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Wednesday, 01 September 2010 3:44 |
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by Brian Howey
BLOOMINGTON - It was his seventh and final mile, heading down South Walnut Street when a motorcyclist preparing to saddle up in a parking lot saw U.S. Rep. Baron Hill walk by.
“Thanks for all you do,” Jason Evans-Groth called out from inside his helmet.
Hill smiled, walked over and shook the man’s hand. The congressman is in a tough reelection battle in a hellish year for Democrats. The congressman had preached to his base all day that the pundits were spewing far too much gloom and doom.
A few minutes later as Hill marched on with his staff and this writer several yards behind, a man in an SUV drove by and yelled out, “You suck.”
So even in this liberal nook in the sprawling 9th CD - a true 50/50 district that has seen several races since 1994 go down to the wire - the split in opinion seemed apt.
Hill is seeking a sixth term in seven elections, losing only once in the Bush-Daniels year of 2004. He faces a different foe than perennial opponent Mike Sodrel. Republican Todd Young is pressing Hill with a tailwind behind him, though he has yet to close ranks with the embittered Sodrel after edging him out with 35 percent of the vote in the three-way May primary. “It’s a little weird,” Hill says of not running against Sodrel. “It’s an adjustment. I don’t know much about Todd Young.”
On this day the Republican National Committee targeted Hill as part of a 40-district, $22 million assault. Hill is ardently defending what has been a tumultuous two years. He broke with many Democrats in his district in April 2008, endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Indiana primary.
He staved off a fourth and final Sodrel challenge that November with 58 percent of the vote. As the Bush presidency waned, Hill voted against the TARP bailout of Wall Street, but backed the Obama stimulus in February 2009. The following fall, he voted for the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade legislation. And the capstone of controversy came with his March vote for the health reforms.
“After that vote, I sleep well at night knowing that people with pre-existing conditions can be covered, that your insurance coverage will follow you, that the doughnut hole has been fixed, that small businesses will get a tax cut for hiring people. Does anyone want to get rid of that?” Hill asked. “I can tell you who does: My opponent.”
And now on a campaign trail littered with briars, liars, fires and brimstone, Hill is battling back. He left an emphatic marker at the Indiana Democratic Convention in June when during a fiery speech, Hill boomed, “I’m glad we passed health care. They want to repeal the thing. Let’s have that debate. Bring it on!”
At that point in June, Public Opinion Strategies had Hill leading Young 41-34 percent in a poll conducted on behalf of the Republican. But more troubling were a number of Rasmussen Reports polls that revealed close to 60 percent of Hoosiers favor repealing the health reforms and about 50 percent are very motivated. But Hill had $1 million cash on hand as Young worked to replenish his primary-exhausted coffers.
Back in 1990 when State Rep. Hill challenged newly appointed U.S. Sen. Dan Coats, Hill announced he would walk the entire state from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan. With great fanfare and a stuffed folder of earned media along the way, Hill jumped into Lake Michigan at the end of the journey.
“The polls showed I was down by 34 percent,” Hill recalled. But soon after his plunge, Mason-Dixon released a poll showing him eight percent down. He would lose to Coats by that same margin. Hill attributed the bounce to his walk.
In this campaign, he will walk 250 miles. He’s getting a ton of press coverage.
Hill walked into the Monroe County Democratic headquarters just off the Indiana University campus around 11:30 a.m. Waiting for him was Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan and about 25 activists and campaign volunteers. “These people are making 1,000 calls a night,” Hill beamed. “They are canvassing every weekend.”
“This is going to be a tough election,” Hill told the Democrats. “There’s a whole lot of hurt out there. And here’s the deal: all the polls are showing the Republicans are more energized by 20 percent. We’ve got to make a thousand calls a day,” he said.
Hill told the story of showing up at Obama headquarters in Columbus in July 2008 on a Wednesday afternoon. He found 10 volunteers making calls, including a woman who had never before been part of a campaign. Obama’s political wing – Organizing for America – has identified 330,000 Hoosiers who voted for the first time in 2008.
