BEAU BAYH HAS every right to feel a bit angsty just now.
Last November, he turned 30—a milestone that can send anyone into a tailspin of existential dread. But not Beau Bayh. He doesn’t “do” angst and dread. At least not in public. It isn’t his style. Or his family’s, for that matter.
“Thirty has been great,” he says. “I’m turning 30, running for office, and practicing law, and it’s all been exciting and sometimes stressful, but overall pretty positive.”
There’s no time to wallow in self-pity. Beau has too much on his plate.
On this particular morning, he looks fresh and chipper, almost supernaturally good-looking and put-together. You’d never guess that he didn’t get home until well past 1 a.m. after speaking at a Northern Indiana political rally and then driving back to Indianapolis with his campaign manager. He’s made many such trips, with more to come. The November 3 general election looms, and Beau is running for his first elected office: Indiana secretary of state. He seems to be taking this challenge in stride, too.
“My back hurts, but my head is clear,” he says.
One would expect no less from the scion of Indiana’s most famous Democratic Party dynasty. Beau’s grandfather was U.S. Senator Birch Bayh, who won his first Indiana statewide office at age 26, and his father is Evan Bayh, who won his first statewide office (ironically, Indiana secretary of state) at 30, then served two terms as governor and two as a U.S. senator. That’s a lot to live up to, even in the best of times.
And politically speaking, these are far from the best of times. Unlike his grandfather and father during their political careers, Beau is trying to win public office in a state that’s turned ruby red. Republicans have supermajorities in both Statehouse chambers, and Democrats haven’t won a single statewide office since 2012. So how does he plan to surmount it all?
The answer sounds like something his father would have said in the ’90s, or his granddad in the ’70s. Beau wants to stick to the issues and point out how very different he is from the current secretary of state, Diego Morales (more about him later). He also wants to build coalitions across party lines by emphasizing what binds Hoosiers together instead of what pulls them apart.
“The current person in this role is not an honest broker,” Beau says. “He’s abused the Hoosier taxpayer in ways that I think are really unacceptable, and he’s injected a lot of partisan politics in a place where it shouldn’t exist. When you tell people about that, it doesn’t matter what political party they’re in, they kind of reject it.”
We’re talking about coalition building in the age of hyper-partisan politics, sticking to the issues when elections can be swayed by TikTok videos, and hoping enough people cross party lines to vote for you—even though it’s highly unlikely most Indiana voters even know who’s running for secretary of state this year.
It seems like a brutal slog against long odds. But it will take more than a (very, very) tough campaign to knock the smile off Beau Bayh’s face.
The Early Days Of Beau Bayh
Born Birch Evans IV, Beau and his fraternal twin brother, Nicholas (called Nick), were born into politics. They arrived November 8, 1995, the only children of then-governor Evan Bayh and attorney and Indiana first lady Susan Bayh. Media darlings from toddlerhood to their teens, their lives included background noise formed by politics and public scrutiny.
“We’d have conversations at the dinner table about political issues,” Beau says. “That’s typical for a lot of American families, regardless of whether or not your dad or mom works in Congress.”
Except in this case, Beau’s father actually did work in Congress. This early exposure, however, didn’t immediately translate into ambition or a call to public service, but the idea resonated with him far more than it did with Nick. Beau says his brother, a strategic football analyst for the Indianapolis Colts, seems immune to the allure of politics and the public eye. Early on, Nick was much less interested in the spotlight than Beau. Evan recalls differing reactions to the hoopla on the night he won his second Senate term, when the boys were around 10. Nick hung out with his mom while Beau stood beside his dad during live TV interviews.
“I never thought Beau was destined to run for public office, but this told me that he was probably a natural people person,” says Evan, now 70. “On that night I saw that he took to public life a little bit more.”
Beau doesn’t see the path chosen by his brother as any better or worse than his own. “He’s like a lot of people my age,” he says. “He kind of looks at the whole circus of things and throws his hands up and says, ‘Gosh, this looks like a whole mess.’”
Beau uses the word “gosh” regularly and without irony, which must require a great deal of discipline considering that after graduating from Harvard University, he served in the United States Marine Corps, rising to the rank of captain. He was in while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were winding down but didn’t see combat.
