Veteran Nevada lawmakers Heller, Berkley eyeing Senate seat in 2012

CARSON CITY -- If you spend a bit of time looking, you might find a few signs around Las Vegas and Reno touting the respective re-election bids of Reps. Shelley Berkley and Dean Heller.

Berkley has some billboards in Clark County. But not even on the street to his Carson City home are there signs promoting Heller's re-election bid.

There was considerably more buzz about the UNLV-UNR football game than there has been about their campaigns.

Both are locks for re-election on Nov. 2, according to political watchers.

But wait a month.

After the newspapers with the headlines about Angle beating Reid or Reid beating Angle are thrown into the trash, the talk will shift to a 2012 U.S. Senate race between Democrat Berkley and Republican Heller.

"Absolutely it will happen," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "They are both safe incumbents with big campaign war chests that they are saving for 2012."

"I think the chances are very good they will face each other," said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "They would be personable candidates. They have engaging personalities."

Berkley said she will decide after the Nov. 2 election whether to run for the Senate. Friends are urging her to be a candidate.

If she does run, she believes she can win, and she thinks Heller will be her opponent.

She noted that she served eight years on the state Board of Regents and spent a lot of time in rural Nevada, the heart of Heller's congressional district.

"Judging from his comments about John Ensign (the Republican U.S. senator), I would have to assume he is running," Berkley said. "But I have no first-hand knowledge. He has been pretty brutal in his comments about Ensign."

Her relationship with Heller is "very cordial," according to Berkley. "On issues affecting Nevada we work well together."

During a meeting with Nevada members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March, Heller even said he has "tremendous respect" for Berkley and praised her for her leadership on matters pertaining to Israel.

He said they might differ on national issues, "but we work together when it comes to Nevada issues."

In a TV appearance last week, Heller said Ensign "has dug himself a deep hole" because of ongoing ethics investigations.

In the spring Heller stopped just short of calling for the senator to resign in the wake of Ensign's marital infidelities with Cindy Hampton and the investigation of whether he illegally tried to find a lobbying job for her husband, Douglas, a former member of his staff.

Ensign's ethical problems are dragging him down and could end up harm other GOP candidates, he said.

Heller said last year that half of his Republican friends were mad at him because he decided against challenging Harry Reid in this year's Senate race.

"There still will be other opportunities," Heller said during an appearance before the Review-Journal editorial board about his decision not to make a move on the Senate seat now.

Heller already has defeated Sharron Angle, Reid's re-election obstacle. He bested her by 421 votes in the 2006 Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District seat.

His congressional opponent, Democrat Nancy Price, complains Heller has been taking his House re-election for granted and just waiting for the 2012 Senate race.

"I don't respond to speculation," responded Heller in an interview earlier this month about Price's comments. "My concern is this election cycle."

Heller said during an appearance Tuesday on the Nevada Newsmakers television show to ask him in six months whether he will be a Senate candidate.

But on his re-election website, Heller has that he is being called a "rising star" in the Republican Party. He mentioned he is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Republican Policy Committee, made up of key Republicans who decide on their party's initiatives.

Berkley also has an impressive resume. She is a member of the New Democratic Coalition, a group of Democrats who espouse a moderate and pro-growth agenda. Like Heller, she also is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the most coveted House committee because it has jurisdiction over all tax proposals, along with those that affect Social Security, Medicare and unemployment.

A Berkley-Heller race would give Nevada voters a chance to decide between candidates who follow the mainstream beliefs of their political parties, speak well and have pleasing personalities.

Heller voted with the GOP 93.6 percent of the time in the last Congress, while Berkley was in step with her party 98.7 percent of the time, according to The Washington Post.

The American Conservative Union gave Heller an 89 score and Berkley a zero score on the votes it surveyed in 2009.

The National Journal, a weekly political magazine, ranked all 435 House members in 2009 for their conservative or liberal votes on economic, social and foreign policy legislation. It found Heller is the 99th most conservative and Berkley, the 299th most conservative member of the House. When it comes to liberal rankings, the National Journal put Berkley is the 131st most liberal member and Heller, the 332nd most liberal member.

Heller, 50, voted against the bank bailout, against national health care reform and against the federal stimulus plan. Berkley voted for national health care reform and the federal stimulus bill, but against the bank bailout.

Both voted in July for the bill to re-establish federal benefits for unemployed workers.

Both even picked up endorsements from the Review-Journal, despite their wide political differences.

They clashed July 22 in a debate on the House floor over whether the stimulus bill had benefited Nevada.

Heller contended the $787 billion bill was supposed to bring "an immediate jolt" to the economy, but the unemployment rate in Nevada had continued to increase.

But Berkley said "for any Nevadan to condemn the stimulus bill was to ignore what's going on in the state of Nevada." She noted that hundreds of millions of dollars went to education, Medicaid and highway construction projects.

Berkley, 59, reported to the Federal Election Commission on Oct. 15 that she had received $2.1 million in contributions from supporters and had $1.3 million in cash on hand.

Kenneth Wegner, her Republican opponent, reported $61,000 in contributions and no cash on hand.

Wegner was drubbed by Berkley in two previous races, including 2008 when he drew 28 percent of the vote to her 67 percent.

Democrats hold a 64,000-registered- voter advantage in Berkley's district, which includes most of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and the Strip, along with parts of unincorporated Clark County. She has won the seat by wide margins in every election since a close race against Don Chairez in 1998.

Heller reported Oct. 21 that he had raised $1.36 million and he had $771,000 cash on hand.

Price reported she raised a little more than $5,000 in contributions and was $552 in debt.

Republicans hold a 29,000-regisered- voter advantage in the district and a Democrat never has won the seat since its creation in 1982.

The wild card in 2012 will be Ensign.

Both Herzik and Damore see the two-term Republican senator as too wounded by the revelations about his affair with Hampton to defeat Heller in a GOP primary if he decides to run for re-election. They see Heller challenging and defeating Ensign in a primary even if the incumbent senator decides to run for a third term.

Instead of saving money for a re-election bid, Ensign has been busy hiring lawyers to fight ethical charges arising from his affair and the $96,000 his parents paid to Hampton and her husband.

Ensign had $961,000 in cash on June 30, but raised only $18,000 in the last quarter. He spent $700,000 of which $550,000 went to lawyers. He now has $280,000 in cash on hand.

The Senate Ethics Committee and the Justice Department are conducting parallel investigations into whether Ensign broke laws or Senate rules in an attempt to cover up the affair.

Damore and Herzik said Ensign may resign his seat next year and allow Republican Brian Sandoval, who leads in the Nevada governor's race according to polls, to appoint Heller to replace him. That would give Heller a step up in a Senate race against Berkley.

Heller has other advantages. He has run three times for statewide office and has won by big margins, even in Democratic years. He won the secretary of state's race in 1994, 1998 and 2002.

Berkley pointed out that 71 percent of the state's population lives in Clark County, her home.

Only the most zealous Republicans would predict now that Heller would defeat Berkley. The political pendulum swings. The 2008 election was a Democratic year, and polling conducted for The Associated Press already shows November will bring big Republican gains in Congress and in governor seats.

"It will be a classic match-up," said Herzik about a Heller-Berkley race. "They have similar personalities. They can work a crowd. They have biting wits. They represent the mainstream in their parties. The big determination will be what will politics be like in 2012?"

Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report. Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.