Harry Reid may need all the help he can get

Well, now we for sure know why Nevada Sen. Harry “I Did Too Smile Once Back in High School” Reid is calling in the Big Guy for a grandiose fundraiser on Tuesday.

A new statewide poll of 625 Nevadans confirms previous research that the four-term Democrat is not well-liked. In fact, he’s downright disliked.

Fully half the respondents think of him unfavorably. Only 38% think of him positively; 11% didn’t care, according to the survey by Mason-Dixon for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

About 45% said they’d vote to oust the 69-year-old Senate majority leader, 17% said they’d consider somebody else, and about a third would vote for him. Going into such elections, incumbents prefer 2-to-1 favorable-to-unfavorable ratios.

Reid already has about $3.3 million in the bank to avoid being “Daschle-d”: in which a Democratic majority leader is unseated by Republicans as Tom Daschle was five years ago. Of course, Daschle went on to become a millionaire advisor to a rich guy, while not paying a lot of taxes and not becoming secretary of Health and Human Services -- so losing isn’t necessarily all bad.

President Obama this week will fly out to Las Vegas on Air Force One for a celebrity-studded funder with Bette Midler and Sheryl Crow, despite his criticism last winter of bankers who go to Las Vegas for taxpayer-funded parties. And then the president will hop over to Los Angeles the next day.

All that Nevada Republicans need to beat Reid is a viable Senate candidate, but there is none yet. U.S. Rep. Dean Heller is a possibility, though he’s not widely known.

Republican John Ensign is well known statewide and enjoys a 53% favorable rating. Trouble is, he’s already the state’s other senator.

A Kennedy in the running?

In the Kennedys’ master plan to have a family member elected to federal office from every state in the Union, another Kennedy is considering a run for the U.S. Senate.

Word out of Chicago on Wednesday is that Chris Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy, once of New York; nephew to Edward M. Kennedy, of Massachusetts; cousin to Caroline Kennedy, also of New York; is seriously pondering a run in next year’s race for the Senate seat vacated by Obama.

That seat is occupied by Roland Burris, who is not a Kennedy and was appointed by Rod Blagojevich, the ex-governor planning a new career in reality TV unless he goes to prison for allegedly trying to auction off the Obama seat.

Neither is Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, who used to hold the North Side Chicago House seat willed to him by Blagojevich when he became governor with the help of his wife’s father, probably Chicago’s most powerful alderman. Also not a Kennedy.

Chris Kennedy is president of the Merchandise Mart, an ancient office/showroom edifice and family investment in downtown Chicago. His interest could chase away some of the other contenders for the Democratic nomination, such as Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, daughter of Illinois House Speaker John Madigan. Also not Kennedys.

Which is not to say that Illinois’ famous Democratic politics is not run by family clans.

Burris, a longtime Illinois Democratic loyalist, is the U.S. Senate’s sole African American and has never lost to a Republican. However, he is older; has lost several primaries; is disliked by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Illinois’ other Democratic senator, Richard J. Durbin; no great fundraiser or speaker; and tainted by his Blagojevich ties.

So if he’s smart, Burris will step out of the way next year and let the next generation of Illinois Democrats march in.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, was not a Kennedy but loved them and did provide the 8,000 or so votes that gave John F. Kennedy his narrow White House electoral win in 1960, has already said Chris Kennedy is a big name.

So that signal has gone out.

The Madigans are a smart family. So Lisa Madigan might take aim now at the governor’s office, currently occupied by Pat Quinn, an empty suit plopped in as an irrelevant ticket mate when Blagojevich was really running the show.

Quinn might like to run to keep the governor’s office for himself. But he’s sharply raising taxes, as Blagojevich had warned about, and, anyway, that’s probably not Quinn’s decision if he’d like to keep his knees, so to speak.

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Top of the Ticket, The Times’ blog on national politics ( www.latimes.com/ticket), is a blend of commentary, analysis and news. These are selections from the last week.