Dan Coats

Daniel Ray “Dan” Coats (born May 16, 1943) is the junior United States Senator from Indiana and member of the Republican Party. He was in the United States Senate from 1989 to 1999, retired, and then returned in 2011.

Born in Jackson, Michigan, Coats graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois and Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1968. Before serving in the U.S. Senate, Coats was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Indiana's 4th congressional district from 1981 to 1989. He was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Dan Quayle following Quayle’s election as Vice President of the United States in 1988. Coats won the 1990 special election to serve the remainder of Quayle’s unexpired term, as well as the 1992 election for a full six-year term. He did not seek reelection in 1998, and was succeeded by Evan Bayh.

After retiring from the Senate, Coats served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005, and then worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. He was re-elected to the Senate by a large margin in 2010, succeeding Bayh, who announced his own retirement shortly after Coats declared his candidacy. Along with Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, he is one of two current Senators to have returned to the Senate having previously retired. Coats will become the senior senator from Indiana after the retirement of Richard Lugar in January 2013

Early life, education and career
Coats was born in Jackson, Michigan, the son of Vera (Nora) Elisabeth (née Swanlund) and Edward Raymond Coats. His father was of English and German descent, and his maternal grandparents immigrated from Sweden. Coats attended local public schools, and graduated from Jackson High School in 1961. He then studied at Wheaton College in Illinois, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1965. At Wheaton, he was an active student athlete on the soccer team. He served in the United States Army from 1966 to 1968, and earned a Juris Doctor from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis in 1971. He also served as assistant vice president of a Fort Wayne life insurance company.

U.S. House of Representatives
From 1976 to 1980, Coats worked for then-U.S. Representative Dan Quayle, a Republican from Indiana's 4th congressional district, as Quayle’s district representative. When Quayle decided to challenge three-term Democratic incumbent Birch Bayh in the 1980 U.S. Senate election, Coats ran for and won Quayle’s seat in the U.S. House.

U.S. Senate
When Quayle resigned from the Senate after being elected Vice President of the United States in 1988, Coats was appointed to Quayle’s former seat. Coats served in the Senate until January 1999, when Evan Bayh became the new Senator. When Bayh retired, Coats ran for his old seat and won in 2010.

Political positions
On multiple occasions, Senator Coats supported gun control measures. In 1991, he voted in favor of Biden-Thurmond Violent Crime Control Act of 1991. This act, which did not become law, would have created a waiting period for handgun purchases and placed a ban on semi-automatic firearms. Subsequently, he supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that President Clinton signed into law in 1993. The legislation imposed a waiting period before a handgun could be transferred to an individual by a licensed dealer, importer, or manufacturer. This waiting period ended when the computerized instant check system came online. Coats also supported Feinstein Amendment 1152 to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1993. The purpose of the Feinstein Amendment was to “restrict the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices.”

In 1993, Senator Coats emerged as an opponent of President Clinton’s effort to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces. In 1995 Senator Coats introduced S. 568: Family, Investment, Retirement, Savings, and Tax Fairness Act which would provide “family tax credits, increase national savings through individual retirement plus accounts, indexing for inflation the income thresholds for taxing social security benefits, etc”. The bill did not become law.

Senator Coats cosponsored, with Democratic Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Christopher Dodd and then-Republican Senator James Jeffords, S.2206: Coats Human Services Reauthorization Act of 1998. This bill, which was enacted into law, “amended the Head Start Act, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Act of 1981, and the Community Services Block Grant Act... in order to provide an opportunity for persons with limited means to accumulate assets.”

In 1996, Senator Coats cosponsored the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 which President Clinton signed into law. The bill allowed the President to “rewrit[e] legislation by vetoing single items of spending or specific tax breaks approved by Congress.” The Supreme Court of the United States declared the law unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York in a 6-3 decision.

Coats made headlines in August 1998, when he publicly questioned the timing of President Bill Clinton’s attack on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and Sudan, suggesting it might be linked to the Lewinsky scandal: “While there is clearly much more we need to learn about this attack and why it was ordered today, given the president’s personal difficulties this week, it is legitimate to question the timing of this action.”

Between U.S. Senate tenures
Coats worked as Special Counsel member in the firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand in 2000 and 2001.

In 2001, Coats was reportedly one of George W. Bush’s top choices to be Defense Secretary, a job eventually given to Donald Rumsfeld, who had previously served as United States Secretary of Defense.

From August 15, 2001 to February 28, 2005, Coats was the United States Ambassador to Germany. As ambassador during the lead up to the Iraq war, he pressured the German government not to oppose the war, threatening worsened US relations with Germany. As Ambassador he also played a critical role in establishing robust relations with then opposition leader Angela Merkel and in the construction of a new United States Embassy in the heart of Berlin next to the Brandenburg Gate.

In 2005, Coats drew attention when he was chosen by President George W. Bush to shepherd Harriet Miers’ failed nomination to the Supreme Court through the Senate. Echoing Senator Roman Hruska’s famous 1970 speech in defense of Harrold Carswell, Coats said to CNN regarding the nomination: “If [being a] great intellectual powerhouse is a qualification to be a member of the court and represent the American people and the wishes of the American people and to interpret the Constitution, then I think we have a court so skewed on the intellectual side that we may not be getting representation of America as a whole.”

In 2007, Coats served as co-chairman of a team of lobbyists for Cooper Industries, a Texas corporation that moved its principal place of business to Bermuda, where it would not be liable for U.S. taxes. He successfully blocked Senate legislation that would have prevented a tax loophole, worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Cooper Industries.

The NYT also reported that Coats was co-chairman of the Washington government relations office of King & Spalding, with a salary of $603,609.

2010
On February 10, 2010, Coats confirmed that he would return to Indiana to run for the seat held by incumbent Evan Bayh in the 2010 United States Senate election. Bayh had made no previous announcements and was fully expected to run for another term, but after Coats announced his candidacy, Bayh announced his retirement on February 15, 2010. On May 4, 2010, Coats won the Republican primary over state Sen. Marlin Stutzman and former Congressman John Hostettler.

Coats received endorsements from National Right to Life Committee, Indiana Right to Life and the Susan B. Anthony List.

Coats has described himself as a conservative who stands for “limited government, lower taxes, a balanced budget, [and] strong defense.” Coats said, “We need to get the economy back on track... that ought to be our priority and not the huge spending going on in Washington”

Coats defeated Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth by a large margin to return to the Senate.

Coats will become the senior senator from Indiana after the retirement of Richard Lugar

Personal life
Coats is affiliated with the Fellowship, an informal association of Christian lawmakers.

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