U.S. Chamber turns its back on Bayh

WASHINGTON — Evan Bayh, one of the more business-friendly Democrats during his two terms in the Senate, helped the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fight government regulations after leaving office in 2011.

He also worked for a private equity firm and served on multiple corporate boards.

But now the world’s largest business group wants to block Bayh from returning to the Senate.

The U.S. and Indiana chambers of commerce will be touring the state Monday  to announce their support for GOP Rep. Todd Young over Bayh in Indiana’s Senate race.

The group, which spent $1 million on ads to help Young win the GOP primary, is spending at least that much in statewide ads beginning Monday.

“This is a race we’ve been committed to from the very beginning,” said Rob Engstrom, the national political director for the U.S. Chamber. “This is a restatement of that belief.”

Chamber: Young has better record, greater chance of winning in fall

Asked to comment, a statement from Bayh’s campaign didn’t mention the business group. Instead, Bayh campaign spokesman Ben Ray criticized Young for recently accepting a campaign contribution from a United Technologies official. The company announced this year it’s closing two Indiana plants and moving production to Mexico. Ray also pointed to comments Young made this summer about the need to “continue to make the argument for things like free trade.”

“Congressman Young puts himself and Washington politics first, not Hoosiers,” Ray said in the statement.

Young's campaign declined to comment.

Trade is becoming a lightning rod issue in this year’s elections, in part because of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free-trade pacts. There’s also a pending free trade deal with countries mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, which would be the largest free-trade deal since NAFTA.

In the Senate, Bayh had been a longtime supporter of trade agreements before voting in 2005 against an expansion of NAFTA into five Central American countries.

After Bayh’s surprise entry in the Senate race in July, the battle for the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Dan Coats immediately became one of a handful that will determine which party controls the Senate. The chamber has gotten involved in races most likely to flip.

Engstrom and Indiana Chamber of Commerce Vice President Caryl Auslander are holding events with Young in Indianapolis, South Bend and Fort Wayne on Monday   to announce their endorsement.

In 2011, the chamber hired Bayh to travel the country arguing for more checks and balances in the regulatory process.

Bruce Josten, who heads government relations for the U.S. Chamber, said at the time that Bayh was hired because of his record in the Senate and as governor.

But Engstrom said Bayh’s Senate voting record was not good enough to earn the group’s backing over Young. Bayh sided with the chamber on 55 percent of the votes most important to the group over his career, while Young has done so 91 percent of the time through last year.

“We bring in all kinds of people with different views,” Engstrom said of Bayh’s past work for the group. “There are candidates that we agree with on some issues, but in the aggregate, his voting record is reflexively liberal when it matters most. The choice is as crystal clear as they come.”

During Bayh’s last year in the Senate, he sided with the chamber more often than 50 other Democrats and the two independents who caucused with Democrats, backing the group on five of the 11 votes tracked in the chamber’s annual scorecard. Bayh backed a compromise tax package and voted to eliminate a reporting requirement for business created by the Affordable Care Act. He opposed studying whether to impose a fee on all security-based transactions and was one of six Democrats voting with Republicans to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The times Bayh broke with the chamber included voting for legislation intended to give women and men comparable wages by requiring employers to show that pay disparity is job-related and not based on gender. He voted for an overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system and an overhaul of federal student loan programs. He voted to require chief executives to appear in political ads funded by their corporations. And he voted for the Obama administration’s efforts to make it easier for employees at airlines and railroads to unionize.

On the 20 votes most important to the chamber last year, Young sided with the group all but four times. The chamber supported a temporary spending bill to keep the government funded, a two-year budget and debt ceiling agreement and the final version of the bill funding the government through September. Young voted against those measures.

He also opposed continuing the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance international sales by offering low-cost loans to foreign buyers or guarantees and credit insurance against potential losses.

The times Young sided with the business group last year included:

• Giving the president expedited authority to negotiate trade deals and continuing assistance programs for workers displaced by trade.
• Supporting repealing the estate tax and cutting taxes for medical device makers and others;
• Backing the Keystone XL pipeline and an end to a decades-old ban on most exports of domestic crude oil;
• Supporting a rewrite of K-12 education policy and a five-year transportation bill;
• Voting for bills to place new hurdles on federal agencies before they can issue regulations and to reverse some of the regulatory requirements imposed on the financial industry in 2010.
• Supporting a federal backstop for insurance claims related to terrorism acts and a bill aimed at encouraging private companies to share information with each other and with the government on computer hacking threats.

The national organization relied on its annual scorecards in making the endorsement decision while the state chamber also interviewed the candidates, according to Engstrom.

The ad the business groups will start airing Monday  criticizes Bayh for voting for the Affordable Care Act.

The ad says thousands of Hoosiers could see their insurance premiums spike as much as 41 percent, citing an Associated Press article that  said Indianapolis-based Anthem was seeking rate increases from nearly 20 percent to 41 percent for next year.

Most insurance companies selling Indiana plans on the “Obamacare” health exchange for people who don’t get coverage through the government or an employer are seeking a rate hike. But Hoosiers could see only a small increase — or no increase — in their cost depending on whether they qualify for a federal subsidy or whether they’re willing to switch insurance plans.

The health care consultancy Avalere analyzed Indiana rate filings and found a proposed average 6 percent increase for all midlevel plans in Indiana. But there was an average 1 percent decrease for the second-cheapest midlevel plan.

Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter:  @mgroppe.

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