If you think Senate majority leader Harry Reid might lose his reelection bid in 2010, you’re not the first to envision that result. In fact, Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick predicted back in May 2006 that “in 50-plus months, Nevada voters will march to the polls and replace Sen. Harry Reid, thus ending one of the longer, more powerful political runs in state history.” At that point, Democrats had not yet taken control of the Senate.
There was some eye-rolling at Frederick’s column when it was published, as it’s hard to predict a political environment four years down the road. But 39 months later, that prediction looks pretty reasonable.
As recently as December, liberals were saying that talk of a Reid defeat was a “ridiculous fantasy,” citing a lack of serious Republican challengers and the traditional advantages of incumbency. But Reid’s numbers have been lousy all year long, with the recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll most clearly sounding the alarm. That one showed Reid losing to two potential GOP challengers, Danny Tarkanian, son of former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, and Nevada GOP chairman Sue Lowden. Reid’s favorable/unfavorable numbers are a miserable 36/52, including a 39/48 split among women and 28/57 among independents. A Mason-Dixon poll in August found similar results, with Tarkanian and Lowden ahead of Reid by wide margins among independent voters: Tarkanian by 32 percentage points, Lowden by 22.
And Reid’s already critical press in his home state is unlikely to change after he told the Review-Journal, “I hope you go out of business.” Reid and his staff insisted it was a joke; considering the old saw about not picking a fight with those who buy ink by the barrel, one can wonder about the political wisdom of a legislator’s appearing to relish the imminent unemployment of those who convey his acts to his constituents. The comment left a relatively supportive columnist at the Reno Gazette-Journal wondering whether Reid was “losing it.” Nevadans are starting to see (and post) signs that say, “Anyone but Reid.” One veteran Republican strategist in Washington adds it all up and offers a succinct diagnosis: “Reid is toast.”
Back in 2006, Frederick wrote, “When it happens, political wiseguys will remember that Sen. Reid’s undoing came early in his last term when he became a big shot in the Democratic Party and quickly morphed into someone Nevada voters did not recognize — his political girlfriend in the House, uber-liberal Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.”
That’s certainly a source of some of Reid’s current weakness. Nevada is getting bluer, but it’s still far from being an overwhelmingly liberal or Democratic one. It voted for Bush twice and has a Republican governor (albeit one seriously hobbled by scandal). Obama won the state by a wide margin, but McCain barely campaigned there. Reid’s ACU ratings in recent years are about what you would expect for a Democratic leader, not for a senator from a purple state.
But let us remember that, although he has ideologically separated himself from his constituents, Reid is a very high-profile incumbent in a state that is enduring an economic apocalypse. Nevada has the third-highest unemployment rate in the country at 12.5 percent. For 31 months, it has had the highest foreclosure rate of any state, and Las Vegas has the highest foreclosure rate of any major U.S. city.
President Obama picked a completely unnecessary fight with Nevada’s tourism industry when he criticized corporate meetings in Las Vegas. An August poll found that 64 percent of Nevadans think the stimulus is either having no effect on the economy or is hurting the commercial climate. The state’s woes are becoming a national symbol, with Time magazine doing a cover story on “Less Vegas.” The Los Angeles Times summarized: “The voters Reid and others will face live next door to foreclosed homes, are surviving on smaller paychecks, have watched neighbors and friends cope with layoffs or have lost their own jobs. Many have been forced out of the state’s middle class.”
In a strange way, the scandal that engulfed Nevada’s other senator, Republican John Ensign, may have actually made Reid’s reelection challenge a bit harder. Reid’s relationship with Ensign has been described as “close” and there was a widespread perception of a “gentleman’s agreement” or “nonaggression pact” between the two, under which neither would directly target the other for criticism and they would instead work closely on state issues. When Ensign ran for reelection in 2006, some Democrats found Reid’s support of his Democratic challenger, Jack Carter, less than satisfactory. Activists on both sides wondered whether either state party would pull out all the stops.
When Ensign admitted to carrying on an affair with his wife’s close friend, who was also a campaign aide, Reid withheld comment. But the juicy scandal was way too tempting a target for the state party, and they swung away at Ensign, working the affair into press releases on issues like Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
“Sen. Ensign, on the other hand, hardly seems equipped to question either her qualifications or her integrity as a judge. Judge Sotomayor submitted to 20 hours of questioning about every aspect of her life, while John Ensign has refused to answer even a single question from constituents over whether he violated the law or Senate ethics regulations,” said Phoebe Sweet, communications director for the Nevada Democratic party. “His own character was questionable even before revelations that his parents paid off his campaign staffer mistress, and his unwillingness to come clean with constituents since is even more troubling.”
With Ensign fair game for the entire Democratic party beyond Reid, the Senate majority leader has become the favorite target of the rest of the state’s GOP. In fact, Ensign may be the only Republican in the state not hitting Reid. (His scandal-tainted status means he’s in no position help or harm Reid this cycle, anyway.) The state party’s recent press releases hit Reid relentlessly, on his “Tele-Conferenced Health Care Confession,” the stimulus, and his sagging poll numbers.
Each senator’s reticence about criticizing the other is proving increasingly irrelevant; the 2010 race is a free-fire zone. Tarkanian and Lowden both have some strengths as candidates, but the ingredients for toppling an established senator are the same as in past cycles: a sense of public anger or resentment, a sense that the incumbent’s methods have been tried and have failed, and an acceptable challenger.
Those ingredients are likely to be present next year. Three years ago, Nevada’s unemployment rate hit a record low of 4 percent. The good old days are not likely to return to the desert by November 2010.
— Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO.