Partisan influence wielded

Democrats' takeover of the state Senate in Tuesday's election didn't start in the Las Vegas and Henderson districts where their candidates ousted Republican incumbents.

The triumph had its roots in Washington, D.C., where national Democrats are playing an unprecedented role in trying to topple the GOP at the statehouse level.

With money, advice and laserlike focus, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, a Washington-based partisan organization, helped spearhead a ruthless and ultimately effective effort to "flip" the control of the Nevada Senate from 11-10 in favor of the Republicans to a Democratic majority.

Political observers say the involvement of national political parties in statehouse races is new in Nevada, though hardball tactics certainly are not.

It's a sign that Democrats in Washington are focusing further down the ballot as they seek to enact their agenda at all levels and also to position themselves for redistricting -- the drawing of legislative and congressional districts that occurs after each decennial U.S. Census -- after 2010.

And though some local politicos wring their hands at the development, they have to concede the Democrats did what they set out to do.

Both Bob Beers, in the state Senate's 6th District, and Joe Heck, in the 5th District, were ousted Tuesday by their Democratic challengers, political newcomers Allison Copening and Shirley Breeden. Democrats now have a 12-9 advantage in the Legislature's upper house.

University of Nevada, Reno political scientist Eric Herzik said the Democratic Party's desire to flip the state Senate wasn't at all surprising, but "in the past the national groups generally stayed out of it."

Republican consultant Ryan Erwin, who wasn't involved in the Beers and Heck races, called them "an incredible precedent."

The campaigns, he said, "took third-party groups to a whole different level in state legislative races. You basically had Joe Heck and Bob Beers running against national committees. Their opponents didn't show up. They didn't campaign. They didn't take any positions. It's not a travesty that Democrats won those races, but it's a travesty how it was done. It's not good for the electoral process."

When Nevada delegates attended the August Democratic National Convention in Denver, they took in a breakfast presentation that at the time didn't get much attention but in hindsight seems significant. The presentation was by Mike Gronstal, the majority leader of the Iowa state Senate and the chairman of the Democratic legislative committee, known as the DLCC.

Gronstal told the Nevadans how in 2006, the committee helped Democrats go from a tie to a majority in the Iowa Senate and win control of the Iowa House.

He touted the policy accomplishments that the Democrats had been able to use their power to enact, including a massive new investment in renewable energy, expanded health care coverage for underprivileged children and seniors, and increased funding for education.

Nevada Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, who ascended to majority leader with the change in power, said the DLCC's help was welcome.

"They came to me as minority leader at the time and said, 'What's your plan and how can we help?'" he said.

The committee, Horsford said, was interested in Nevada because it was one of three states where statehouses looked as if they could be flipped -- along with Wisconsin and New York -- and of the three, the only one that was a presidential battleground.

The DLCC was founded in 1994 and has ramped up its efforts the past five years, spokesman Matt Compton said.

"We've made net gains every year since 2003," he said. "Democrats now control 60 of the nation's 98 partisan legislative chambers."

(Each state has two partisan legislative chambers except Nebraska, where the Legislature is both unicameral and nonpartisan.)

In the two Nevada races, the committee worked with the Nevada Democratic Party on a blitz of nasty mailers that blasted Beers and Heck, sometimes distorting their records.

It hooked up the local party with national polling and mail firms to help run a slick, professional, message-tested modern campaign.

And the DLCC spent its own money on television ads attacking the two incumbents.

Both Democrats and Republicans at the national level have committees devoted to helping elect U.S. senators, members of the House of Representatives and governors. The DLCC is a parallel effort that works on the state level.

The Republican Party doesn't really have an equivalent effort. There is an RLCC, and it ran some last-minute television ads here, but it is a recently formed division of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which also works to elect GOP lieutenant governors, attorneys general and secretaries of state.

"Among the partisan committees, we're the only ones solely devoted to legislative races," the DLCC's Compton said.

The ultimate goal is to make the kinds of policy changes Democrats seek, some of which can only be enacted at the state level, he said.

"There's a growing awareness that the work that gets done in our nation's statehouses is important," Compton said. "A Democratic agenda (for the nation) essentially has to begin in our nation's statehouses. There's a reason legislatures are called laboratories of democracy. With our recent gains, you're going to see Democratic legislatures in a lot of places, including Nevada, getting things done."

The ends might be seen as noble, but not everyone has been wild about the means, especially those mailers.

Nasty attacks are nothing new, but to some, especially the victims, they seemed out of bounds: calling Beers "in bed with" the porn industry because he'd once gotten a political donation from an adult filmmaker; putting Heck's name next to a sad-looking female cancer patient with a bald head and a hospital gown because he voted against requiring insurance companies to pay for a vaccine that prevents a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer.

