Heller, Sandoval meet as governor considers U.S. Senate appointment

Gov. Brian Sandoval met with Rep. Dean Heller on Tuesday as the state leader considers appointing his fellow Republican to become U.S. senator, two sources confirmed.

The meeting suggests Sandoval is getting close to an announcement on whether to replace resigning U.S. Sen. John Ensign with Heller, as expected, or someone in a caretaker role until the 2012 election.

"I don't see this thing hanging out there much longer," said one source.

Sandoval's office said he would announce by Friday his decision ahead of the May 3 effective date of Ensign's resignation.

If Heller is appointed senator, the incumbency is expected to give him a boost in a 2012 campaign against his likely general election opponent, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Berkley, however, said she doesn't think a Senate appointment would help Heller. Voters, she added, would have a clear choice as she and other Democrats back President Barack Obama's plan to trim government spending without changing Medicare and Heller gets behind a GOP House proposal to change the program to a voucher-like system for younger recipients.

"I don't think there's a great advantage," Berkley said Wednesday in her first public comments on the possibility of a Heller appointment.

"It doesn't really affect my plans," she added, responding to reporters questions after a middle school event.

Asked whether she agreed with Democratic legislators who urged Sandoval to open the appointment process to public scrutiny, Berkley shrugged off the idea and said she learned long ago not to worry about things she can't control.

"I'm going to let the governor do what he's going to do," she said. "Whatever's going to happen is going to happen."

Democrats have been pushing against the idea Heller would enjoy a leg up. In a column this morning in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper and website, Mark Mellman, a pollster for Berkley and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., challenged the conventional wisdom.

"Since popular election of senators began in 1913, 118 appointed senators sought election and just 62 -- or 52.5 percent -- won their seats," Mellman wrote. "An appointed senator has about the same odds of winning a coin flip as (s)he does of keeping his or her seat: about the same odds as an otherwise evenly matched race for an open seat."

Stephens Media Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this story. Contact reporter Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.