Bayh May Have a Battle in 2010 (CQPolitics.com)

It's hard to think of Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who has won two landslide elections to the Senate and previously served as a popular two-term governor, as anything but politically safe. But such is the political environment for Democrats these days, and there are signs that even Bayh will have to hustle to win a third term.

CQ Politics has decided to move the Indiana Senate race from the uncompetitive "Safe Democratic" category and place it instead in the highly competitive "Leans Democratic" category.

Bayh's once-Olympian political stature has lost a little luster in recent years. His brief consideration of a 2008 presidential campaign, and the serious consideration that eventual winner Barack Obama gave to naming Bayh as his vice-presidential running mate, may have created an impression that Bayh is more closely aligned with the Democratic left. Indiana did narrowly vote for Obama in 2008, but it will not be easy running as a Democrat this year in a state that still has a generic conservative lean.

Republicans think that Bayh is vulnerable and have criticized his vote for Obama's economic recovery law and for a Democratic-written health care plan that passed the Senate last December but which has since stalled.

Bayh will downplay his party affiliation and emphasize his image as a bipartisan-minded centrist. His voting record in 2009 often hewed to the center, according to CQ's "party unity" statistics that measure how frequently members of Congress side with their party on votes that essentially divide the two parties. Bayh sided with most Republicans 36 percent of time on party unity votes, the second-highest "party opposition" score among Senate Democrats, behind only Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's 37 percent.

The ratings change owes in part to the likely candidacy by former Sen. Dan Coats, (1988-99), who was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the election of Dan Quayle as vice president. Coats has since served as U.S. ambassador to Germany and as a lobbyist.

In the immediate aftermath of Coats' Feb. 3 announcement that he would "test the waters" for a Senate campaign, Democratic officials and their liberal allies released a barrage of attacks on Coats' background as a lobbyist for pharmaceutical interests and financial institutions. If those attacks reveal vulnerabilities in a Coats candidacy, they also indicate the concern that Democrats attach to his candidacy.

Democratic officials would prefer that Coats think twice about running or at least damage him in a GOP primary in which he will not run uncontested. Four Republicans have been running for months, including former Rep. John Hostettler and state Sen. Marlin Stutzman.

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