Daniel Ray Coats
May 16, 1943
Jackson, Michigan, U.S.
Political party Republican
Spouse(s) Marsha Coats
Children 3
Education Wheaton College, Illinois (BA)
Indiana University, Indianapolis (JD)
Daniel Ray “Dan” Coats is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and again from 2011 to 2017.
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 Senate 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.
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. Coats declined to run for re-election in 2016, and was succeeded by Todd Young.
On January 5, 2017, Coats was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump for the post of Director of National Intelligence.
Early life, education and career
Coats was born in Jackson, Michigan. His father was of English and German descent, and his maternal grandparents emigrated 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 1972, where he was also the associate editor of the Indiana Law Review. 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.
Political positions
Gun laws
Coats has supported gun control measures. In 1991, he voted in favor of the 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 this amendment was to “restrict the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices”.
In April 2013, Coats was one of 46 senators to vote against passage of a bill which would have expanded background checks for gun buyers. Coats voted with 40 Republicans and 5 Democrats to stop the passage of the bill.
Taxes
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.
LGBT issues
In 1993, Coats emerged as an opponent of President Clinton’s effort to allow LGBT individuals to serve openly in the armed forces. Coats was one of the authors of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and opposed its 2011 repeal. He does not support same-sex marriage but opposes interference with “alternative lifestyles”.
Russia
Coats pressed President Barack Obama to punish Russia harshly for its March 2014 annexation of Crimea. For this stance, Coats and several other lawmakers were banned from travelling to Russia.
Other
Coats cosponsored, with former Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and 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, Coats cosponsored the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 which President Clinton signed into law. The bill allowed the President to “rewrite 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.
Coats made headlines in August 1998, when he publicly questioned the timing of President Bill Clinton’s cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan, suggesting they 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 Secretary of Defense, a job eventually given to Donald Rumsfeld who had previously held it under President Gerald Ford.
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 ke.g. role in establishing robust relations with opposition leader Angela Merkel and in the construction of a new U.S 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’s 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. In that role, he worked to block Senate legislation that would have closed a tax loophole, worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Cooper Industries.
Personal life
Coats lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana and is married to Marsha Coats, Indiana’s female representative to the Republican National Committee. During the 2016 presidential campaign she endorsed Donald Trump, saying, “I truly believe the office will change Donald Trump. I believe it will humble him. And, I think even Donald will be impelled to turn to God for guidance… I believe our party needs to give Donald Trump a chance.”
Coats is a member of The Fellowship, an informal and highly-secretive association of Christian lawmakers. He received the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America’s Charles G. Berwind Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He also frequently donates to charity and has helped underprivileged youth.
TrumpPresidente 
Leave a comment