Race for Senate in Nevada--High Stakes, Even Odds

The stakes are high in this year’s U.S. Senate race in Nevada, between two-term Democratic Rep. Harry Reid and Republican James D. Santini, for the seat being vacated by Republican Paul Laxalt.

The outcome could help to decide control of the Senate (Republicans now have a 53-47 edge, but they hold 22 of the 34 seats being contested this year), and it could also be crucial to Laxalt’s presidential ambitions.

Laxalt, a close friend of President Reagan, recently said he may try for the Republican nomination in 1988 if he can raise $8 million to $10 million and if none of the other Republican hopefuls has established a clear lead.

But if Laxalt is to be a credible presidential contender, it is widely believed, he must deliver a winner in his home state Senate race--particularly because Laxalt hand-picked Santini as the man he wanted to succeed him.

Both men face minor opposition in a Sept. 2 primary, but the November contest is expected to be between Reid and Santini.

So far, the race looks close, and most political observers in the state expect it to remain so. A recent Richard Wirthlin poll, taken for the Republican Senate Campaign committee, showed Reid with a 43%-41% lead, with 16% undecided.

The Reid camp claims that its man is further ahead than that, but concedes that Santini, who served four terms in Congress as a Democrat before switching parties this year to enter the Senate race, has gained ground in recent weeks.

Because of the importance of the election, vast sums will be spent in this thinly populated state, where there are only about 350,000 registered voters.

If total spending reaches $5 million, as expected, and if the Wirthlin poll is correct in identifying only 15% to 20% of the voters as “undecided,” then about $100 will be spent to woo each of these voters.

President Reagan raised more than $500,000 for Santini during a late June visit to Las Vegas, and Santini campaign officials say the President will return to Nevada at least once before election day, perhaps twice.

Reagan won almost two-thirds of the Nevada vote in 1984, but there is no certainty the President will be able to transfer that popularity to Santini.

Reid is confident that he will be able to raise as much money as he needs, and neither side is expected to have a spending advantage. Both men are political veterans.

Reid, 46, was elected lieutenant governor in 1970, at the age of 29. In 1974, he lost a U.S. Senate race to Laxalt by 624 votes out of about 160,000 cast. But in 1975 he was defeated in a race for mayor of Las Vegas.

From 1977 to 1981, Reid was chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, which regulates gambling in the state. Since 1982 he has been in Congress.

Miner’s Son

Born in tiny Searchlight, Nev., Reid is the son of a poor miner, but today he is a wealthy trial attorney and landowner.

Santini, who will be 49 next week, was born in Reno and attended the University of Nevada-Reno, where two of his fraternity brothers were Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., who is now Republican national chairman, and Richard Bryan, now the state’s Democratic governor. Santini has been a deputy district attorney, a public defender, a justice of the peace and a District Court judge, all in Clark County (Las Vegas).

From 1974 to 1982, he was Nevada’s lone congressman. (In 1982, Nevada gained a second congressional seat, and Reid was elected in Las Vegas, while Republican Barbara Vucanovich was chosen by the rest of the state.)

Bitter, Divisive Primary

In 1982, Santini challenged incumbent Democratic Sen. Howard Cannon. After a bitter, divisive primary, Santini carried every county except Clark but still lost the election. Many Nevada Democrats are still furious at Santini because they believe that the bruising primary was the principal reason Cannon was defeated in the 1982 general election by Republican Chic Hecht.

Last summer, 11 days after Laxalt announced he would not seek a third Senate term, Santini switched parties.

Laxalt “leaned on me hard to make the party change, but not to run for the Senate,” Santini said in a recent interview. “He said something like, ‘I’m moving out and we need you to move into some sort of leadership capacity,’ but in no way shape or form did he say he would back me for the Senate.”

‘Pulled Out Voluntarily’

Rep. Vucanovich, a close Laxalt political ally, was preparing to run for the Senate but, it is generally believed, she was persuaded to step aside after Republican polls showed that Santini would be a stronger candidate against Reid.

Both Laxalt and Vucanovich deny this.

“She looked at the situation herself and pulled out voluntarily,” Laxalt said in a telephone interview from Washington.

“I wanted to run,” Vucanovich said, “but when I looked at the time I would have to be away from Congress, I didn’t think that was fair to the people who elected me.”

But a highly placed Nevada Republican, who asked not to be identified, said that was not what happened.

“Laxalt and Fahrenkopf decided they wanted Santini,” the source said. “They told Barbara if she ran, they would not support her. She was hurt and angry--she still is--but she’s very loyal to Paul, so she pulled out.”

Erratic Political Path

Instead, Vucanovich is running for a third term in Congress.

Reid hopes to capitalize on the party switch and on the somewhat erratic political path Santini has followed in recent years.

In 1976, Santini was Nevada coordinator for former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., when Brown was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1981, he was one of the “boll weevil” Democrats in Congress who supported Reagan’s budget cuts. Now he is a Republican who says he agrees with most of Reagan’s policies.

“The issue is consistency,” Reid said recently. “Everybody has a right to change parties. . . . But it’s the manner in which he did it that is troubling--waiting for Laxalt to announce and then switching parties on the very last possible day.”

But Santini insists that his conservative political views have not changed since he was first elected to Congress in 1974.

‘Practical’ Support

“I ran then as an anti-big government candidate,” he said. “I was in favor of cutting taxes and eliminating wasteful government spending. Those convictions of 1974 were translated into my 1981 budget votes.”

Santini said he supported Brown in 1976 because the former California governor was willing to visit economically depressed rural Nevada, while Jimmy Carter, the eventual Democratic candidate, was not.

“My support wasn’t philosophical, it was practical,” Santini said. “I knew if I was going to get any of Nevada’s problems solved, I had to have a President who had been to Nevada and knew what it was like.”

