Reid the Younger attacks Sandoval on banks, but his law partner was key to passing major bank dereg bill

Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010 | 2:56 p.m.

Sometimes a campaign is so desperate to find an opening that it throws out a bombshell, hoping that it can cause enough of an explosion to alter the race’s dynamic. And sometimes, the TNT detonates on the candidate who ignited the fuse.

Such is the case with gubernatorial hopeful Rory Reid’s new line of attack on Brian Sandoval, which he induced former President Clinton to preview on Wednesday and then unleashed with a new ad Thursday.

The argument: That banks and special interests persuaded Sandoval to leave the federal bench and that he would be in cahoots with those evildoers as governor.

Banks: Good bogeyman this year.

Problem: Reid not only works for a huge law firm – Lionel, Sawyer & Collins – that has plenty of big business clients. But the bill he set up the former president to pound Sandoval on was essentially passed by one of his law partners. Yes, you read that right.

“His opponent sponsored a bill to deregulate banking so that they could do here what happened in New York and all over America. I don't think that is a good idea," Clinton said, according to the Review-Journal. "If you want a vibrant free market you have to have oversight, otherwise they always have tended to destroy themselves for 400 years."

Forget whether that’s even an accurate description of the bill, Assembly Bill 360 in 1997. It is true that Sandoval sponsored it when he was an assemblyman. However, delving into the minutes of a May 14 hearing on AB 360 finds that the person most responsible for the spadework on the measure was none other than Dan Reasor, one of the state’s more respected lawyers and – wait for it – a partner in Lionel, Sawyer & Collins. But it gets better: Reasor lists the passage of the bill as one of his accomplishments – on the LS&C website!

Perhaps Rory doesn’t read the LS&C web site.

And I wonder how Bubba will feel when he learns about the fine research done by Team Rory. “Whoops” doesn’t quite say it.

The ad released Thursday is narrated by Reid the Younger:

Briansbankingbuddies

My first thought was what in the world is a partner in law firm that represents the state’s “powerful special interests” doing saying this stuff? And that looks even worse when Reasor’s role is considered.

At first glance, the dots connect quite well. Yes, John Sande, a Jones Vargas partner, has lobbied for the banks for years and also helped pass AB 360 a baker’s dozen years ago. Yes, Sandoval now works at Jones Vargas. And, yes, Pete Ernaut and Greg Ferraro, the two lobbyists cited in the ad’s backup, are Sandoval’s pals and were supportive, even encouraging when he decided to run for governor. It is a stretch to say they were doing it for the big banks – Ferraro and Ernaut do very little lobbying work for banks – but they do represent powerful special interests. That part is true.

So this would have been a relatively clean and potentially effective attack. If only….

Even if you bought the stretch from the banks to Sandoval’s departure from the federal bench, this is a textbook case of a flawed messenger in the person of a Lionel, Sawyer partner. And considering Reasor all but wrote the bill Team Rory gave to President Clinton to bludgeon Sandoval with, the shrapnel from this explosion is much more likely to hurt Reid than Sandoval.