Lowden leads Republican pack

Sue Lowden has established herself as the far-ahead GOP front-runner in Nevada's U.S. Senate race and the Republican most likely to beat Sen. Harry Reid, even with a Tea Party candidate on the Nov. 2 general election ballot, according to a new poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Six weeks before early primary voting starts, Lowden's closest GOP rival, Danny Tarkanian, has failed to catch fire with Republican voters in the past few months, the survey found. Meantime, Sharron Angle lost some conservative support, putting her out of the running along with two other long-shot contenders, investment banker John Chachas and Las Vegas Assemblyman Chad Christensen.

As for Reid, the poll shows the Democratic incumbent's popularity dipping to a new all-time low with 56 percent of registered Nevada voters saying they have an unfavorable opinion of the senator, while about four in 10 people say they would vote for him on Election Day -- not enough to win.

"Reid is hoping third party candidates, particularly this Tea Party guy, will draw enough votes that he can win, but I don't see that happening," said Brad Coker of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the survey. "Everybody knows who Reid is, and voters don't have a good opinion of him."

Other political analysts said it's too soon to count Reid out, particularly since he and the state Democratic Party have a sophisticated get-out-the-vote machine and he'll have up to $25 million to spend if the Senate majority leader reaches his record fundraising goal for the 2010 election.

"I still think he's going to win, although it's not going to be pretty," said Erik Herzik, political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "He has to win back all those centrists and conservative Democrats who are driving down his numbers. They don't have to love him, but they have to like Harry Reid more than they like Sue Lowden, who's a solid candidate but she has plenty of vulnerabilities."

If Lowden wins the primary it could help energize a key pillar of Reid's support, the unions, which have a long-running battle with Lowden for fighting organized labor while running several casinos. She lost her state Senate seat in the mid-1990s in part because unions worked against her.

According to the Mason-Dixon poll taken in early April, if the Republican primary were held today:

■ Lowden would win 45 percent of the vote.

■ Tarkanian, 27 percent.

■ Angle, 5 percent.

■ Christensen, 4 percent.

■ Chachas, 3 percent.

Sixteen percent were undecided with the other seven GOP hopefuls not registering support.

In the previous Mason-Dixon poll for the Review-Journal in February, Lowden also led Tarkanian by 18 points -- 47 percent to 29 percent -- with Angle picking up 8 percent and Chachas 1 percent.

In a general election matchup with three named candidates -- including Scott Ashjian, who has filed under the Tea Party of Nevada banner -- the new April poll showed:

■ Lowden would win with 46 percent of the vote compared with 38 percent for Reid, 5 percent for Ashjian and 11 percent undecided.

■ Tarkanian and Reid would end in a dead heat with 39 percent of the vote each, while Ashjian would pick up 11 percent of the vote and with another 11 percent undecided.

In the previous February survey that tested Reid in a matchup against an unnamed GOP nominee and an unnamed "Tea Party" candidate, the senator came out ahead with 36 percent of the vote compared to 32 percent for the Republican, 18 percent for the Tea Party candidate and 14 percent undecided.

But the latest survey shows Ashjian won't likely make much of a difference in the race.

Nevada voters who recognize his name don't like him much: 1 percent had a favorable opinion of him compared with 13 percent who had an unfavorable opinion. Another 27 percent were neutral and 59 percent didn't recognize the Las Vegas businessman's name.

Ashjian's candidacy also is in question since the Independent American Party and a member of the local Tea Party movement have challenged his right to be on the ballot. They allege that he filed as a "Tea Party" candidate several hours before he officially switched his party registration from Republican.

The statewide telephone poll questioned 625 registered voters who said they vote regularly in state elections. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. For the GOP primary survey, pollsters questioned 300 Republicans, and the results had a 6 percentage point margin of error.

The survey was taken Monday through Wednesday, the same week the 70-year-old Reid was kicking off his re-election campaign with a three-day bus tour of mostly rural Southern and Northern Nevada.

Starting from his hometown of Searchlight one hour south of Las Vegas, the Reid road trip aimed to reach voters face-to-face to persuade them the Senate majority leader hasn't forgotten his small-town roots, and to highlight projects he has helped fund, including clean energy solar and geothermal plants.

