Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political obituary is being written this week, and it goes something like this: Stung by a string of verbal gaffes and voters' growing animosity toward his party's agenda in Washington, the one-time middleweight boxer is almost certain to take it on the chin in November. Some talkers are even suggesting he follow Democrat Christopher Dodd's lead by calling it quits "on his own terms."
But if Reid does lose his seat this year, the story of his downfall will be about more than his ill-chosen analysis of President Obama's skin color and "dialect." A more extensive look back at Reid's 40-plus years in Nevada politics reveals this: While he's never been particularly popular among Nevadans, he's a crafty and ruthless brawler who found a way to scrape out victories in eight of 10 elections for five different offices. Dodd, a wealthy senator's son, sailed to re-election in the House and Senate in Connecticut with a career average of 63 percent. Reid, the child of an alcoholic hard-rock miner and a woman who did laundry for a local bordello, knows how to get his hands dirty.
Part of Reid's challenge stems from the changing political and demographic dynamics of Nevada, which has been a swing state for most of the past two decades. In 1992, Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush there, 37 percent to 35 percent. Four years later, Clinton won by an even slimmer margin, 44 percent to 43 percent, over Bob Dole. In 2004, George W. Bush won Nevada by about 20,000 votes. More recently, while Democrats tout an aggressive voter-registration drive in 2008 that gave them a 50,000-voter advantage in the state, Reid may be largely unknown to many of the Nevadans who have moved there since his name last appeared on a ballot in 2004.
Ever since he first won elected office in the Silver State at 28, Reid has struggled to lock down supporters. Occasionally, he has failed. He lost a Senate race in 1974 by 624 votes to Republican Paul Laxalt. Two years later, he was defeated in a run for Las Vegas mayor. Since then, he's won six House and Senate races, but often by the narrowest of margins.
Reid won an open Senate seat in 1986 by an eyelash (in a year in which Democrats added eight seats in the chamber), and six years later, in 1992, he had a tough Democratic primary fight, defeating wealthy businessman Charles Woods with just 53 percent. That November, in what was a great year for Democrats nationally, he took just 51 percent in a race against a relatively unknown Republican challenger, rancher Demar Dahl. That showing was particularly unimpressive, considering that he outspent Dahl nearly 5-1.
Reid's biggest political threat so far came in 1998, when he faced an aggressive challenge from then-Rep. John Ensign (R), who held Reid to a 428-vote margin of victory.
Reid's biggest burden in 2010 appears to be the Democratic agenda he has been forced to shepherd through the Senate, including a health care bill that becomes less popular every week. In October 1998, the last time he faced a heated battle back home, a Mason-Dixon poll showed 36 percent of voters viewed Reid unfavorably. This month, 52 percent of poll respondents view him unfavorably, according to a Mason-Dixon poll that was released after Reid had run an expensive round of positive TV spots. A new poll shows he now trails all three Republicans vying to challenge him, none of whom is well-known outside the GOP base.
On Tuesday, however, one indication surfaced that Reid's obituary may have been written prematurely. On that day, Ensign broke with some fellow Republicans and urged the GOP and media to back off his embattled colleague and move beyond comments he made about Obama. Under a nonaggression pact, Reid and Ensign have agreed for years not to criticize each other, on the basis that they could need one another someday in a state whose politics remain unpredictable.
Ensign, for one, apparently doesn't think Reid is down for the count just yet.
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