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Fort Wayne Journal GazetteWASHINGTON – Democrats came out hitting hard Wednesday morning less than 12 hours after news hit that Republican Dan Coats was exploring a Senate run.
"Dan Coats is a Washington lobbyist for the banking industry, who lives inside the beltway, and is registered to vote on the east coast. Sounds like a great candidate for the heartland. Was Jack Abramoff not available?" a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee said.
Dan Parker, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said Coats has been out of Indiana so long that "he couldn't sign his own petition," because only registered voters can sign the petitions Senate candidates are required to collect before getting on the Indiana ballot.
The allegations and accusations Democrats lobbed at Coats in interviews and news releases offer clues to the kind of attacks they are likely to make in a campaign -- his residency, his work as a lobbyist, his years away from Indiana. In the early reaction, none brought up Coats' conservative ideology.
The Constitution requires a Senate candidate to be an "inhabitant" of the state, and Indiana law defines "inhabitant" as "resident." A residence, according to state law, is "where a person has the person's true, fixed, and permanent home and principal establishment; and to which the person has, whenever absent, the intention of returning."
Coats was not registered to vote in Indiana in 2004 or 2002 either. He left the Senate in 1999. Usually, if the voter doesn't do anything about their registration they would still be a registered voter. It takes about 4 years to remove an inactive voter. He must had taken action to be removed as a voter in Indiana.