Reid dismisses surveys, saying "I'm not a poll guy" and the only poll that counts is on Election Day even as his campaign says privately that its internal polling and focus groups show the senator ahead.

The Reid campaign also contends the Mason-Dixon poll isn't a true ballot test because it doesn't include the full general election slate of eight candidates, including the Democratic senator who faces little-known primary opposition, the GOP nominee, several nonpartisan candidates and one each from the Independent American Party and the Tea Party of Nevada, and "none of these candidates."

Also, the Reid campaign insists that once a Republican nominee is chosen, the senator will be able to make a case for why voters should send him back to Washington for a fifth Senate term instead of a freshman Republican lawmaker whose record and positions Reid is prepared to pick apart.

"I think we're going to see some differences once we are up against a single Republican opponent," said Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid. "We're prepared to run a race against any of those Republican candidates that could emerge" from the primary.

For now, Reid and his campaign are hotly focused on Lowden and have been attacking her on a near daily basis. This past week, from the campaign trial, Reid criticized Lowden's record on veterans after she released a TV campaign ad with a Vietnam veteran praising Lowden for touring with Bob Hope's USO show in Vietnam several decades ago and for supporting veterans in the Legislature.

The Reid camp also made fun of Lowden for telling a campaign audience in Mesquite that they could save health care costs by "bartering" with doctors and paying cash for treatment.

"That's her answer to health care reform?" Summers asked.

Lowden defended her bartering statement by noting that some patients are paying cash now instead of using credit cards or going through insurance companies to pay for medical procedures.

"Many doctors are giving discounts," Lowden said before slamming the Reid campaign for following her around with a video camera. "They're so desperate that they are going to videotape everything I do so they can try and extract some morsel they think will be controversial."

Lowden said she expected she would be on the receiving end of brutal Reid campaign attacks since someone from his camp said last fall that the senator would "vaporize" his opponent.

"I think that my positive campaign in this primary is working," Lowden said. "I'm pretty happy that we are focused on June 8 and apparently Harry Reid is focused on our Republican primary, too."

Despite her claim to focus on the "positive" side of the campaign, Lowden has given as good as she's got in her battle with Reid, and her campaign had made clear she'll fight fire with fire.

She has called Reid out of touch with reality and Nevada, which has a record high unemployment rate of more than 13 percent and record home foreclosures.

"He built nothing," Lowden said of Reid, who has helped secure federal funding worth hundreds of millions of dollars for everything from environmental projects and parks to industry and education over his four decades in public office. "I did and all the people who pay taxes in Nevada built whatever he says he built. That's our Nevada taxpayers' money, and if he's taking credit for that shame on him."

With Lowden showing the most momentum and early voting starting May 22, the former state senator and casino executive appears headed toward victory in the primary unless she makes a game-changing mistake or one of her opponents manages a surprising comeback, political analysts said.

"Now is a real good moment to begin pulling ahead because that primary is getting real close," Herzik said. "Tarkanian's got to get something to distinguish him from Lowden, and he doesn't have it. If voters are choosing between Lowden and Tarkanian, then Lowden wins."

Tarkanian's campaign credited Lowden's early, six-figure TV ad campaign for putting her ahead of the GOP pack, and is counting on a late surge with stepped up TV and radio ads for a comeback. He's launching a new TV ad Monday, featuring supporters talking about the leadership style of the real estate businessman and former University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball star, his campaign said.

"We have not gone into full campaign mode with advertising," said Jamie Fisfis, a consultant for Tarkanian who said his internal polling shows his client doing well. "Obviously we expect things to change. Our goal is to be ahead on June 8 not April 8."

Chachas, an Ely native and multi­millionaire who came home from New York to run a partly self-financed campaign, has been upping his profile with a six-figure TV and radio ad campaign to highlight his family's Nevada roots and his financial expertise. He also has erected billboards in rural and Northern Nevada, where many primary voters live, to attract more attention.

Angle and Christensen are competing for the same slice of conservative Republican voters, but have little to show for it so far and not much expected given their slim campaign coffers.

"Angle, Chachas and Christensen are nonfactors as long as they remain in single digits," pollster Coker said. "This late in the race they are now afterthoughts for most GOP voters."

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.