President-elect Donald Trump is expected to select U.S. politician Daniel Ray "Dan" Coats as his nominee to be the next Director of National Intelligence. Coats served as a senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, and again from 2011 to 2017.
Coats was born in Jackson, Michigan, the son of Vera and Edward Coats. His father was of English and German descent, and his maternal grandparents emigrated from Sweden. Coats 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.
Coats was first elected to Congress in 1981 to represent Indiana’s fourth Congressional district.
In 1989, he was elected to his first tenure in the Senate, which lasted until 1999. He succeeded Dan Quayle in both jobs. In 2010, the 73-year-old Coats was re-elected to the Senate and served a single six-year term. He announced in 2015 that he would not run for re-election in 2016.
Coats also served in the George W. Bush administration as ambassador to Germany. As ambassador during the lead-up to the Iraq war, he pressured the German government not to oppose the war.
As ambassador, he also played a critical role in establishing robust relations with then opposition leader Angela Merkel and in the construction of a new United States Embassy in the heart of Berlin next to the Brandenburg Gate.
Coats is married to Marsha Coats, Indiana’s female representative to the Republican National Committee.
