Evan Bayh missed 75 percent of his Armed Services Committee meetings, including on the day of the Iraq invasion

Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh (D) missed over 75 percent of his Senate Armed Services Committee hearings while he was a member between 2003 and 2011, BuzzFeed News reports. Bayh recently came out of political retirement to run for the Senate seat against Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.) in the race to replace the retiring Sen. Dan Coats (R), in hopes of helping the Democrats retake the upper chamber.

While Bayh remains slightly ahead in the polls, his participation — or lack thereof — in the Armed Services Committee presents ample attack fodder for his opponents. As indicated by attendance data, Bayh only attended five of the 24 Armed Services hearings between Jan. 1, 2003 and April 9, 2003, during the height of the Iraq invasion.

Even more concerning is the fact that on the morning of the Iraq invasion, Bayh did not attend the committee's 9:45 a.m. hearing, which concerned that year's defense authorization bil and included a testimony from the energy secretary on the Energy Department's atomic energy defenses. Bayh did manage, however, to attend an "informal breakfast" held by the Investment Company Institute that morning instead.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Bayh also apparently missed other hearings around that same time to attend receptions and go to Vail, Colorado, with his wife to attend fundraisers and a charity event. A GOP operative who spoke with BuzzFeed News said the absences proved Bayh's "cavalier approach ... to sending us into a decade-long war."

In response to the accusations, Bayh's spokesman Ben Ray said, "The documents being provided to press by a political opponent of Evan's in the final days before an election are at best incomplete and not reliable sources of information on how his time was spent." Ray also noted that Bayh's opponent, Rep. Young, "either didn't show or didn't speak at more than 80 percent of his Armed Services hearings."