Political Radar: Bye-Bye, Bayh

Subscribe to this blog's feed

« Thompson and Hunter to Iowa | Main | Gates Sworn In »

Bye-Bye, Bayh

December 16, 2006 9:53 AM

ABC News' Jake Tapper Reports: Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) has decided not to run for president. A source close to Bayh tells ABC News that the Indiana Democrat decided that the odds were such that whatever the possible Democratic field he couldn't ask his family, friends, and supporters to go down that road.

Bayh, you may recall, visited to New Hampshire last weekend, a trip that received scant attention in the shadow of the first visit to that first-in-the-nation primary state by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

Two weeks ago, Sen. Bayh told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos his intention to form a presidential exploratory committee and run for the White House.

Yesterday Bayh dropped out of the race, telling his home paper the Indianapolis Star that "This path and these long odds -- would have required me to be essentially absent from the Senate for the next year instead of working to help the people of my state and the nation."

On paper, Bayh looked a promising a candidate. He is a centrist "New Democrat" and former governor of the red state of Indiana, the son of former Senator with $10.5 million in his campaign coffers. He'd hired staff in Iowa.

But, says a source close to Bayh, it just didn't look like this was going to be his year.

"The odds were always going to be very long for a relatively unknown candidate like myself, a little bit like David and Goliath," Bayh says in a written statement.

"And whether there were too many Goliaths or whether I’m just not the right David, the fact remains that at the end of the day, I concluded that due to circumstances beyond our control the odds were longer than I felt I could responsibly pursue."