Doyle McManus: All bets are off in Nevada

There are many close races for the U.S. Senate this year, and many strange ones, but the bitter contest between two unlovable candidates in quirky Nevada is, for my money, the closest, strangest race of all.

The Democratic candidate, Sen. Harry Reid, is one of the most powerful men in Washington, a master at steering billion-dollar federal projects to his economically busted state — not someone you’d expect to find locked in a desperate fight for his political life. His Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, is a gaffe-prone “tea party” firebrand who canceled most of her public appearances in the last week of the campaign to avoid more missteps. Yet she may well topple the Senate majority leader.

Why is Reid in such deep trouble? The biggest reason is the most obvious: Nevada’s economy, which rests on real estate, construction and tourism, is snakebit. Its 14.4% unemployment rate is the highest in the nation; its mortgage foreclosure rate is higher than anywhere else as well; and Reid’s power as majority leader has availed little against these problems.

But there’s a second, more local reason. Reid made his name as a moderate Mormon Democrat from a conservative Mountain state; in his earlier Senate terms, he voted to ban late-term abortions and to kill most gun control measures. Now, he has climbed to the top of the Senate heap, serving as majority leader. And that, ironically, hasn’t played well with the folks back home.

His position in the Senate hierarchy has made Reid the legislative manager of President Obama’s agenda. And that means that his biggest accomplishments of the last two years — the $787-billion stimulus bill and the Obama healthcare bill — have put him at odds with many of his constituents. Call it the curse of the majority leader: Like his predecessor, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Reid could lose his Senate seat because his leadership job pulled him to the left. It may be awhile before another conservative-state Democrat lusts after that post.

Because of the high stakes, millions of dollars have poured into Nevada to pay for ceaseless television commercials, mailings and telephone calls on both sides. Almost all of the messages are negative, of course. Reid’s latest commercial, hammering at his argument that Angle is “extreme and dangerous,” notes that she wants to “phase out” Social Security and features a cancer survivor who says she might have died if Angle’s views on health insurance had been law.

Angle’s latest, titled “Stupid Things Harry Says,” reminds voters that the incumbent is famous for gaffes too, including his description of Obama as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect.” Earlier Angle commercials accused Reid of voting to give “special tax breaks to illegal aliens” (he voted against a proposal to stop the IRS from refunding tax overpayments to illegal immigrants — some break) and to use tax dollars to provide Viagra for sex offenders (a claim that’s technically true but highly misleading).

The result? Nevada voters don’t much like either candidate. Rarely in American politics has so much money been spent to win so few votes with so little joy.

Still, many voters feel they have to choose, and roughly half have gone to the polls already, thanks to Nevada’s user-friendly early voting law that opened polling places in shopping malls and grocery stores almost two weeks ago.

I went to the state’s biggest early voting site, in a mall in the upscale Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, one of the state’s key political battlegrounds. My conversations with voters confirmed what the polls show. Most Nevadans aren’t voting for a senator they want; they’re voting against the candidate they dislike more.

“Harry Reid isn’t perfect, but Sharron Angle is an embarrassment,” said CleAnne Gilman, 66, a retired interior designer who said she voted Democratic.

“I voted for Sharron Angle,” said Dave Slider, 32, an air-conditioning sales representative. “I think she’s crazy, but she’s the lesser of two evils. Harry Reid doesn’t seem to listen to people from Nevada anymore.”

That complaint was echoed by James Johnson, 66, a health insurance manager who added a personal note.

“I’ve known Harry Reid and his family for 30 years,” Johnson said. “I like Harry Reid. But I’m disappointed in him. He hasn’t done as much for Nevada in the last few years.”

He wasn’t crazy about Angle, he said, but thought she was focused on the right things. Nevertheless, he added, his first vote ever against Reid made him “feel like a traitor.”

Other Nevadans are conflicted in the other direction. Angle’s rigorous tea party opposition to pork-barrel federal projects — even those that would help Nevada — and Reid’s success at directing them to the state have divided the Republican Party. Several old-line GOP leaders, including former Republican National Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. and Reno Mayor Bob Cashell, have crossed the aisle to endorse Reid.

Reid has been apologetic about the failure of the stimulus to refloat Nevada’s economy and doesn’t talk much about his work to pass the healthcare bill, but he has been unabashed about the federal money he has brought to Nevada, appearing often at federally-funded energy and construction projects.

After almost a year of relentless bombardment with campaign messages, few Nevadans are undecided anymore (fewer than 4% in most polls). They’ve heard enough messages; they know where the candidates stand. The battle now comes down to which side can persuade more of its supporters to vote. Reid has a big, well-honed Democratic Party organization, largely funded and staffed by labor unions; Angle has a newer, untested tea party network, funded by conservative “independent expenditure” groups, including the organization of former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove. More on that in Sunday’s column.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com