Editorial board: Sue Lowden discusses the issues
Sue Lowden, who is considered by many to be the front runner in the GOP primary for the chance to face off against Harry Reid despite polls showing her in a dead heat with Danny Tarkanian, stopped by the Review-Journal Tuesday afternoon for a far-ranging session with the editorial board.
We have posted online several brief clips on various topics addressed: Harry Reid, immigration, health care, character and security.
She admitted that one reason she is considered a front runner by many of the national political pundits is that she has hired for her campaign some of the people who helped John Thune defeat Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Money will be a factor in the this race and much of it will be coming from out of state, because of Reid's high profile nationally.
If there were a theme for the meeting it might have been: evolution. To explain how she evolved from once contributing to Reid to now opposing him, she said he had evolved from a Blue Dog Democrat to a liberal. To explain how she had evolved from voting for abortion rights to now being pro life, she noted that the country had evolved to the point that pregnancy out of wedlock was no longer such an awful stigma. She did not really have an answer for my question about whether that might not be so good for society considering the staggering number of out-of-wedlock births in this country.
She also seemed startled when Vin Suprynowicz, who beat me to the question by a fraction of a second, challenged her assumption that no one could oppose requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, which would drive up the premium costs for those who faithfully carried insurance while healthy. Lowden responded with a discussion of portability. But her suggestion to break up the health care legislation into bite-sized pieces instead of 2,000-page behemoths made sense.
Lowden also had an amusing answer as to how she would respond if someone tries through innuendo or accusation to say her husband's rise in the gaming industry coincided with the mob's entanglement in Las Vegas casinos. Harry Reid was chairman of the Gaming Commission when her husband Paul got his first license, she notes.
