Sen. Reid says he was too busy to attend son Rory Reid’s gubernatorial debate

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid is a busy man -- so busy that he skipped his son's first gubernatorial debate over the weekend.

"I had long-standing commitments," Reid said Monday when asked by a reporter at his Las Vegas campaign headquarters if he attended the Sunday evening debate.

Rory Reid's mother, Landra, was there and his brothers, according to the senator.

Sen. Reid's absence from the event was no real surprise. He and his son have kept their distance during their separate campaigns.

The son, a Clark County Commissioner, is running on his first name, Rory, and not his last, leaving the family name off most of his campaign material.

The thinking apparently is that Rory Reid doesn't need the baggage of his father's unpopularity as Sen. Reid fights to win a fifth Senate term.

Sen. Reid is in a close contest with Republican Sharron Angle, whose name came up once during the debate.

Rory Reid, a Democrat, accused his Republican opponent Brian Sandoval of being as bad for education as Angle, who has called for doing away with the Education Department.

"Brian Sandoval is a nice man, but he is a weak leader," Rory Reid said in the debate as he tried but failed to get a rise out of Sandoval, who is running about 20 points ahead of Reid, according to the latest Mason-Dixon poll.

Any Sandoval weakness might come as news to Sen. Reid, who helped Sandoval become a federal judge. At the time, Sandoval was Nevada's attorney general. In 2005, then-President George W. Bush nominated Sandoval to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada based on Reid's recommendation. Sandoval resigned from the bench to run for governor.