“Where is she today?” Hill asked. “Is she going to vote? We need to find her and get her to the polls. If we do that, we’ll be just fine.”
In the 9th, it just may come down to that.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey BLOOMINGTON - It was his seventh and final mile, heading down South Walnut Street when a motorcyclist preparing to saddle up in a parking lot saw U.S. Rep. Baron Hill walk by.
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Thursday, 26 August 2010 10:43 |
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by Brian Howey
KOKOMO - Dan Coats came of age politically when he emerged from Dan Quayle's shadow during the thrust of the Reagan Revolution. He is the only Hoosier not named "Lugar" or "Bayh" to hold a U.S. Senate seat since 1989. He is undefeated. He has been married only once.
And he surprised just about everyone when he reemerged as a candidate on Ground Hog's Day - 12 years after having last held elective office and 18 years since he was last on a ballot. He had decided to take on U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh after the Republican field failed to raise money and Coats was alarmed at the direction of the country under President Obama. When the news got out, former Sen. Phil Gramm dialed him up to inquire how his "second marriage" was faring. It was a joke, of course, Marcia Coats had fully signed off on his return to senatorial politics.
In late 1998, Coats stopped by for a final chat. After eight years in the House and 10 years in the Senate, he wanted to move on. He was tired of the constant need to raise money and the nastiness of the process that was careening toward impeachment of President Clinton. And there was the senator's son - Evan Bayh - waiting in the wings to reclaim his father's Senate seat.
After our conversaton, Coats walked out the door, only to return. "I could have beat Evan Bayh," he said before walking away. Was this to be "unfinished business," Coats acknowledged, "To be candid with you, a little bit."
"I had committed to term limits. I wanted to honor that commitment," he said. "But I did feel bad that in a sense I opened the door and turned a Republican seat into a Democratic seat."
Thirteen days after Coats decided to run, Bayh retired. After an aide called him with the news, Coats was thunderstruck. “I can’t believe it,” he said about 12 seconds later.
As Coats pondered a return to politics, he was warned that things had changed since he last ran in 1992. "I had former colleagues that called and said, 'This is an entirely different ball game. You sure you want to do this?' We went in with eyes wide open."
Had the decision come in a normal way with months of planning, Coats would have done things differently. "It was the last thing I was considering," Coats said. "I would have taken a number of steps earlier if I thought I was getting back in preparation for that. We have this second home in North Carolina and I certainly would have sold that." Within weeks of his return, Democrats posted a YouTube video of Coats talking about retiring to North Carolina.
And it has been eye opening. Back in 1992, the Internet was still in diapers. When he left office, newspapers and TV stations were just turning to the Internet. Now there are blogs run by “journalists” without degrees and with agendas.
"The most major change is the Internet," he explained. "The ways and means of communication and the access to information is so extraordinary. There's no filter. You can take anything you want to say, make any allegation and you can make it anonymously. There's no editor you can call and say, 'Hey, wait a minute.' Or 'here's my story.'”
Indications of the change came almost immediately. Earlier in the day on Feb. 2, Bayh told a group of visitors in his Senate office that he had to "go deal with a German ambassador." Howey Politics Indiana broke the news about Coats that night and called Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker for a comment. He responded by reciting Ambassador Coats' ties to Bank of America as a lobbyist.
"I can tell you the difference between the former campaign (1992) and this one is people like this guy," Coats said, pointing to Pete Seat, his communications director. "You give him a piece of news, he gets on the Internet and he's all over it. You type in ‘Lobbying Disclosure Act’ and ‘Coats’ and boom! That information is there. It is revolutionary. So when Parker heard I was doing this, boom, he went to the Internet and I think he had that stuff in an hour."
Another sea change is the "I gotcha" dynamic. "It's not what you stand for, who you are, what you did, or your resume," Coats said. "It's we're going to catch you making a mistake. And we're going to blast that and that's going to be our campaign."
