–Dan Coats: 129,674
–Michael Barnard (D): 82,053

1986 4th District Congress
–Dan Coats: 99,865
–Gregory Scher (D): 43,105

1988 4th District Congress
–Dan Coats: 132,843
–Jill Long (D): 80,915

Those are all impressive margins, true, but the 4th District of the 1980s is not that dissimilar to the 3rd District of today; it’s a very Republican district. Coats never had a competitive election as a Congressman.

As a Senator?

1990 Senate
–Dan Coats: 806,048
–Baron Hill (D): 696,639

1992 Senate
–Dan Coats: 1,267,972
–Joe Hogsett (D): 900,148

All results are taken from the Clerk of the House.

Baron Hill ran a relatively vigorous campaign (he campaigned by physically running the length of the state), but still lost by over 100,000 votes. He also gave Coats the closest thing to a competitive election that he ever faced, and that was a margin of about 8%.

So why is Dan Coats’ entry enough to move the rating when the national environment and the polling didn’t cause it to budge?

He hasn’t raised any money. He’s starting late. He hasn’t run a competitive election before (and declined to face Bayh last time). He has unfortunately baggage (lobbying, TARP, residency, etc).

There also hasn’t been a poll matching him up against Bayh, though polling has shown the race competitive with other potential November opponents (one of which is already running).

So where does that leave us?

We have a candidate with no money, no polling, no prior serious campaign experience, but who is being talked up by a bunch of GOP bigwigs.

Why?

I hope to learn the answer, since what I am seeing so far doesn’t convince me.