Dan Coats

After spending 18 years in Congress (ten in the House and eight in the Senate), Dan Coats became a professional Washington lobbyist working on behalf of special interests—like big Wall Street financial firms, big oil companies and foreign governments—even when those interests conflicted with Indiana’s interests.

His first job after leaving Congress was for the Washington, DC lobbying firm of Verner, Lipfert, Bernhard McPherson and Hand where his clients included Merill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Freddie Mac.

Later, he became Co-Chair of the lobbying division of King & Spalding where his clients included Bank of America, Cerberus Capital Management and Harvest Natural Resources, a Houston-based energy company partly owned by the socialist state of Venezuela.  Under Coats’ direction, King & Spalding’s lobbying division helped their corporate clients move American jobs overseas.  In fact, Coats’ firm has a group of attorneys who do nothing but help big corporations move their operations to other countries.  They even hold seminars to instruct these corporations on how to do it!

And now, after being paid millions by special interests, Dan Coats wants Hoosiers to send him back to the U.S. Senate.  But who’s he kidding?  He’s already made clear that he’s not going to turn his back on the special interests that made him rich.  He’s going to continue to do their bidding.  So, instead of sending him to the Senate, let’s let Dan Coats go back to his big Washington lobbying firm.  We need to elect someone who’ll stand up for Indiana.