Reid’s angle: Money can’t buy him love

The nationally watched U.S. Senate race between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle shapes up like that old joke about two hikers who encounter a grizzly bear.

One hiker yells, "Run!" To which the other says, "Are you nuts ... we can't outrun a grizzly."

The first hiker then knocks the other hiker to the ground and yells back on the dead run: "I know ... I only need to outrun you."

And so it is in the first 40 days of the general election that Sen. Reid looks over his shoulder at his opponent and shouts: "Hope voters hate you more than they hate me!"

The Reid camp spent millions on that "Hate Her" strategy and it was rewarded Friday with a solid 7-point lead in the first Review-Journal/8 News Now poll of the general election season. This is significant because the Review-Journal polls are the most authoritative in Nevada, proving spot on for the past 20 years.

But before Sen. Reid and President Barack Obama do a chest bump and an end-zone dance in anticipation of a fall victory, let's keep a few things in mind.

It's the first poll (not the last) and you'd think that with Reid's longevity he would be killing Angle at this point. He has more money, influence, name recognition and organization than his opponent. Of course, being up by 7 percentage points is better than being down by 7, but it's far from a knock-out lead. And it's been built not by improving his own standing, but by casting doubt on Angle's.

Angle's a relatively unknown political figure, especially in vote-rich Las Vegas. The Reid camp has made good use of his war-chest advantage to paint Angle as a political weirdo who, as the Reid commercials state over and over again, is "too extreme" for Nevada.

Of course, anyone who knows Nevada knows that she's not "too extreme" on the conservative side of the aisle anymore than Harry Reid is "too extreme" on the communist side of the aisle. But it goes to show that in politics money can't always buy you love, but it can plant enough fear to buy your opponent a dose of suspicion and hate.

This phenomenon, by the way, was called exactly right by national political commentator Dick Morris last spring. He predicted that if Reid's money couldn't completely knock out his Republican opponent in the first six weeks, the tide would turn against Reid the rest of the way.

The big questions for Angle are now these: Can she get it together and stop the slide? Remember, Reid's got plenty more campaign cash where that came from. Can Reid intensify voter fear even more, or is this the extent of the gap between his own profound unpopularity and her utter unfamiliarity? And finally, can she close the gap once her organization finds form and substance enough to fight?

After a poor start, it looks like Angle's getting her staff and campaign together and beginning to function at a higher level.

Last week the Angle campaign announced that it had raised $2.29 million, half of which came from Internet and social media sources. That's still way behind the some $25 million Sen. Reid says he will raise. But it's enough to mount a defense, of which there wasn't much when the Review-Journal poll was in the field.

She also has one more big thing going for her. Outside of lame duck Gov. Jim "Luvguv" Gibbons, Reid is the most unpopular statewide political figure in Nevada. His favorability rating as tracked by the Review-Journal polling over the past 36 months remains stuck in the mid-30s. That normally spells doom for an incumbent.

This widespread anti-Reid angst is underscored by the fact that the Harry Reid campaign never gives the public or the media much advance notice of where Reid will make a rare personal Nevada appearance for fear of giving angry voters time to mobilize a protest, which they will do given half a chance. Also, his own son Rory Reid, who is running for governor, prefers to be known not as a "Reid" but as a "Rory."

And finally, there is one other factor no one's talking about. It's hard to quantify because it's not been seen before in Nevada Republican politics -- what's the effect on the GOP base of a closely, and bitterly, contested three-way primary?

Just a few short months ago Sharron Angle, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian all led the field at one point or another. All of them were shown capable of beating Harry Reid straight-up if they emerged from the GOP primary. Expectations in all three camps were therefore naturally high.

So when Angle emerged the come-from-behind winner in the volatile primary, more than half of the GOP faithful were both spent and disappointed. I don't think the party's yet caught its breath enough to fully embrace Angle. In particular, women voters who had supported Sue Lowden (not to mention Sue Lowden herself) have not warmed up to an Angle candidacy.

But all that said, the bottom line remains: While money didn't buy Sen. Reid love, it did produce enough suspicion of his opponent that he now enjoys a mighty strange position for a Harry Reid re-election bid -- front-runner status.

Can the apocalypse be far behind?

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@review
journal.com) is publisher of the Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.