Tide turns for Titus

After decades spent swimming against the current, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., finds herself in a position she could hardly have imagined a few years ago.

Taking the stage at last week's gathering of the Paradise Democratic Club, Titus basked in a roomful of warm feelings. She accepted the club's Outstanding Democrat of the Year award for 2008.

"But I think it would be more appropriate to say I am part of the year of the Democrat," she told the crowd of a couple hundred in a banquet room at Bally's.

For most of her 20 years in the state Senate, Titus was the leader of the kicking-and-screaming minority.

Her loss to Jim Gibbons in the 2006 governor's race was more than a mere setback to political ambition; it was a devastating personal blow.

But the tide has turned.

As a first-term member of Congress, the university professor with a pronounced Georgia twang is part of a Democratic majority that has set a far-reaching agenda on the kinds of issues she pushed at the state level for so many years: energy, education, health care.

Coming home to honors such as this one and induction into the state Senate Hall of Fame during last week's congressional recess, Titus got to do a victory lap of sorts.

"I think things happen for a reason," Titus, 58, told the Paradise club. "If we hadn't run that (gubernatorial) race as hard as we did, we wouldn't be here today. That was a down payment."

In 2008, Titus initially ruled out a bid for the perpetually competitive 3rd Congressional District, which covers suburban and rural areas of the Las Vegas Valley.

But when the Democrats' chosen candidate, a political newcomer, unexpectedly dropped out late in the game, Titus jumped into the race with both feet.

After years of trying to unseat Republican Jon Porter, Titus was the candidate who finally got it done for the Democrats, defeating the three-term incumbent by more than 5 percentage points.

But the fight is far from over.

Titus also was greeted in Nevada last week with an attack ad on the radio courtesy of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"Just how fast is Congresswoman Dina Titus spending your money?" said the ad, which ran all week on Las Vegas stations.

"Newspapers say Titus and Nancy Pelosi authorized $1.2 trillion in spending in less than two months. ... Titus and Pelosi are leaving mountains of debt for our grandchildren to pay, money that America is borrowing from China and Middle Eastern countries. It's wrong."

Though she has been in Congress for less than four months, it actually was the second ad the committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives, has launched against Titus. She plans to run for another two-year term in 2010 and doesn't yet have an opponent.

Committee spokesman Ken Spain said the Republicans want to make sure Titus answers for "her willingness to support a pork-filled stimulus package and a budget that taxes, spends and borrows in excess at the expense of her constituents in Nevada."

Titus notes that the stimulus cut middle-class Nevadans' taxes. She contends the stimulus will create jobs, while the president's proposed budget will cut the deficit and invest in worthy priorities.

During this campaign and the last one, Republicans branded her "Dina Tax-us" and painted her as a tax-and-spender.

"It's kind of like, what else have they got to say?" she said of the familiar line of attack.

"The Republicans aren't offering any solutions, and mainly what they are hoping for is that the president's agenda fails," Titus said.

"That's not much to build a campaign on. And so I think if we're able to talk about things that I've done and things that I've worked on, that we'll be able to counter that. But I don't take it lightly, because they will have money and they will be negative and they're already starting."

It wasn't all collecting awards and beating back attacks for Titus last week. She was busy with congressional duties, including a roundtable with local business leaders, a speech to a group of high-school girls and a workshop for homeowners facing the threat of foreclosure.

In Congress, she has put her nose to the grindstone, earning appointments to three committees -- something she had to get special permission to do, since the normal limit is two.

Last month, Titus successfully offered an amendment to the GIVE Act expanding national service. Her proposal to create a "National Service Reserve Corps" passed with broad bipartisan support, 339 votes to 93.

Like most who attended the Paradise gathering -- which Titus said felt more like a family reunion than a political event -- John Ponticello, the club's president, has known Titus for many years.

He was a student in her political science class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the early 1980s.

When Titus first ran for state Senate in 1988, party officials opposed her -- they had their own candidate picked out -- but Titus won anyway, he recalled.

Ever since then, Titus has sometimes been at odds with the party establishment, but she has always had strong grass-roots support from a network of liberal activists. They called themselves "Team Titus" during the 2006 campaign, when they helped her beat a conservative Democrat with more business support in that year's gubernatorial primary.

For them, seeing Titus go off to Washington was "a dream come true" after a "crushing disappointment," said Dwayne Chesnut, a Team Titus leader.

"It feels like destiny the way everything turned out," said Carol Chesnut, Dwayne's wife and organizing partner.

Titus says there's nowhere she would rather be right now, and not just because of the difficult legislative session unfolding in Carson City.

"I think it's a turning point in the country's history," she said. "The challenges are tremendous, but there's optimism out there that government can do good things and that individuals can serve their country again."

Titus said she has always approached politics as someone hopeful of making things better.

"I was very excited and idealistic then, and I am still that way today. Every day, I look over at that Capitol, and I think, 'Damn. That's where I work.'"

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