Interesting read,
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh was among the most loyal of surrogates for Hillary Rodham Clinton in his state’s May primary — a companionable former governor who had a knack for making Clinton laugh.
Yet on a chaotic election night in Indianapolis, when Clinton’s staff was panicking about the excruciatingly slow count of votes in Obama-friendly Lake County, Bayh seemed powerless to scare up inside information. To the amazement of several Clinton insiders, he sat in a holding room, hunched over a laptop, hitting the “refresh” button over and over on a newspaper website’s interactive vote tracker in a state he was supposed to dominate.
“He’s a great guy, but he couldn’t even get the scoop on the results in his own state,” said a Clinton supporter who witnessed the scene. “He was just waiting around like everybody else. It seemed like he didn’t really have the juice we thought.”
House and Senate Democrats wading into the 2008 race know they’re taking political risks, especially if their candidate goes on to lose. The performance of high-profile surrogates is a closely watched campaign-within-the-campaign, demanding a ruthless evaluation of a surrogate’s capacity to deliver targeted demographic groups, avoid gaffes and exert control over local political operations.
The downside is a dented reputation, at least among party insiders. “Bayh proved that he was Bayh — a smart, capable guy who will never light up a room, who didn’t really help deliver a key state,” says Jennifer Duffy, who follows the Senate for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. While Clinton won Indiana, she barely held off Obama in a state she was expected to win convincingly. “You can’t even compare him to Claire McCaskill, who actually delivered and really enhanced her reputation.”
Such assessments don’t seem to have hindered the Indiana senator — he’s reportedly still on Barack Obama’s vice presidential shortlist — and there’s always the chance of a November redemption if he helps deliver the Hoosier State to Obama in the general election. Bayh’s communications director, Eric Kleiman, says his boss “did a pretty good job,” adding: “Indiana was the only state where she was trailing Obama significantly and she ended up winning by two. He was an effective surrogate without ever uttering so much as a breath of criticism on Sen. Obama.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12629.html
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