Bio
Beau Bayh is a 7th generation Hoosier and the son of former Indiana governor and U.S. Senator, Evan Bayh. He served in the Marines, achieving the rank of Captain before he was honorably discharged in 2023. After his military service, Bayh earned a law degree from Harvard and served as a Judicial Law Clerk in Bloomington for the Honorable David F. Hamilton on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Bayh is focused on eliminating corruption and wasteful spending in the Secretary of State’s office, advocating for small businesses, and increasing voter participation.
Q&A
Why are you running for Indiana Secretary of State?
I was raised in a family of public servants and I was always taught growing up that no one forces you to enter public life, but if you choose to do that, you ought to do it to help your community, your state and your country. Unfortunately, the current Secretary of State has used his position of trust with the public and his office, not as a means to benefit our state, but as a means to enrich himself. That kind of offends my sense of what a public servant should be, particularly when this office is so important. In your hands is our state’s most precious resource, the health of our democratic process. When I was a United States Marine, some of the missions that we worked on took place in areas where democratic processes were not functioning appropriately. I have seen firsthand what it could look like when these things break down, and it’s too important of a job to be entrusted to someone who I don’t think is a trustworthy individual. That’s what’s caused me to try and make a change here.
What would be your top priority if elected?
Unfortunately, the current Secretary of State has hired members of his family, bought a luxury SUV with $92,000 of our tax money, taken trips all over the world that he hasn’t been able to explain who’s paying for them and given out no bid contracts to his largest campaign donors. My first priority in this office is going to be to clean up that kind of wasteful spending and corruption. We’re going to conduct an independent audit on day one, because all of my goals regarding policy are going to be tough to accomplish if the taxpayer fundamentally does not trust that the office is being run appropriately. Once that trust is restored and voters are confident this office is being run appropriately, then we can turn our focus to the policy issues.
Indiana ranked 41st in voter turnout nationally in 2024. What do you think can be done to improve turnout?
We consistently rank toward the bottom of the United States in voter participation. So there’s a few things we can do: One, we got to protect early voting. Legislators have repeatedly tried to shorten the early voting period here in our state. Voters are more likely to participate when they can pick a time that’s more convenient for them to do so. I’d also love to see expanded hours for voting. Right now in Indiana, we have the shortest windows in the country, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and factors, such as the cost of child care, make it hard for working parents to get to the polls if you can really only do it between working hours. We also have to, in my opinion, end straight ticket voting in our state. We’re one of only six states in the country that has this system. What this means is that the first page on your ballot, when you go in to vote in the fall, will not have a list of names or offices on it, it’s just going to have political parties. Red team, blue team. This has created an environment in our state where sometimes people are getting elected to public office, not because of the right person for the job, but because they’re wearing the right color jersey. This has driven down competition in our state, and the number one reason that people don’t vote is because they feel like their vote doesn’t matter. The biggest driving force behind that apathy is straight ticket voting because it has decreased competition. So if we got rid of straight ticket voting, not only would we have people getting elected because on their individual merits and not because they’re wearing the right color jersey, we’d also increase competition in our election throughout our state, which would also increase the incentive that people have to participate because they say, “Hey, my vote really might make the difference here.” Another thing that it’s important that we accomplish here in our state is implementing citizen-led ballot initiatives. Other states have this, like Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and what this would do is, in addition to candidates on your ballot, you also see big questions. For example, take the redistricting thing we went through toward the end of last year. I want to put that issue on the ballot for Hoosier voters to have a more direct say in. Lastly, my opponent in this race, Max Engling, wants to close our primaries. That’s not what we should do if we’re serious about increasing participation among eligible voters. The biggest voting bloc in our state is not Democrats or Republicans; it’s independents, so when Max Engling says he wants to close the primaries, what that means is that he doesn’t want anyone in our state to be able to vote in a primary unless you register with a political party. For people who don’t associate with either political party, that’s going to make it harder for them. They’re not going to feel at home in either party and it’s going to create another hurdle for them to participate, which is going to drive our participation even lower.
What steps would you take to ensure greater transparency within the office?
My first act as Secretary of State will be to open an independent audit of this office. It’s very important that we uncover what all has gone wrong. The luxury SUV, the hiring of family members, the world traveled and the no bid contracts. That’s just what we know, and government corruption and waste is a lot like an iceberg. You just see the 10% above the surface, not the 90% lurking underneath. I made a pledge several weeks ago that no donor to our campaign will be awarded a state contract. That’s important to show people that you’re making decisions with their tax money in an honest way. You’re not rewarding donors of your campaign, that’s ridiculous. Instead, we’re going to increase transparency by conducting an independent audit, uncovering what’s gone wrong and making those results available to the public, holding anyone accountable who needs to be.
How would you improve the office’s services when it comes to its role in business regulation?
This office has great resources that help business owners through the business division. One of those is called the Business Development Center. So this is a resource that makes new business owners in our state aware of licensing requirements and lines of credit that may be available to them. For example, as a veteran, there’s different lines of credit that are available to you as compared to a non-veteran. The problem is not that this resource doesn’t exist, the problem is that when you go into the business division website of this office and you click on the button that says “I want to start a business,” you have to scroll three pages down to see the resource. What you see on the top three pages is a bunch of self-promotion on the behalf of the current officeholder, Diego Morales. So it’s important that we make the tools that this office oversees work for the small business owner and not work as a means of self-promotion on the part of the office holder.
Why should voters support you?
One reason is that we have a real plan for increasing participation, which I mentioned earlier. I think if people are interested in more voices, who are eligible, participating in our democracy, if you feel like that’s where our country is at its best, where there’s a greater competition of ideas, that’s what I stand for. But you know, there’s a lot of important policy which this office oversees. That’s all very important, and that’s going to be a big part of our message on the campaign and what I will stand for when we win this election. Beyond the policy, this campaign is about something deeper. I’m going to get to all 92 counties before this campaign is over, and I feel this kind of fear and division and anger that has gripped our politics, and I hear about it from people in their local communities. We have leaders, at both the state and the federal level, who fan the flames of division. They pit Americans against each other because it benefits them politically, but that’s not what leadership is. I was a United States Marine Corps officer, and I was in command of a whole lot of people from all different walks of life. Just like how you and your family don’t agree on everything, we didn’t agree on everything either. But at the end of the day, we were able to put our differences aside and come together to achieve some very difficult missions. Beyond the policy of this office, this movement is about making our politics look a little bit more like that in our state, where we don’t focus on all the little things that divide us as Americans or as Hoosiers, but instead we focus on the big things that we’re always going to have in common: our love of our state, our love of our country and our love of our neighbor. Those things should always be more important than the little political differences we may have had. That’s what this campaign is about, and if you believe in that message, I hope that you’ll support us.
