Baron P. Hill

Political Debut

Hill studied history at Furman and returned to Seymour to run a local insurance and real estate company. After seven years, he ran successfully for the Indiana House. He stayed in the state legislature from 1982 to 1990.

That year, he made a long-shot bid against then-Sen. Daniel Coats (R-Ind.), who had been appointed two years earlier to fill Vice President Dan Quayle's vacated seat. During that race, Hill received press attention when he walked from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan - and then jumped into the 60-degree water. The stunt didn't win him the election, but he did capture 46 percent of the vote, an impressive showing for the state representative from southern Indiana.

Hill said he lost interest in politics around the same time Democrats lost control of the Indiana General Assembly and U.S. House in 1994. He left government for a job at Merrill Lynch.

Tough House Races

But when Rep. Lee Hamilton told Hill in 1998 that he was retiring from Congress after 34 years, Hill rejoined the hordes of Washington hopefuls. Indiana is a basketball-crazed state, and Hill benefited from his hoops fame and the publicity from his earlier Senate run. He outspent his opponent, state Sen. Jean Leising (R), $1 million to $650,000 and won by just three points.

Hill has been aggressively targeted by the GOP, once successfully. Although his district elected Democrat Hamilton for 34 years, it voted overwhelmingly for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

In 2002, Hill beat Indiana businessman Mike Sodrel (R) by five points in a race where the candidates raised a combined $2.3 million.

In 2004, the Republican National Committee poured more than $1 million into the race.Sodrel added funds of his own and received campaign visits from such high profile politicians as Vice President Richard Cheney, then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Sodrel, doubtless assisted by President Bush's coattails, won by fewer than 1,500 votes. After a month-long recount, Hill conceded. He was the only incumbent Democrat outside of Texas to lose in that election cycle.

Hill once again predicted that this was the end of his political career. "I had it in my mind that once you are a loser, you are tagged as a loser," Hill said.

But Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), who lost in 1994 only to return in 1996, helped Hill realize he could run again and be successful. He rode the Democratic tide of 2006 to beat Sodrel in a race that was the most expensive in the state.

Of course, no one thought Hill's seat was safe two years later. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began fundraising for Hill early in the 2008 election cycle, and Democratic leaders gave him a seat on the coveted House Energy and Commerce Committee, with the hope that his ties to business would help him raise money. The result was a dominating performance in 2008 that left people doubting Sodrel would stage Hill-Sodrel V in 2010.

Hill, who has always been a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally-conservative Democrats in the U.S. House, was elected the group's Co-Chair for Policy in 2008.

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