Columnist Jon Ralston: Brazenness knows no bounds

Sunday, July 9, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com.

If chutzpah were gold, Harry Reid would be Midas.

Look no further than the events of last week -- leavened by a little historical perspective -- to understand why Reid's penchant for brazenness knows no bounds -- and, perhaps, why he has ascended so far in the Club of 100.

As I saw Reid on television and in print last week with Bruce Babbitt, gushing about the Interior secretary's contributions to Nevada and proposed expenditures of $33 million of property purchases under a new lands law, I couldn't help but think of John Ensign. I wondered what the ex-congressman must have been thinking as Reid basked in the glory of a bill -- the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act -- that Ensign and Sen. Richard Bryan had once proposed.

Oh, sure, Ensign had picked up on an idea from his predecessor, Jim Bilbray. But Babbitt's visit was a reminder of how the measure was once entombed for purely political reasons -- by Harry Reid.

Turn back the clock to 1996. Ensign is a first-term congressman running for re-election against state Sen. Bob Coffin. Reid is doing everything in his power to boost prohibitive underdog Coffin's chances -- not because he likes Coffin so much but because he knows if Ensign wins, the congressman will run for the U.S. Senate in 1998.

As the election nears, Ensign is poised for a legislative victory that will surely put away Coffin. The Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act is about to pass Congress. The measure is alternately referred to as the Ensign-Bryan lands bill, or the Bryan-Ensign lands bill, depending on which co-sponsor is talking about it. But through a series of last-minute legislative maneuvers, the bill died. This measure, which would have provided millions of dollars to local agencies through land sales, was no more. And why? For what?

Oh, there was a cover story -- a hostile amendment, procedural problems. But Ensign and Bryan both knew whodunit. This was no complicated game of "Clue" -- it was Harry Reid in the Senate with malice aforethought.

Reid muttered some non-denial denials. But Bryan was incensed that a measure he had worked so hard to pass had been entombed because his colleague didn't want Ensign to get a victory so close to the election. And then the evidence surfaced: A letter, dated Sept. 26, 1996, from Frank Murkowski, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, to House Resources Chairman Don Young. The letter flatly stated that the lands bill would not be included in the final package "due to opposition from Nevada's senior senator.

"I was informed by my staff that Reid's staff had stated that he intends to utilize all procedural obstacles at his disposal to defeat this legislation. As you know, Senate rules provide the ability of one senator to object to legislation, which could ultimately result in its death. Therefore, at this time I do not feel that I can include this language and jeopardize the passage of the conference report."

So Reid and his staffers had sent the word to Murkowski that the senior senator would do everything and anything he could to stop a measure that could have started nearly four years ago the process Babbitt commenced last week. Reid was willing to give up all the money, all the salutary benefits of the legislation, just to deprive Ensign of a legislative win.

Later, after Ensign vanquished Coffin, Reid acted as if nothing had happened and eagerly signed onto the legislation. And last week, it was as if the measure was his own, that all of his machinations to kill it had never taken place.

What a mensch Bruce Babbitt is, Reid told the media. How wonderful this bill is, he said, as cameras whirred. Now that is chutzpah.

I wonder what John Ensign was thinking as he watched the coverage.