“The Marines I led came from all different walks of life. We didn’t all vote the same. But at the end of the day, we came together to achieve a common mission,” Beau says.
After his military service, Beau got his law degree at Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge David F. Hamilton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. During this time, he and his family endured a personal tragedy for which there was no positive spin or silver lining.
In May 2018, Susan underwent surgery to remove an aggressive, cancerous brain tumor. After a long, painful struggle with the incurable disease, she died on February 5, 2021, at age 61. At a memorial service at Trinity Episcopal Church (where the brothers were baptized), Beau shared a story from Susan’s last days, when she was so sick she could no longer speak and even opening her eyes was difficult: She looked at Beau and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
During this ordeal, the Bayhs’ near-bulletproof veneer of positivity finally cracked. But only a bit. John Krull, a veteran political reporter and current director of the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College, recalls the opening of an outdoor classroom at Holliday Park dedicated to Susan in November 2023. Evan, Nick, and Beau all turned out. Evan spoke of how Joe Biden (whose oldest son died of the same form of cancer in 2015) told him there would come a time when the memory of their loved one would bring a smile to their lips, not a tear to their eyes.
And then Evan did something that was unprecedented: He paused for a moment to gather himself. “I’ve known Evan Bayh for nearly 40 years,” Krull wrote at the time. “In all that time, I’ve marveled at his emotional discipline—a product, I’ve always suspected, of being in the public eye almost from birth. In such circumstances, carving out a space for a private self demands great effort and will. I’ve never known him to let the wall down in public, never seen him reveal his inner self to an audience.”
Evan seems to have passed that emotional discipline to his son. Along with his propensity for saying “gosh.”
Susan is remembered as being effervescent and sunny. No one saw it as an affectation, though she could definitely smile when her heart wasn’t in it. Evan keeps an old Indianapolis Monthly issue on his coffee table that features a photo of her on the cover. She looks so happy and energetic, you’d never know she was sick from the flu and had to drag herself out of bed to have her picture taken.
Her influence on her sons was powerful but often hidden. Beau recalls that when they lived in Washington, D.C., Susan would occasionally pick up people who looked like they needed rides and take them where they wanted to go. Nobody knew about this (except the twins, who were often in the backseat), and nobody used it as a photo op. Beau says the experience kindled his interest in public service.
Somewhere along the way, he also picked up his father’s chipper-to-a-fault public persona. Krull, who has known the Bayh family for decades, says Birch was pretty much the same person in public as he was in private. He thinks Evan, who, like his twin sons, grew up enmeshed in politics and his own personal tragedy—his mother Marvella died from cancer in 1979 at the age of 46—developed his persona not only because he lived in the public eye, but also as a defense mechanism.
“I think he always felt like people were watching him and taking note,” Krull says of Evan. “And I think the experience of his mother’s illness and death reinforced in him a really strong imperative to keep his private self very, very, very private. The only thing different for Beau is that he’s had a twin to go through it with him [and Evan was an only child].”
Running The Numbers
Given his character and lineage, Beau seemed destined to someday take a shot at politics. Whether he succeeds is an open question. There is no “easy” button for this race, in spite of his famous name.
“Republicans have dominated statewide office for so many election cycles that it feels hard to imagine how they could lose it,” says Dr. Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis. “If he ran as a typical Democrat in Indiana’s current political climate, I don’t think he would have a chance of being successful.”
And yet, this particular race offers him several advantages. Indeed, it may present the Democrats with their best chance in a long time to take a statewide office.
This year’s election doesn’t include a presidential, gubernatorial, or senatorial vote, thus placing secretary of state at the very top of the ballot. This alone garners the race more attention than usual and may blunt the danger of it falling victim to something Beau personally despises: Indiana’s straight-ticket voting rule.
Straight-ticket voting allows Hoosiers to select the entire slate of candidates from one party by filling in a single box on their ballot. The system can effectively predetermine the outcome of down-ballot races without individual candidates having a chance to make a case for themselves.
Beau is well aware of this dynamic, and one of his campaign promises is to end straight-ticket voting in Indiana. It might sound self-serving on the surface, but nationally, his view is very much the norm. According to the National Conference of State Legislators, it’s only possible in six states. Everyone else abolished it or never allowed it in the first place.
