Spy games

We’re racing full speed toward the November election, which means voters likely feel bombarded with witless nonsense from all sides.

Take the TV ads promoting the candidates for one of Nevada’s U.S. Senate seats. Watch a typical 30-second spot and you might come away believing that Republican Joe Heck is in favor of breast cancer or that Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto plotted for years to increase the crime rate.

Nuance and reality often get lost in the quest for power.

And now we have GOP Rep. Cresent Hardy squabbling with his opponent, Democratic hopeful Ruben Kihuen, over whether Chinese spies might use the proposed $1 billion Faraday Future electric car plant in North Las Vegas as cover to spy on Nellis Air Force Base.

Seems a Nellis commander late last year emailed Rep. Hardy’s office to express unease over the factory plans — the company is owned by a Chinese billionaire — and the potential for espionage. Rep. Hardy made mention of the issue during a Las Vegas speech in July. A Democratic operative assigned to tail the congressman in hopes of catching an embarrassing moment was in the audience and recorded the comment, which became public last week.

This led to a predictable war of words between the two campaigns. A Hardy spokesman said his boss was raising “legitimate concerns” and was simply seeking to “strike the appropriate balance between growing our economy and protecting” Nellis. Mr. Kihuen’s team fired back that “it’s disappointing” Rep. Hardy is “continuing down this rabbit hole” at the expense of the state’s economic development efforts.

In fact, what’s disappointing is that this has become an issue at all when more important matters — such as U.S. fiscal policy, entitlement reform, immigration and foreign affairs — should be dominating the campaign.

If the intelligence community in Washington had any serious indication that the project represented a threat to national security, it’s unlikely the government would have allowed it to move forward. The notion that Wo Fat and his operatives might set up shop at Faraday to snoop on Nellis or Area 51 seems fantastically conspiratorial. On the other hand, if an Air Force bigwig raised the question with Rep. Hardy, it’s hardly fair to excoriate him for mentioning it.

As far as Faraday is concerned, the two candidates might be better off debating the manufacturer’s long-term fortunes. The state lured the company to Apex in North Las Vegas with a tax and infrastructure incentive package worth $335 million. But the secretive outfit has never produced a single vehicle and its funding structure remains murky, despite promising to create 4,500 jobs and to bring a car to market next year.

Forget the James Bond intrigue. The real question is whether Faraday Future will actually deliver.