Published: March 20, 2008 03:42 pm            

Clinton counting heavily on Bayh in Indiana

TERRE HAUTE — At times Thursday it was hard to tell who was running for president in Indiana ‚Äî Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or the man who never left her side, Sen. Evan Bayh, a popular politician and perhaps the former first lady's best hope for winning the state's May 6 primary.

The moderator of her round-table with a half dozen workers in a Terre Haute cafe? Bayh.

The man who introduced her to the crowd outdoors, handled two questions during her brief news conference, and talked up her candidacy at every opportunity? Bayh, the former governor, current senator and Terre Haute native whom Hoosier voters never seem to tire of.

All presidential candidates count on prominent supporters as they move from state to state. But surrogates have proven especially vital to Clinton in her bid to stop Barack Obama's momentum in late-voting industrial states.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland helped Clinton win his state this month, and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's all-out support is helping her stay ahead in polls there, where Democrats will vote April 22.

No surrogate appears more essential, or more omnipresent during her visits, than Bayh, who toyed with the idea of running for president himself in 2006. At times during Clinton's three-city tour of Indiana on Thursday, Bayh practically pleaded with voters to share his enthusiasm.

"I just wish that all the American people could see Hillary the way I have seen her," he said as he wrapped up the hour-long round-table, where he seemed to answer almost as many questions as she did.

He told of visiting wounded U.S. troops with Clinton at a German hospital, where her energy and attention struck everyone. "I've seen firsthand her commitment to our troops," Bayh said to applause.

Obama has his own key surrogates, including Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who campaigned with him this week in West Virginia. But Bayh seemed almost attached to Clinton's elbow Thursday, and she repeatedly invited him to help answer voters' and reporters' questions about local and national matters.

Indiana is so GOP-inclined that the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry it was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and before that, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bayh, whose father also was a U.S. senator, not only wins statewide elections as a Democrat, he wins them by big margins.

After two terms as a governor who cut taxes and built a budget surplus, he won his Senate seat in 1998 with 64 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2004 with 62 percent, outpacing President Bush, who carried Indiana with 60 percent of the vote.

Clinton on Thursday often noted what "Evan and I" have done in Washington, including trying to increase investments in alternative fuels including ethanol, a popular stand in this corn-growing state.

Inevitably, local reporters asked the New York visitor if she would consider Bayh as her running mate. Patrons of the Saratoga cafe in Terre Haute chanted "Bayh for vice" when the two entered.

"It's premature and presumptuous to talk about any of that," Clinton told reporters, as Bayh hovered inches away. She continued: "I don't think it would be any surprise to anyone what high regard I hold Evan Bayh in. ... I'm a great admirer of his."

Clinton and Bayh stressed economic themes Thursday, with Clinton telling workers, in essence, she feels their pain.

She sympathized with farmers' and plant workers' anxieties about their job security, their children's futures and the high costs of health care, college and gasoline. Clinton offered no new proposals for solving them, but she struck a clearly populist tone.

"I think we've got to end the subsidies to oil companies," she said, noting record profits and high gasoline prices. "We need more investigations into why the prices keep going up," she said.

        

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