Any candidate playing at the congressional level has to be aware of the “Macaca” moment, as Sen. George Allen learned in 2006. “Everywhere I go there is a camera on me recording,” Coats said. “It used to be you’d call a press conference, the press would show up and that was your message. Today it’s what door did you enter? What restaurant did you eat at? I’ve had people outside my house. I’ve had people checking to see when I come home. I’ve had people posing as journalists at a Republican event.”
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey KOKOMO - Dan Coats came of age politically when he emerged from Dan Quayle's shadow during the thrust of the Reagan Revolution. He is the only Hoosier not named "Lugar" or "Bayh" to hold a U.S. Senate seat since 1989. He is undefeated. He has been married only once.
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Thursday, 19 August 2010 9:19 |
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by Brian Howey
KOKOMO - It had been an intriguing 72 hours before Gov. Mitch Daniels took the stage at the Highland Park band shell here on a steamy Wednesday night. With a Newsweek reporter in tow, Daniels was on the stump for his first political priority: electing a Republican Indiana House.
With him stood Kokomo Councilman Mike Karickhoff, one of about 25 challengers Daniels recruited in order to overcome a 52-48 Democratic majority in the House that had stomped most of the governor's reform agenda.
"A reporter asked me what keeps me up at night," Daniels told a crowd of about 250 people. "I sleep very well," he said, “but instead of counting sheep, I just count all of the states I'm not governor."
On Sunday, Daniels appeared on Fox News Sunday and told host Chris Wallace that he is "open to the idea" of a presidential run. But, he said, "My attention is entirely fixed on the challenges -- and I think opportunities -- facing Indiana." Asked about what conditions might prompt him into the race, Daniels said, "Chris, you live in a world of secret agendas and code words, but not all of us operate that way." Republicans like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Mike Huckabee must effectively address the nation's fiscal health, with the economy now careening toward that dreaded "W" recession. "I’m hoping we will have people step forward and really hit those things head-on," he said. "Maybe I’ll be one of them, but there are a lot of ways to contribute to that debate."
Daniels also took a shot at the Obama administration when he was asked if he supported the stimulus. Daniels responded, "Really don’t. It amounts at this point in time to asking the citizens of responsible states like ours to subsidize those places who have been more reckless. It’s probably not going to help the economy. It’s this notion of a sort of a trickle-down government. You pour a few more bajillion dollars in the top of the funnel and maybe a little demand and a few private-sector jobs will fall out the bottom. It’s really not the way to do it."
In the ensuing 48 hours, Daniels found himself in an uncharacteristic brush fire, as Indiana reporters dusted off a letter from last February when Daniels joined 46 other governors asking Congress to extend enhanced federal Medicaid match rates. His staff said he signed the letter as a "team player." He told a reporter, "I have made the same point over and over, that borrowing money from the Chinese and spending it on government is not effective. My clear recollection is saying I'd only sign a letter that says don't add to the debt, and I thought that letter made it plain."
Democrats cried foul, saying he flip-flopped, noting that the $1.2 billion in stimulus funding had propped up the Indiana budget on Medicaid and education funding. "He used the stimulus money to prop up the budget, so it’s basically political doublespeak,” State Rep. Phil GiaQuinta told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. "If his heart isn’t into it then maybe he shouldn’t take the money."
Another twist came when Anne Murphy, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, sent a letter to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services saying that the governor's Healthy Indiana Plan should be incorporated into the health care reforms. It contrasted with Daniels emphatic criticism of the health reforms, prompting him to freeze enrollment into HIP shortly after President Obama signed the reforms into law.
What became clear is that presidential politics - with a potential candidate playing to a national audience - can complicate the task of governing back home.
The governor continues to send mixed signals. On Wednesday he met with about 400 people in Muncie, did a ribbon cutting on a Major Moves funded road in Fort Wayne, heralded 350 new jobs in Huntington from an Ohio company moving in, met with Hoosier Conservation Corps workers, and then attended a graduation of inmates in a faith-based program at the Miami Correctional Facility.
