Though he dismisses the rumors, Indianapolis U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett is getting plenty of buzz as a potential contender for the city’s mayor or a U.S. Senate seat.
The U.S. Attorney for Indiana’s Southern District is being eyed by the state’s Democratic Party to help win back Indianapolis’s mayor’s office in 2015, according to a report in the Indianapolis Star.
Joe Hogsett
Hogsett has raised the profile of the office, the report indicates, by seizing new initiatives against drugs, guns and child exploitation. He’s also engaged the media in his district, holding some 20 news conferences since April, the paper notes.
“If you want to name the top three to five,” Ray Scheele, a Ball State University professor, told the Indy Star about possible candidates, “Hogsett certainly is in that list.”
Hogsett has reinvented his career, working as the district’s top law enforcement official after filling his resume with political positions . Early on, he ran Evan Bayh’s campaigns for secretary of state and governor, according to the report. Hogsett became the Indiana Secretary of State in 1990, and then later lost bids for a seat in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. He went on to serve as Indiana co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008. In 2010, he became the U.S. Attorney for the district.
Hogsett has the support of Bayh, the former senator, who told the paper that he would be a “wonderful representative for the Democratic Party and the people of Indiana.”
Hogsett wouldn’t say whether he’s considering running for political office down the line.
“I can’t anticipate the future,” he told the Star. “I’ve always been politically active, and I’ve always been politically motivated. So I don’t want to rule out any possibility. But . . . I don’t have any present or current plans to do that.”