Santini believes that his conservative views are more acceptable to a majority of Nevadans than those of Reid, whom he described as “the most liberal congressman that has represented Nevada in this century.”

Strong Financial Support

He pointed to Reid’s strong financial support from organized labor and to the high ratings Reid’s voting record received from the AFL-CIO Committee On Political Education (COPE)--82 in 1983, 90 in 1984. (Santini omitted mentioning that Reid’s COPE rating fell to 41 in 1985.)

According to Santini, he supported President Reagan 70% of the time in 1981-82, his last year in Congress, while Reid opposed the President 56% of the time in 1984-85.

Reid said the attempt to portray him as a liberal is “part of the same pitch the Republicans are using all over the country this year--against (Gov.) Bob Graham in Florida, against (Rep.) Jim Jones in Oklahoma--that we’re all somehow part of the ‘Liberal Eastern Establishment.’ For anybody familiar with the Washington scene at all, to call me a liberal is just laughable.”

Liberal Image

But Reid is having some trouble shaking his liberal image.

The Pro-Family Coalition, a conservative, largely Mormon group, has endorsed Santini, a Catholic, over Reid, a Mormon, because Reid is “just actually very liberal--too liberal for Nevada,” said Carol Carlson, coalition president.

Carlson said her organization endorsed Santini because Reid would not agree to consider the past positions of possible U.S. Supreme Court nominees on such issues as abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, both of which the coalition opposes.

A Reid spokesman said the congressman told the group he “did not support a political litmus test” for judges, but would oppose any nominee “who could be shown to have a solid pro-abortion point of view.”

Candidates’ Positions

The two candidates do not seem to differ very much on current issues.

Both are opposed to abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and gun control, and both favor the death penalty.

Both are generally supportive of Reagan foreign policy, although Santini wants to send aid to the Nicaraguan contras and Reid does not.

Reid has been sharply critical of the Reagan Administration’s decision to include Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas, as one of three possible sites for the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste dump.

He argues that the dump might be unsafe, that it is “totally incompatible with tourism” and that Nevada, already the home of nuclear weapons testing and several large military bases, has done more than its share to help the national defense effort.

Opposes Nuclear Dump

In rallies throughout the state, Reid is asking voters to sign a letter to the President opposing the nuclear waste dump under any circumstances. He hopes to collect 15,000 to 20,000 signatures, and then request a meeting with Reagan.

Santini called the letter-writing campaign “an election-year charade,” but acknowledged that “the Democrats have had a public relations success” with it.

Santini, however, also is strongly opposed to locating the nuclear waste dump in Nevada, so the issue may not be especially beneficial to Reid.

Some observers believe that the “North-South factor” will work to Santini’s advantage.

If Reid is elected, both Nevada senators--he and Hecht--would be from Las Vegas, a situation that has not occurred in recent memory and one that is said to perturb many voters elsewhere in the state.

Shaky Start a Surprise

Santini, although he has spent most of his working life in Las Vegas or in Washington, was born in Reno and is perceived by many to be a northern Nevadan.

If there has been a surprise so far, it is that Santini, known as a smooth, effective campaigner in past elections, has gotten off to a very shaky start.

When he announced for the seat last March, Santini appeared to many television viewers to be overweight and he was perspiring heavily, a problem that has plagued him in the past. (He has since lost weight and looks trim.) And shortly after Santini’s announcement, his 25-year-old son was arrested in Reno on a cocaine possession charge.

Differences of opinion between Republican strategists in Washington and Santini supporters in Nevada apparently led to several early blunders.

‘Start From Scratch’

“We were playing catch-up,” Santini said in explaining his poor start. “I announced late and Reid enjoyed the advantages of an incumbent--he had his staff in place. We had to start from scratch. For a while, during that organizational hiatus, I didn’t even have a press secretary to handle the ordinary give and take of a hard campaign.”

Some Republicans are worried because Santini, so far, does not seem to be living up to his reputation as a hard-working candidate who loves to press the flesh at the barbecues, rodeos and other events that make up a significant part of Nevada campaigning.

For instance, at a recent “Santini Stampede,” a Republican fund-raiser on a ranch outside Reno, Vucanovich and other GOP candidates worked the crowd, but Santini stood in one place, looking ill at ease and waiting for people to come to him.

‘A Shotgun Candidate’

One top northern Nevada Republican theorized that Santini “may not be comfortable yet with the party or with the Republican crowd,” while another suggested that he was “a shotgun candidate,” forced by Laxalt and other prominent Republicans to undertake a race for which he had little enthusiasm.

But both agreed that, despite these early problems, the contest is a toss-up.

Republican strategists are counting on Santini, a more forceful speaker, to outshine Reid in a series of debates scheduled for the fall.

Santini is expected to run well in the Reno-Carson City-Lake Tahoe area and in the rural counties, while Reid should do well in Clark County.

Most political experts believe that Reid must carry 60% of the Clark County vote to win. Because 53% of the state’s registered voters live in Clark County, and Democrats hold a 56.5% to 37.5% registration edge there, this appears attainable.

‘Battle of Personalities’

But Republicans are hoping that a strong campaign in the Las Vegas area, assisted by one or more presidential visits, will reduce Reid’s lead in Clark County enough to make Santini a statewide winner.

“It’s really coming down to a battle of personalities,” Laxalt said. “That, and the special plea that we’ll be making that Ronald Reagan, in his last two years in office, shouldn’t have a Democratic-controlled Senate to contend with.”

Will Nevadans heed that plea from their departing senior senator, or will they elect Harry Reid, thereby sticking a very sharp pin into the Laxalt presidential balloon?