He told the Kokomo audience that the day amplifies what "sets Indiana apart. I think we've gained on these goals."
But then he added, "There is so much to do when I'm back in private life."
So this is a presidential flirtation. And it's a three-legged stool. The first leg is to help candidates like Karickhoff defeat Democrats to retake a majority and form a new nucleus of reform-minded Republicans in the House. Howey Politics Indiana has 12 seats either projected as a Republican takeover or are in tossup up, and 11 are held by Democrats. To achieve these goals, "We really have to have people with new ideas,” Daniels said. “That's why I asked Mike Karickhoff to run."
The second step begins in January if Daniels achieves his majority. He is then poised to push for education and local government reforms. It will come during an excruciatingly tough budget year as the state's reserves drain away.
And lastly, next Spring after the legislature goes home, if the jobs are still sparse, the economy drifts and no Republican reaches the cone of inevitability, a presidential campaign would be built.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey KOKOMO - It had been an intriguing 72 hours before Gov. Mitch Daniels took the stage at the Highland Park band shell here on a steamy Wednesday night. With a Newsweek reporter in tow, Daniels was on the stump for his first political priority: electing a Republican Indiana House.
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Thursday, 12 August 2010 3:59 |
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by Brian Howey
TERRE HAUTE – I’ve traveled to more than 25 Indiana cities and towns this summer, from Angola to Rising Sun, from Michigan City to Peru and the one thing that is on everybody’s mind is jobs. Or as the 1992 Clinton campaign so succinctly summed it up, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
As we enter the dog days of August in this blistering summer of discontent, the Indiana and U.S. jobs pictures are strikingly familiar. Unemployment has hovered around 10 percent for months and the tentacles of the Great Recession of 2009-10 have ensnarled thousands of families. Dozens of my friends and acquaintances have been impacted economically in many ways.
With the homestretch of the 2010 campaign that starts on Labor Day just over the horizon, a new poll by Bellwether Research statistically backs up what I’ve been hearing: the jobs buck stops with President Obama and not Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. The fascinating aspect of this is that these two politicians – so similar in so many ways beyond party and ideology – may be intertwined as we close in on 2012.
Bellwether – which polls for Daniels – was in the field in Indiana on July 20-25 and interviewed 800 likely voters, calling both landlines and cell phones. It shows the national right/wrong track numbers at 30/57 percent, while the Indiana numbers were nearly inversed at 49/32 percent. President Obama's approve/disapprove numbers stood at 44/50 percent (identical to many national polls), compared to 65/28 percent Daniels.
"Voters are making a clear distinction between President Obama and the federal government and Gov. Daniels," said pollster Christine L. Matthews, who is a Kokomo native.
As for interest in the November election, 47 percent rated it "10" on a 1 to 10 scale. Among those affiliated with the Tea Party movement, 65 percent rated it a "10" as well as 61 percent of 2008 voters for presidential candidate John McCain. Ominously for Democrats, only 36 percent of 2008 Obama voters rated it a "10" posing the same dilemma the party faced in 1994 when it lost Congress for the first time in 40 years. Base vote suppression is a very real dilemma for Democrats.
That dynamic is in play on a generic Indiana General Assembly question. Republicans held a 45-31 percent lead over Democrats – which control the Indiana House 52-48 - but among likeliest to vote (those participating in three out of the last four elections) the gap stood at 54-26 percent, and it was 35-24 percent favoring Republicans among independent voters. Among Tea Party affiliates, it stood at 72-8 percent favoring Republicans.
Daniels’ support stands out in several aspects. His approve/disapprove numbers among African-American voters stood at 69/18 percent, among Obama voters at 56/36 percent and among independents at 63/28 percent. "There isn't a Republican in a state or in Congress who has those kinds of numbers among African-Americans," said Matthews. It is that reason that Daniels is the center of presidential speculation, though a decision on that front won’t come until after the 2011 Indiana General Assembly.
