Rep. Buyer’s retirement gives Dems hope in 4th District

INDIANAPOLIS - Republican Rep. Steve Buyer’s announcement Friday that he will not seek re-election after 18 years in Congress could give Democrats their best chance in years to pick up his district. Still, they were not too hopeful.

“It’s still a difficult district, but anything is possible,” said Jeff Fites, Democratic chairman of the district that stretches from the Lafayette area through the western and southern suburbs of Indianapolis to Bedford.

Buyer won re-election in 2008 with 60 percent of the vote even as Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Indiana since 1964. And Robert Dion, a professor of American politics at the University of Evansville, said Democrats shouldn’t get too excited about their chances in the 4th District this year.

“This is a decidedly Republican district,” Dion said. “This would be a tough one for Democrats to pick up. It doesn’t present itself as a top-tier target.”

Buyer choked back tears Friday as he announced his wife, Joni, had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease that killed her sister 21 months ago, and he would not seek re-election this year.

“As part of Joni’s prognosis, she has been advised to de-stress her life,” Buyer said. “Therefore, I believe it is in my family’s best interest for me to complete my service to the nation in military uniform and in Congress.”

Buyer, 51, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, is the top Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. He was the committee’s chairman for two years before Democrats won the House majority in the 2006 election.

But Buyer has been dogged in recent months by questions about a private scholarship foundation he created that has raised more than $880,000 since 2003 without
awarding any scholarships. He has defended his handling of the foundation, but didn’t mention it during Friday’s announcement and didn’t take any questions.

Buyer said he would complete his term, which runs through the end of this year.

“Politically, the easiest thing for me to do would have been to run again, especially with the present wave that is coming for the American people eager to take back their country,” he said. “There are many things I will miss doing, but now is the time to step back and focus on Joni.”

A possible Republican candidate for the seat is state Sen. Brandt Hershman,
R-Lafayette, who is Buyer’s district operations director. Hershman, who has a family farm in Wheatfield and works in Monticello, said Friday he would consider running.

Purdue University biology professor David Sanders, who lost badly to Buyer in the 2004 and 2006 elections, is the only Democrat to announce a campaign. Candidates face a Feb. 19 deadline to file for the May 4 primary.

Buyer has come under fire recently for The Frontier Foundation, which was to award scholarships to Indiana high school seniors who promise to work in the state for one to two years after their college graduation.

Critics say no scholarships have been awarded, and much of the foundation’s money comes from companies or trade associations interested in issues before the veterans committee or the Energy and Commerce Committee, on which Buyer also serves.

Internal Revenue Service documents show the foundation received more than $200,000 from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies. Other top contributors include RJR tobacco, biotech firm Amgen, drug maker Eli Lilly, T-Mobile and the National Association of Broadcasters.

The Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics on Monday asked the IRS and the Office of Congressional Ethics to take a look at the foundation.

Buyer helped kill a three-year ban on advertising new drugs that drug manufacturers and broadcasters opposed, and he voted against a bill that would have allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco, the watchdog group said.

Melanie Sloan, the group’s executive director, said she wishes Joni Buyer well but Buyer’s decision coming so soon after a complaint was filed “can’t be a coincidence.”

Buyer was an attorney in the northern Indiana city of Monticello. Called for active duty during the Persian Gulf War in 1990, he served as a lawyer in a prisoner of war camp.
Upon his return, he began his campaign for Congress and defeated third-term

Democrat Jim Jontz in the 1992 election.

He also served as one of the House prosecutors during former President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.