“In a straight-ticket voting state, elections don’t become a contest between who the best person for the job is,” Beau says. “It’s all about who’s wearing the right color jersey. A lot of times people don’t even know who they’re voting for.”
Unfortunately for him, straight-ticket voting will still be very much a “thing” when he is on the ballot this November. But at least he’ll have plenty of cash in his coffers to buy ads sharing his views. In the first few months of his campaign, he raised north of $2 million, already surpassing what Morales, elected in 2022, brought in over his entire election cycle.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Republicans, who claim he’s getting out-of-state money “on a silver platter.” Even Beau’s competitor for the Democratic nomination, small business owner Blythe Potter, has criticized him for taking campaign cash from people closely linked to Donald Trump, including Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan. Evan worked for Apollo after he retired from the Senate.
To Beau, however, having Republicans on his donor list is a feature, not a bug. “We’ve not just had support from Democrats,” he says. “We’ve had tremendous support from Republicans, too. I don’t want to be the secretary of state for just Democrats. I want to represent everyone.”
“Big tent” stuff might sound schmaltzy, but experts say it’s the only strategy that offers Democrats a path to statewide success. In theory, a Democratic candidate could do extremely well with the blue base and still lose by a landslide, given that approximately 31 percent of Indiana voters identify as Republicans, only 25 percent as Democrats, and almost 44 percent as independents.
“Even if you get all of the Democrats, obviously that’s still not going to be enough,” Wilson says. “He needs moderates or independents who don’t see themselves as aligning with either party but prefer Bayh to Morales. But if you want to get some of the moderate voters or maybe even disaffected Republicans, you’re not going to do that if you’re too liberal or too ideologically extreme.”
Beau, who seems aware of this, is in no danger of looking too “ideologically extreme” to average Hoosiers. “It’s unfortunate that what should be an administrative role at the secretary of state’s office has become hyper-partisan and politicized,” he says. “I’m going to focus on the issues that are germane to this office, none of which should be overly partisan.”
Beau couldn’t have found a more perfect opponent than Diego Morales. Some think Morales is the sort of person for whom the phrase “scandal-plagued” was invented. During his time in office, Morales hired his brother-in-law as co-director of the auto dealer services division of the secretary of state’s office, for which he got a six-figure salary. Morales also helped himself to a state-funded $90,000 GMC Yukon Denali purchased from Kelley Automotive Group, a Fort Wayne dealership that donated $65,000 to his political campaign.
Among the state’s GOP hierarchy, Morales looks uniquely vulnerable to Beau’s broad coalition approach designed to draw in Democrats, disaffected Republicans, and independents to reach victory. There certainly seems to be enough blood in the water for it to work.
Problem is, it’s attracted more than one shark. In March, likely after working through the same political calculations, former Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard also announced he was running for secretary of state, vowing to form a new party.
“If you’re a Republican voter who just can’t bring yourself to vote for Morales, Ballard gives you somewhere to go,” Krull says. “He creates an off-ramp for a lot of Republicans who are uncomfortable with the MAGA agenda. And there are a lot of those folks out there right now.”
Beau believes Ballard’s party concept resembles the Republican Party before Trump entered the field. Which means old-school Republicans will face off against new-era party candidates. It also means Beau needs a smaller share of votes to win. If Ballard takes 30 percent of ballots and Morales another 30, Beau can get into office with just 40 percent.
“I didn’t think [Beau] had much of a chance in the beginning,” Krull says. “But the dynamics of the race have changed.”
The heir to one of Indiana’s most celebrated political legacies has months of campaigning ahead before he finds out if Indiana buys what he’s selling. In the meantime, he adheres to a jam-packed daily routine. In the morning, he goes for a run on the Monon Trail or works out at downtown’s National Institute for Fitness & Sport. Then he “bills some hours” at his day job as a commercial litigator at the legal firm MacGill PC. Then he works the phones, soliciting financial support and political backers. Most evenings, he heads out to the sticks for campaign events.
Campaign activities will eventually crowd out everything else, likely becoming more grim and intense. But Beau plans to keep smiling. “I try to remain positive because I think that’s how you should be in life,” he says. “Hubert Humphrey used to call himself the happy warrior, and that’s the sort of persona I try to embody. Wake up every day with a smile on your face and do the best you can.”
Will that be enough to win the race? Gosh knows.