A Daniels’ challenge to Obama would be fascinating. Both are excellent orators with vivid retail politics skills. They write their own speeches and TV ads and both have broken political molds within their respective parties. But they approach government from opposite ends of the spectrum (except for education reform), as their stances on health reforms and the auto bailouts revealed.
The Bellwether poll hits at a time when President Obama is aggressively pushing back. The BP oil spill crisis has ended. Obama is reminding voters that the economic woes, the Wall Street and auto bailouts began with President George W. Bush, along with a legacy $1.2 trillion deficit. He’s been in Michigan and Chicago touting the auto recovery, which has seen the Big 3 begin to turn profits. Obama said in Detroit last week that his new administration was backed into a corner “with very few choices.”
“If we had done nothing, not only were your jobs gone, but supplier jobs were gone, and dealership jobs were gone and communities that depend on them would have been wiped out,” Obama said to Chrysler workers. "You are proving the naysayers wrong, all of you. They thought it would be impossible for your company to make the kind of changes necessary to restore fiscal discipline and move towards viability. Today, for the first time since 2004, all three U.S. automakers are operating at a profit; first time in six years."
Obama’s political wing – Organizing for America – has a strategy for getting back in the game. OFA has identified 333,000 first-time Indiana voters who came out in 2008. There are eight staffers in Indiana Democratic headquarters who are working to reengage them in congressional races involving Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Joe Donnelly, Tom Hayhurst and Trent Van Haaften.
The lesson from 1994 is that base suppression can kill a majority in Congress and the Indiana House. And that the buck stops with the president and not the governor. by Brian Howey TERRE HAUTE – I’ve traveled to more than 25 Indiana cities and towns this summer, from Angola to Rising Sun, from Michigan City to Peru and the one thing that is on everybody’s mind is jobs. Or as the 1992 Clinton campaign so succinctly summed it up, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
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Wednesday, 04 August 2010 9:25 |
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by Brian Howey
NASHVILLE, Ind. - So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
There are a handful of politicians who in the mid to late span of their careers achieve what we call “statesman” status. Doc Bowen and Lee Hamilton were examples of this here in Indiana. A statesman establishes a political cred to the point where he stands above normal political activity. When Lugar won his sixth term in 2006, he was unopposed by the Democrats - something that rarely happens above the Mason-Dixon line. “Let’s be honest,” said Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker in 2006. “Richard Lugar is beloved not only by Republicans, but by Independents and Democrats.”
A statesman achieves such status not simply by winning elections with landslide margins, but by achievement. In the case of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an Indiana senator achieved at the head-of-state level. For the first time in history of mankind, an arch rival is scrapping the arsenal - in this case nuclear, chemical and biological weapons - of another. The WMD of the Soviet Union was the most sinister in humanity.
And this work is not done.
Just last month, the Nunn-Lugar Act was responsible for six strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, six ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, four nuclear weapons transport train shipments secured, and 48 metric tons of Russian chemical weapons agent neutralized.
The WMD stockpiles have been eliminated from countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Albania.
There remain cesspools of other odious threats that if delivered into the hands of terrorists could wipe out a city or a stadium, something Lugar articulated back in 1995. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet may be because of the work of Sen. Lugar. And on this count alone - along with his work on hunger or keeping democracy viable after corrupt Philippine elections 30 years ago - a seventh term for Sen. Lugar, even at age 78, makes sense.
Particularly to someone like me, who traveled with Lugar to five countries and as far out as Siberia three years ago. Despite having 25 years on me, the guy was indefatigable. I was exhausted by the 4 a.m. wake-up calls, 19-hour days and late dinners. The day after Lugar returned, he was presiding over Foreign Relations Committee meetings with top generals flying in from Iraq.
