INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Democrats hoping to see red states turn blue in November have only to look at Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh to know it can happen.

In 1988, Bayh became the first Democrat in 20 years to win the Indiana governor's office. He's gone on to build a popularity few Democrats in the state have achieved: a 79 percent approval rating as governor and, in his 2004 Senate race, more votes than President Bush in a state that hasn't voted Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Bayh's enduring popularity could help Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama win Indiana come November if he taps Bayh as his running mate, and many believe Bayh's experience on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees could bolster an Obama-Bayh ticket's foreign policy credentials.

But Bayh's tenure as governor could provide another asset for Obama — the executive leadership experience that some other vice presidential contenders lack.

"Evan Bayh has had to develop budgets and administer a large state bureacracy, which is vastly different from running an office in the United States Senate," said Robert Schmuhl, a professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. "During his term in office, people of both parties recognized his administrative skills."

Bayh's name was already well known when he first ran for political office in 1986, winning the race for secretary of state that year. His father, Birch, won the first of three terms in the U.S. Senate in 1962 and was an unabashed Great Society liberal.

The younger Bayh ran for governor in 1988 on a platform of fiscal responsibility, reducing what he considered to be a bloated government bureacracy and opposing tax increases. He defeated Republican Lt. Gov. John Mutz in 1988 with 53 percent of the vote and was easily re-elected in 1992.

As governor, he was a pragmatist, often out of necessity. When he took office, the House was evenly divided between the parties, and Republicans ruled the Senate throughout his eight years in office.

Yet he managed to increase funding for schools every year and cut taxes.

"Clearly he reached across the aisle," said Stan Jones, a former legislator who became Bayh's education adviser in 1990 and was later his legislative liaison.

Bayh earned a reputation as a fiscal tightwad that he carried on to Washington.

He required state department heads to give back as much as 5 percent of their budgets at the end of each biennium, and he refused at times to spend money appropriated by the General Assembly — including millions of dollars for state employee pay raises. He vetoed the first two-year budget bill that he received in 1989 because he did not think it was balanced.

He left office with a then-record $1.6 billion state budget surplus.

A centrist Democrat, he worked with Republican leaders to cut license plate taxes in half in what Bayh called the "biggest tax cut in state history." But though he boasts of never raising taxes as governor, in 1993 he tried to get lawmakers to first approve a new hospital tax and later to increase cigarette taxes to offset runaway growth in Medicaid expenses.

Senate Republicans wouldn't budge, so Bayh slashed Medicaid by $500 million, mostly by reducing payments to health care providers, to balance the budget.

Some social services advocates said Bayh's frugality, Medicaid cuts and his decision to merge all welfare functions under a giant agency came at a price to the elderly, abused children, people with disabilities and the poor.

John Cardwell, who was on the board of the state Coalition for Human Services during Bayh's tenure, said the revamped social services agency got so big and top heavy that it lost touch with "those on the ground" who were truly in need. He also said the Medicaid cuts went too far.

But Cardwell said groups like his eventually established a dialogue with the Bayh administration.

"He could be stubborn but was a person who over time learned and listened," Cardwell said. "The Evan Bayh that came into office in 1989 left eight years later a much wiser political leader."

Wiser, however, doesn't translate to exciting. Bayh is often called bland, and his keynote address at the 1996 Democratic National Convention was widely panned.

He's also been criticized as a finger-in-the wind leader who prefers to avoid controversy.

In 1995, when more than 20,000 union workers staged a massive Statehouse rally against Republican efforts to lower wages on public construction projects, Bayh stayed in his office. Then-Lt. Gov. Frank O'Bannon strapped on the "Union Yes!" cap and spoke to the crowd.

"I sometimes questioned whether he brushed his teeth without taking a poll," said state Rep. Charlie Brown, a Gary Democrat.

But supporters note he can act quickly and talk tough when needed.

He initiated plans to include questions about extramarital sexual activity in interviews with candidates for top government jobs after the state's lottery director resigned in 1989 over an extramarital affair with a woman he had hired as the agency's human resources director.

When a man out of prison on a one-day furlough sought out and killed his ex-wife, shocking the state, Bayh severely restricted the program.

When news broke that the state's welfare agency had the worst food-stamp error rate in the nation, Bayh called a news conference and announced that "heads would roll" if the problems weren't corrected.

And when other superdelegates reneged on their support for Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, during their epic primary battle this spring, Bayh stood firm.

Though he has spent nearly a decade in the Senate, Bayh could play into Obama's promise to change the way business is done in Washington. His path to the top of Democratic circles still rankles some who would have preferred he go through the county chairmen or state party apparatus.

"He had his own organization and his idea was that, 'You guys need me a lot more than I need you,' and that was so true," said former state Senate Finance Chairman Larry Borst, a Republican.

But whether Obama needs him remains to be seen.