A vanquished Republican candidate is making a comeback in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, but not on the November ballot.
Businessman Danny Tarkanian, who finished behind fellow Republican Sharron Angle in the state’s June primary, has formed a political committee to launch a website and run radio and TV ads dissecting Sen. Harry Reid’s voting record.
The Las Vegas-based group, Harry Reid Votes, will remind residents of the “poor decisions” Reid has made for Nevada, Tarkanian said Monday.
“The votes that he has been making haven’t been a big focus of the race,” Tarkanian said. “We feel the majority of Nevadans will feel they were not good votes.”
The group, formed last week, joins several independent political organizations pouring millions of dollars into the race, which polls show is a dead heat.
A spokeswoman for Tarkanian’s group, Audrey Mullen, said the website will have interactive features that will allow visitors to take quizzes on Reid’s voting record and answer the question, “How much is Harry Reid like you?”
The organization was formed under a section of the federal tax code that allows it to raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, unions or corporations.
Tarkanian is the son of University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. The new group will give Danny Tarkanian a public platform, which could benefit him politically if he decides to make another run at public office.
Meanwhile, Reid’s campaign began running a new TV ad criticizing Angle’s education agenda, including a proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. “She’s just too extreme,” a narrator says, reprising a central theme of Reid’s campaign.
Angle, a former teacher, has said decisions about education should be made at the state and local level, not in Washington.