The Republican ankle biters from the right were indignant when Lugar announced he would vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. They were also upset that he voted for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
State Sen. Mike Delph, who may be looking to challenge Lugar in the 2012 primary, chided “Sen. O’bama” (sic) on his support of Kagan. “Some have suggested that Senator Lugar’s support of Elena Kagan is an act of statesmanship,” Delph wrote on Facebook. “And that those of us expressing concern are partisan and lack an understanding of Separation of Powers and harbor sour grapes being on the losing side of a Presidential election. If that is true, then why didn’t the media criticize Sen. Bayh or then Sen. O’Bama for voting against Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Alito?”
Delph told the Indianapolis Star, “Elena Kagan, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, are all very liberal. None of these individuals is worthy of Hoosier support as they are all out of step with Main Street Indiana. He needs to be mindful of how people in Indiana view these nominees.”
Lugar pointed to his Sept. 12, 2005, statement during the Roberts confirmation: “The Founders were at pains to emphasize the difference between the political branches - the Executive and the Legislature - and the Judiciary. Their concern about the potential dangers of passionate, interest-driven political divisions, which Madison famously called the ‘mischiefs of faction,’ influenced their design of our entire governmental structure. But they were especially concerned that such mischiefs not permeate those who would sit on the bench. Otherwise, they warned, ‘the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice,’ and ‘would stifle the voice both of law and of equity.’
“I believe that each of us in the Senate bears a special responsibility to prevent that from occurring,” Lugar said.
As Lugar dusted off that statement, WIBC conservative talk radio show host Greg Garrison was blasting him for having the audacity to vote for Kagan, whom he sophomorically described as a “communist.”
So Lugar might well be confronted with the “mischiefs” of politics in 2012.
Some on the right call him a “RINO” - Republican In Name Only. This comes in a year after which Lugar opposed President Obama’s stimulus package, the health reforms, the Wall Street bailout, and was skeptical of the handling of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. This has brought disappointment from the center and left who hoped Lugar would be the GOP bridge to Obama.
Lugar has - as a true internationalist - backed Obama’s efforts in reaching out to Islam, particularly after the President’s 2009 Cairo speech, and the START Treaty. The START treaty was a major whipping boy in the recent Republican Senate primary as the field tripped over themselves to appeal to the other wing of traditional Hoosier politics - isolationist right - as opposed to internationalists like Lugar, Hamilton and Ambassador Tim Roemer.
Spencer Ackerman observed, “Lugar’s brand of moderate internationalism is a dying one in an increasingly bellicose Senate GOP caucus. Take a look at the 2003 vote on the last nuclear reduction treaty with Moscow. Enough GOPers who voted for it are still in the Senate to provide for ratification — John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), I could go on — but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the Senate GOP leader, didn’t even vote on a Bush administration priority. And enough of the newer, smaller class of GOP senators are either further to the right or disinterested in bipartisan foreign policy when cobbled together by a Democratic president as to raise questions about to who goes along with Lugar’s exhortations.”
He added, “Lugar’s backing will get the treaty out of the Foreign Relations Committee, something that was hardly certain as recently as last month. The administration also has the lever of Ronald Reagan’s fulsome quotes about seeking a nuke-free world to use against recalcitrant GOP senators. 'My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially, and ultimately to eliminate, nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat' (Reagan, 1988) is just one example among many."
“If not,” Ackerman continues, “it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen. It’ll be a statement about the collapse of what used to be a bipartisan international priority, most fervently advocated by the most sainted GOP president of all.”
Can Lugar be defeated in the Republican primary?
This would be a fool’s errand or a narcissistic plot to gin up statewide name ID for a future run.
Any challenger would come up against the Lugar political machine that pioneered voter lists, and an incumbent with a 60 to 70 percent approval. The Lugar apparatus has so many legions of loyal allies - Gov. Mitch Daniels the most influential – that any challenge would have to be viewed as almost comical.
One challenge from the right would virtually guarantee another, and the two or three will hack at each other for that 25 percent (perhaps much less) of the John Price/Eric Miller wing of the party.
Thus is life in the factions of mischief.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey NASHVILLE, Ind. - So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
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