Despite unpopularity among Nev. GOP, Reid may come out on top
By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 6, 2010; 3:01 PM
washingtonpost.com
LAS VEGAS -- Elevator technician David Shurtliff, 48, strolled out of an early voting station at the Clark County Government Center the other day happy to proclaim whom he voted for in Tuesday's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate: "Not Harry Reid, that's who!"
Nevada Republicans are seeking the Not-Harry-Reid vote with a vengeance this year as they attempt to dethrone the powerful Senate majority leader by portraying the four-term incumbent as a deal-making Washington insider.
But someone other than Reid's Republican rivals may benefit on Tuesday from the anti-Hary Reid movement: Harry Reid. In their zeal for a third big win this spring after victories in Utah and Kentucky, tea party groups are lining up behind the most uncompromising GOP candidate they see -- Sharron Angle, a former state assemblywoman who has hopped to the front of a 12-person pack in recent public polling with steadfast views against taxes and government spending.
But by backing a woman who many times was the lone "no" vote in the Nevada assembly, these groups may be handing Reid the candidate he can most easily beat.
Reid's unpopularity is deep among Republicans across the country. The four-term senator played a key role in every controversial initiative, from health reform to the stimulus bill, to emerge from Washington in the past year.
Reid is also a blunt-spoken politician more skilled at tactics than tact. Perhaps most famously, he described President Obama in 2008 as a strong candidate because he is a "light-skinned" black man with no "negro dialect." Some published polls show that more than half of Nevada voters are unhappy with Reid.
And his opponents are seeking to capitalize on that. The Tea Party Express and Club for Growth have flooded the airwaves to take Reid down. The fruits of that campaign are evident everywhere. At a Saxby's Coffee Shop in suburban Henderson, south of Las Vegas, Republican Danny Tarkanian, the son of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and another top contender in Tuesday's primary, schmoozed easily with supporters -- including one wearing a "Dump Reid!!" t-shirt.
"When he became majority leader, he lost his focus on Nevada," Bill Borzick, 75, a retired engineer, said of Reid as he sipped a whipped cream-topped iced coffee. "The worst case is to have one party that's liberal and in charge of everything. You need some checks and balances."
Nonetheless, the dynamics of the Republican primary may actually be helping the 70-year-old son of a miner from tiny Searchlight in southern Nevada. Talk of Reid's vulnerability this year peaked with the rise of Republican contender Sue Lowden, a former state senator, casino executive and beauty queen whom published polls have shown beating Reid in the fall. But Angle, seen as more conservative by a number of influential Republicans, has attracted the backing of the Tea Party Express, the Club for Growth and another tea party group, FreedomWorks.
Lowden also waded into a couple of minor controversies, including some fundraising irregularities and a highly publicized remark about the days when consumers paid their medical bills by bartering such items as chicken. But her numbers really plummeted after everyone else saw that she was the one to beat and aimed their guns at her. Focused mostly on her moderate voting record and her past support for Reid, they began firing away with millions of dollars in negative TV ads.
Even a Democratic PAC with ties to Reid has run ads ridiculing Lowden's chicken remark -- compelling evidence that Reid wants Angle to win Tuesday as much as the tea party does.
As Lowden's fortunes faded, Angle's rose. Tea party activists flocked to her promises of lower taxes, less government spending and what they view as stricter adherence to the constitution. But Angle is vulnerable to the caricature of being out of touch with the mainstream; pragmatic voters may view her as too uncompromising about the size of government -- at the expense of Nevada. Also, Angle supported a prison rehabilitation program during her years in the state assembly promoted by the Church of Scientology and involving saunas and massage. And she is a passionate advocate for reversing Reid's efforts to ban nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain -- an effort that Nevadans overwhelmingly support.
Those kinds of positions are likely to come under the same scrutiny in a general election that another tea party favorite, Rand Paul, has endured since his Senate primary win in Kentucky last month. Both candidates provide a case study in the longterm viability of the movement.
Perhaps the biggest factor in this fall's election will be the economy; Nevada is one of the recession's epicenters, with unemployment hovering close to 14 percent, and the mortgage foreclosure rate among the highest in the nation. The signs of economic hardship are everywhere in Las Vegas: a two-story banner on the side of the Planet Hollywood casino, "Retail Space Available;" the stalled construction site of the Hotel Fontainebleau, where a weathered sign promises "Opening Fall 2009." In many of the suburban stucco neighborhoods skirting the city, vacant houses speckle nearly every block, the vegetation brown and windows shuttered.
"If we want to see the short road to grief, all we have to do is look right here in Nevada," Angle told conservative radio show host Heidi Harris. (Angle's campaign declined a request for an interview). "These things are happening right there and right now, and Harry Reid has done nothing to help."
But Reid won't go down in that battle without a fight. His campaign will seek to remind Nevada voters of the more popular evidence of his work within the state: a veterans hospital; a massive new hotel development, CityCenter, in downtown Las Vegas; and the demise last year, after nearly three decades of planning, of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility. |
