Posted on 05/24/2010 4:49:14 AM PDT by speciallybland
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has knocked down his leading Republican challenger, paving the way for a potential fall fight with a tea party favorite who may be easier to beat.
Reid’s unceasing attacks on his biggest-name challenger — former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden — have dragged her down into a tight three-way race with lawyer Danny Tarkanian and former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who has won the endorsement of the Tea Party Express.
A Democratic-funded poll released last week showed Angle edging out Lowden, with Tarkanian in third place. It was the first time in months that Lowden hasn’t held a sizable lead.
“Harry Reid very much likes to pick his opponent. He wants to be right in the middle of the Republican primary,” Lowden told POLITICO Friday. “He’s doing everything he can to influence the primary, and he knows I can beat him.”
Reid’s machine piled on Lowden for suggesting that a barter system — “in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor” — could help cut health care costs. Lowden is now running ads slamming Angle for twice voting for pay raises while serving in the Nevada Assembly. And Tarkanian is hitting Lowden for a controversy over a bus allegedly given to her Senate campaign by a donor.
Reid’s supporters say the Republican infighting gives him a new lease on life.
“Things are finally starting to go our way,” said one Reid adviser. “He’s coming back.”
Reid campaign spokesman Jon Summers said the majority leader is prepared to run against any possible opponent, but the campaign clearly relishes the thought of taking on Angle — and claiming Lowden’s scalp. Reid’s campaign has already cut anti-Angle ads, and its oppo research operation has begun digging into her record.
Democrats are eager to lump Angle together with other tea party candidates across the country — particularly amid the controversy Rand Paul has created with his comments about the Civil Rights Act.
And they believe an Angle win in the June 8 Nevada GOP primary would give them an appealing national narrative: that the Republicans’ November ticket across the country is filled with “extreme” candidates well outside the mainstream of American politics.
On her website — full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors — Angle declares: “Like a soldier going to war, I am fighting for my country, the Constitution and a free society.”
She wants to privatize Social Security; cut federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars; build nuclear power plants inside Yucca Mountain; abolish the federal income tax and institute a “simpler, fairer, flatter tax system”; “defund Obamacare”; pull the United States out of the United Nations; ban nearly all abortions; get rid of the Energy and Education departments as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and remove all campaign finance restrictions, requiring instead immediate reporting of donations.
And in a state with a large and growing Hispanic population, Angle takes a hard-line view on immigration, siding with the tough new Arizona law that gives law enforcement officials broad discretion to crack down on suspected illegal aliens.
“Arizona is right to say you’ve failed us and we’re going to secure our borders,” Angle said
Angle says the Democrats are misreading the country.
“They’ve missed the pulse of the nation,” Angle told POLITICO. “It’s a wave of conservatism across the land. I think they’re not really reading what is truly going on if they think I’m going to be an easy opponent for Harry Reid.”
But political strategists on both sides say Angle would have to step up her field organization and advertising apparatus to have any shot of beating the most powerful Democrat in the Senate.
Angle “has no clue about what is going to happen to her,” said a Nevada GOP insider. “She is in no way prepared for this, for a race at the federal level. She’s really out of her depth here.”
A Reid adviser told POLITICO in October that the majority leader would “vaporize” his 2010 Republican opponent. And Angle says she knows exactly what’s coming — unfair attacks from the well-funded Reid campaign and from a complicit media.
Democrats will hit her hard on Social Security and for drawing a connection in 2002 between “drugs bought on the streets of our state” and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
“I was just equating drug dealers to terrorists,” Angle said Friday, adding that she expects Reid to “distort the truth” about her comments on the issue.
Reid is also prepared to whack Angle with the fact that she was selected “Worst Member” of the Nevada Assembly in informal polls conducted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1999 and 2005.
Angle said the press, legislators and staff participating in the poll were largely “left leaning.”
“Any conservative thought, or any conservative voting, to their way of thinking is terrible,” Angle said. “And so that’s really what that rating was about. I wear that as a badge of honor. What that does is just solidify my record as being a conservative.”
Lowden stopped just short of saying that Angle would lose if she were the nominee, but said: “You think Harry Reid is afraid of her? Is he running commercials against her?”
In an interview Friday, Lowden denied suggestions she was in a free-fall, saying that the race has tightened in the final weeks because of the Tea Party Express’s endorsement of Angle — and because of the six-figure attack ad blitz from Reid’s allies.
Although Tarkanian insists that he can emerge from the three-way primary as Lowden begins to focus on Angle, Lowden said the race has become a two-way campaign between her and Angle.
During the interview, Lowden refused to say if she stood by her bartering-for-health-care comments, saying she was focusing instead on Nevada’s high unemployment and foreclosure rates. When a reporter asked Lowden about the comments, she accused him of “allowing” Reid to change the subject.
“If you want to change the subject and talk about the subject that no one else is talking about, that’s up to you,” Lowden said.
At the end of the interview, Lowden declined to discuss whether she shared Paul’s views on the Civil Rights Act.
“You can’t resist this, can you? I have no idea what another candidate says,” Lowden said.
Asked whether she had any concerns about the law’s reach into private business, Lowden said, “I’m going, thank you,” then abruptly hung up the phone.
So who is Reid giving money to, Tarkanian or the Tea Party rep?
The left and the gov. unions are going to distort, detract and lie w/ mountains of money.
We must develop a cogent couterpunch that keeps the public eye on the nefariuos politicos. If we don't then the tidal wave will be muted and the socialization will continue.
I shudder to think where we'll be if that happens.
Why would anyone pay any attention to a democrat funded poll. And for that matter Politico.
Yep, Reid is toast, regardless of how they try to spin this.
He will soon be singing “Me no TARP” “Me no Healthcare” “Me no Cap & Trade” To no avail.
Bye Bye “Dingy Harry”.
Yes, I’m sure Reid picked his opponent. It had nothing to do with conservatives at all.
This explains everything!
SO, the official GOP won’t help Angle if she wins the primary?
If she doesn't make it in Nevada in 2010, I'd like to personally invite her to move to West Virginia and run against Robert Byrd (or his ghost) in 2012.
True if the media likes it you know it’s no good.
Exactly, but so Nevada!!!
In Nevada???? Too many switch parties just to win in the more conservative districts. They fear Pinky...
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