Name at birth: Birch Evans Bayh III

Evan Bayh has been a U.S. senator from Indiana since 1999. A conservative Democrat from a heartland state, Bayh is also part of a political family: his father, Birch Bayh, was Indiana's senator from 1963 to 1981 and was a major Democratic candidate for president in 1976. Evan Bayh graduated from Indiana University in 1978 and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1981. Five years later he was elected as secretary of state for Indiana, and two years after that he was elected governor. Only 33 at the start of his first term, he served as governor from 1989-97, then ran successfully for the Senate in 1998. An early and strong supporter of the Iraq War, he was reelected in 2004. Bayh made a brief run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, then was named as a potential running mate for nominee Barack Obama. (Obama chose Joe Biden instead.) Bayh's 2003 autobiography was titled From Father to Son: A Private Life in the Public Eye.