GOP eyes tough task: winning Harry Reid's seat in Nevada

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 26, 2009 | by Adam Nagourney New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has emerged as a tempting target for Republicans as he prepares for re- election next year: unpopular at home, identified with partisan battles in Washington and shadowed by the memory of the election defeat suffered by the last Democrat who held his job, Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

"We view this race as highly competitive, if not the most highly competitive race for a seat held by a Democratic incumbent today," said Randy Bumps, political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But as President Barack Obama makes ready to fly to Las Vegas today to appear with Reid at a fundraiser, it has become increasingly clear just how tough a task the Republicans face. Reid has studied Daschle's 2004 loss and is aggressively raising money, building a turnout organization and seeking to disqualify potential rivals, all with the aim of locking up his election to a fifth term well before a single voter goes to the polls in November 2010.

"What I learned from him is you have to prepare for the worst," Reid said of Daschle. "I've done that. I'm not sure Tom did that."

Obama's visit to Las Vegas, following a request that Reid made to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, will be the first occasion on which Obama has raised money for an individual senator as president. The unmistakable signal is that the White House intends to invest Obama's prestige and fundraising prowess in a state he won by 12 points last fall.

Reid, in an interview in his corner office at the Capitol, said he would raise $25 million for his campaign, a record-breaking figure for a Senate candidate in Nevada. Aides said that sum, which Republicans did not dispute, was intended to give pause to any Republican thinking of taking him on.

"I'm telling you about what I'm planning to do," Reid said. "I don't know what effect it will have on anybody, but that's what I'm planning to do."

Still, the challenge of a potentially tough race next year has added another complication to an existence that was already complicated enough. Reid, pivotal to the success of Obama's ambitious agenda, must corral support for it in the face of an increasingly resistant Republican minority and with a Democratic caucus that paradoxically appears harder to manage the greater its majority becomes.

With an eye back home, Reid has taken increasing care not to be identified with some of the more liberal leaders in his party. Republicans say that whomever they run against him, a central part of the campaign will be to link him with Democratic figures like Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the speaker of the House.

So it did not hurt him that in keeping with his longtime stance on gun issues, he was able last week to support successfully a provision eliminating the ban on loaded firearms in national parks, and he previously voted to repeal most of the District of Columbia's gun-control regulations. In a display of self-preservation, he also broke with the administration in leading his caucus against providing the money that the president had sought to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Reid's campaign preparations reflect the complex position he is in. He may be at the peak of his power in Washington -- the head of the Senate, with a personal relationship with the president and his top aides -- but public and private polls in his home state show that he is unpopular there, with many Nevadans saying they would prefer to vote for someone else.

In a survey last week, Mason-Dixon Polling and Research found that just 35 percent of respondents would definitely vote for him.

"As soon as he took over for Daschle and became the national party Senate spokesman, he stopped being Harry Reid the senator from Nevada, and he turned into Harry Reid the voice of the Senate," said Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon's managing director. "His whole profile changed; his numbers changed. This is exactly what happened with Tom Daschle."

Reid began televising advertisements in Nevada last year, reflecting a central goal: making himself known to the hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who have moved into the state since the last time he was in a competitive election, in 1998.

And in the elections last November, his organization worked successfully to defeat two potentially strong Republican rivals of his: Jon Porter, a congressman, and Joe Heck, a state senator.

Another potential opponent, Lt. Gov. Brian K. Krolicki, was indicted in December on charges of mishandling state funds when he was the state treasurer. The most frequently mentioned prospect for Republicans at this point is Rep. Dean Heller, but he would have to give up a presumably safe House seat and membership on the Ways and Means Committee. Like Reid, Heller is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.