The mail campaign was generated by the state Democratic Party independently of Copening and Breeden, so the candidates bore no responsibility for the messages and even expressed distaste for them.

The Democratic Party's executive director, Travis Brock, defended the fliers, saying Beers and Heck had to answer for their records. But he also tried to disclaim some accountability for what they said, putting the responsibility in a September interview on the Washington-based consulting firm that came up with the fliers, The Strategy Group.

The group's Web site shows mailers from other states that used the same images and messages as some of the Nevada pieces. The state Democratic Party's financial report shows nearly $300,000 in payments to the firm through Oct. 23.

Brock and other representatives of the state party didn't return multiple messages seeking comment for this article last week.

"As a voter, as somebody who cares about the integrity of the process, I don't think I like it," said Democratic political consultant and lobbyist Billy Vassiliadis, who stressed he was talking about the general trend of third-party campaign attacks, a tactic both sides of the political spectrum have increasingly used.

"I'd rather see these candidates, if they want to attack somebody, go ahead and do it themselves and take responsibility," he added. "The problem with this stuff is, who's accountable for it? But you don't unilaterally disarm."

Another Democrat who tried to distance himself from the mailers was U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who exercises pervasive control over Nevada Democratic politics.

In September, he made a personal phone call to Heck, to whom he'd never previously spoken. Reid assured Heck he had nothing to do with the mail campaign.

But Reid certainly helped make the campaign possible. Financial reports show that his Washington political action committee, the Searchlight Leadership Fund, gave the state Democratic Party $250,000 between Jan. 1 and Oct. 23.

In a prepared statement responding to questions, Reid said financially supporting his party did not constitute responsibility for the attack ads the party produced.

"Nevada has been a battleground for some time now, so I worked with a number of organizations and campaign committees to make sure that candidates up and down the ticket had the resources they needed to win," Reid said. "As for the mailers, we have very talented people who work for the party and the campaigns. I don't manage the day-to-day operations of every campaign in Nevada.

"My primary job is to help ensure the state party has what it needs to win."

Reid was happy to take partial credit, however, for the resurgent fortunes of the Democratic Party in Nevada, a state where in 2002 Democrats held not one of the six constitutional offices but now hold four. Barack Obama won the state by 12 percentage points on Tuesday.

"I made a decision that what happened in 2002 would not happen in Nevada again," Reid said. "So, we began investing in the party, growing our base, and recruiting winning candidates. Now, with each election cycle, Democrats perform better and better. Going forward, we have to keep building on that work to ensure Democratic success in 2010, 2012 and beyond."

And Reid hailed his party's new control of the state Senate: "Having a Democratic majority in the Legislature will be good for Nevada," he said. "The state is facing some serious challenges and I am glad we have leaders in both houses with the knowledge and skills to address them."

Pollster Andrew Myers of Virginia-based Myers Research, who worked with the DLCC on the campaigns, said he was a bit mystified by all the histrionics about the fliers, which he said were fair and based on the issues.

"We talked about their records, rightly so," he said of Beers and Heck. "They took those votes. They did those things."

Much of the criticism of the campaigns stemmed from the fact that Breeden and Copening were largely invisible, refusing invitations to most debates and forums.

Because his work was independent of the candidates' campaigns, Myers said, he couldn't answer that charge, but "these were candidates that had stellar backgrounds," he contended of Breeden, a retired school district administrator, and Copening, a public relations executive.

"You all in the press were very tough on those two folks," Myers said. "The reality is, they don't have the gaping holes in their records these two guys (Beers and Heck) do. Last I checked, Allison Copening was not trading favors for her boss in the Legislature. She wasn't arming kindergarten teachers."

Beers once pushed a legislative amendment that benefited a former employer, and he sought legislation to allow licensed grade-school teachers to carry weapons in the classroom. In both cases, which became grist for lurid mail pieces, the Republican said the bills were worthy causes.

Horsford, the newly minted majority leader, chalked up the Democrats' victories to quality candidates who ran their own quality campaigns, though he acknowledged that the outside assistance was a factor. He also said they benefited from the well-funded and well-organized joint efforts of the Obama presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.

Most of all, Horsford said, Democrats had their finger on the pulse of a changing electorate this year.

"Voters were demanding change," he said. "We all sensed there was a mood in the electorate that government wasn't working. People felt worse off than they were in the past. Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the last 23 years. We lead the nation in home foreclosures.

"People wanted to have leaders who understood those concerns."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.