Marshall plays up fiscal credentials, says Amodei is taxing fellow

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 | 4:49 p.m.

I forget: Which one is the Republican in the first special House election in Nevada history?

Democratic Treasurer Kate Marshall’s anticipated television campaign captured the duality of her task in the solidly Republican Congressional District Two: Make herself palatable to more conservative voters and make her opponent, ex-state Sen. Mark Amodei, less palatable.

Two tasks, two ads.

Positive

Not so positive

What party is she? You won’t hear or see it in those ads. Why? Because being a Democrat in CD2 has not done anyone any good since the district was created in 1981.

The substantial buy (1,000 gross rating points for first week) indicates that with 30 days until early voting, Marshall believes she needs to engage Amodei on TV before it is too late. She has – or had – a large money edge, so she is now taking advantage of it. We will soon see if he thinks it is necessary to answer her on TV or if the National Republican Congressional Committee will buy air time to answer.

So far, Amodei has ignored Marshall, preferring to let the National Republican Congressional Committee and the state GOP play the bad guys. That was the case today as both the NRCC and the state party put out news releases assailing the Marshall ad – not the one about Amodei, the one about her fiscal bona fides. Familiar tack: The economy she claims credit for helping is in the tank and she lost $50 million of state money in the Lehman Brothers dissolution.

Quick distillation: Marshall has exaggerated her stewardship of the economy but the GOP folks have similarly used hyperbole in holding her responsible for not foreseeing the Lehman crash.

An Amodei release does address his post-2003 votes against taxes and points out Marshall says Amodei voted for a pay increase – even though he would be gone from the state Senate when it would have taken effect. (The last charge, as the Sun's Anjeanette Damon pointed out was not true. Amodei did benefit from a small pay increase the following session.) The rest is standard fare – “Obamacare” and my favorite: “Clearly Kate Marshall is following the Harry Reid strategy of negative attacks….”

Every time the Amodei folks can mention Reid’s name, they will.

(Although I deeply appreciate the “fact check” the GOP applied to Marshall’s spot, we will air Reality Check spots on both of the Democrat’s ads on “Face to Face” soon.)

I do find Marshall’s criticism of Amodei’s support of tax increases in 2003 interesting for several reasons:

1. It is accurate that he sponsored a tax increase that would have been the largest in history – the Care-Amodei bill was an alternative to Gov. Kenny Guinn’s gross receipts tax and was stillborn. He also voted for more than $800 million in taxes that did not contain a gross receipts tax. Amodei, like ex-U.S. Senate contender Chad Christensen, are fond of calling the gross receipts a “state income tax” to make it sound worse.

2. The Care-Amodei bill, which Republican senators at the time signed onto as a protest against the gross receipts, has come back to haunt some of those GOP folks. Indeed, Rep. Joe Heck’s political career might not exist if then-state Sen. Ann O’Connell, one of the most conservative lawmakers ever to serve in Carson City, had not been a co-sponsor. That fact killed her when Heck ran against her in a primary in 2004. If Amodei had had a real primary this year, supporting one huge tax increase and voting for another might have erased him from the landscape. No “ballot royale,” either, so, for Amodei, GOP problem averted. And, thus, the genesis of the Marshall attack.

3. Marshall surely would not have opposed the tax increase in 2003 – it was supported by every Democrats and only some Republicans were against it. But that’s not her point, She wants to “educate” Republicans and independent voters about Amodei’s record. She may not get GOP votes with the ad, but she may believe she can suppress GOP turnout and sway some independents.

It’s a relatively transparent strategy: Pretend you are not a Democrat, paint your opponent as a tax and spender and hope for the best.

Will the ads help? Depends.

It may be true that nothing any Democrat does in CD2 can result in a victory. It never has.

But if you assume low turnout (it will be) and you assume the Democratic machine trumps the GOP machine (is there one?), theoretically, Marshall has an outside shot. But is anybody listening and does anybody even know there is an election besides those already decided?

I haven’t seen any reliable polling data yet, but I expect the data will be flowing soon. This is a difficult race to poll because I’m not sure how you find a likely voter in this most unlikely of elections.

If Amodei or the NRCC goes up right away to respond or attack Marshall, that means either they are being better safe than sorry, or they have polling information that indicates he needs to slow down the Democrat who in both of these ads is doing her best to pretend she is not one.

UPDATE: I learned late Wednesday that the NRCC is making a buy. So either the Republicans are playing it by the book -- an attack unanswered is an attack accepted -- or they are worried about the Marshall Plan.