Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.
He's a GOP incumbent in an election year when many of his fellow Republicans wish they could erase the "R" next to their name on the ballot.
He has been one of the most ardent supporters of the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. He accepted - and later returned - campaign contributions from disgraced megalobbyist Jack Abramoff. At a time when many Republicans are doing their best to distance themselves from the White House, he has to defend a record of backing President Bush's agenda 96 percent of the time from 2001 to 2005, according to Congressional Quarterly figures.
And to top it all off, he's running against an opponent with a famous political name - and a father who just happened to have occupied the White House for four years.
Add it all up, and if it weren't for the fact that his hair is already that color, you'd have to say Campaign '06 would be enough to turn U.S. Sen. John Ensign's hair gray.
But despite a record and political circumstances that would seem to have him firmly in Democrats' cross hairs, the Silver State's junior senator is sleeping very well this campaign season.
At least partly, Ensign has his Democratic opponent, Jack Carter, to thank for that.
Carter, the oldest son of former President Jimmy Carter, generated a buzz when he announced his candidacy last fall, mostly because of his family name, but his campaign has since fizzled. What little momentum he had coming off a summer tour of rural Nevada died earlier this month when he contracted severe colitis, forcing him off the campaign trail for three weeks.
In short, a month before early voting begins, Carter remains a challenger in name more than in fact, with some polls showing him facing a sizable double-digit deficit.
While his strategy - making the race a referendum on Bush and the Republican leadership in Washington - is shaping up to be a winning one elsewhere, few have actually heard Carter make his case.
"National Democrats would like to include Nevada in that tier of races they need to win to retake the Senate," said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. "But they realize it's not really in play."
For his part, Ensign is simply following the old rule of politics: Ignore your opponent. In fact, his campaign ads - in rotation since Labor Day - put a positive spin on his legislative record and showcase his background as a veterinarian, without mentioning Carter's name, of course.
Carter adviser Terry O'Connell insists the campaign will turn primarily on retail politicking over the next few weeks leading up to the first of three televised debates with Ensign on Oct. 15. On the advice of former President Bill Clinton, a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, Carter has been heavily targeting rural Nevada.
"It depends more on having the last word than spending a lot of money to compete with (Ensign) on the first and middle words," O'Connell said.
In other words, Carter doesn't have the cash to have many of his words - first, last or middle - reach voters.
That is made clear by the hand-drawn signs in Carter's cramped campaign office that read "Plead for Pledges" and "Beg for Dollars."
As of July 26, the end of the last federal campaign finance reporting period, Carter had $380,000 cash on hand compared to Ensign's $3.2 million.
Even Carter himself has tightened the purse strings. At his office, he boasted recently about feeding four people for $8.08 at the local Costco. "You even get a free Coke," he said.
For Carter, getting his message out - fast - is critical.
"It's getting late," said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. "We're at the point in an election cycle where it's all about TV. Unless it's on TV, it doesn't happen."
While linking Ensign to Bush is Carter's best chance of winning, he has yet to define himself as a credible alternative, Rothenberg's Gonzales said.
"Having the right message matters, but the messenger matters as well," Gonzales said. "At this point, I don't know if people see this race as an even choice between two equal candidates."
Perhaps that will change in the coming weeks though, as the former president hits the campaign trail to stump for his son. The free media that accompanies those events will give Jack Carter's campaign a much-needed boost.
Indeed, when the elder Carter was in town last month to visit his sick son in the hospital, an impromptu appearance at a Hispanic rally produced a priceless publicity jolt.
Despite Carter's famous name, his father's fundraising ability and anti-Bush backlash, Ensign is still an easy lock for re-election, said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "I just don't see it happening for Carter," Sabato said. "It would have to be 1994-plus in reverse for Ensign to lose," he added, referring to the GOP's lopsided win in that year's congressional races. (Ensign got his start in Washington in 1994, narrowly winning election to the House in that year's "Republican Revolution" to represent Nevada's 1st Congressional District.)
David Damore, a UNLV political scientist, agrees. "It's really tough to beat an incumbent, even in a year that's looking good for Democrats," he said.
Despite his voting record, Ensign is not seen as a close Bush ally, and thus not vulnerable, Damore said.
Republicans portray Ensign - a former casino manager whose stepfather, Michael Ensign, was chairman and chief executive of Mandalay Resort Group until last year - as his own man. They point to his record as a fierce fiscal conservative, which at times has led to showdowns with both the Republican leadership and the Bush administration.
In 2004, Ensign was one of only four Republicans who voted against passing an $820 billion spending bill, written mainly by GOP leaders and the White House, that would have ended a bitterly fought budget debate. Before that, he voted with most Democrats and against almost all Republicans to keep a filibuster of the bill alive.
In 2003, Ensign was one of nine Senate Republicans to oppose Bush's landmark Medicare prescription drug plan, saying that its cost over 10 years would far exceed the $400 billion price tag cited by its authors.
"Ensign has done a good job in the last six years defining himself as an individual," said Steve Wark, former chairman of the state Republican Party and a prominent political consultant. "He's established his bona fides and protected himself from being labeled an administration lap dog."
Still, he has voted with party leadership 91 percent of the time from 2001-2005, according to Congressional Quarterly. And that loyalty has been rewarded. If re-elected, Ensign is lined up to become chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the high-profile political arm of the Senate GOP.
It confirms his status as a rising Republican star. But while the post would raise Ensign's national visibility, it carries big risks. Republicans will be defending 21 seats in 2008, compared to only 12 Democrats who will be up for re-election.
"It's a position you take when you're trying to build good will," said Cook's Duffy.
For some, the position has been a fast track into top-tier leadership. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, is expected to become the Senate's Republican leader next year with the retirement of current leader Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, who also once held the post.
Asked about his overwhelming support for Bush's agenda, Ensign said: "The president doesn't even take a position on the vast majority of bills up here. It's a made-up number."
He says he has shown his independence on a number of important issues, not the least of which is Yucca Mountain, where he has opposed the administration's plan to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada. He voted against Bush's prescription drug bill, fought to preserve the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act and opposed the initial $20 billion grant package to rebuild Iraq, instead unsuccessfully pushing for half of that package to be structured as a loan.
Ensign also opposed the Senate immigration bill earlier this year, which included a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, both provisions favored by Bush.
"The bottom line is that I try to do what's right back here," Ensign said.
In doing so, he consistently has shown his conservative stripes. In 2005, the National Journal, in its annual ranking, rated Ensign as more conservative than 82 percent of his Senate colleagues on key votes that year. He opposes embryonic stem cell research and authored legislation - which was passed by the Senate but stalled when House and Senate leaders could not reconcile different versions of the bill - to make it a federal crime to help a minor escape parental notification laws by crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.
He has pushed to split up the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - the rulings of which, he argues, are too liberal - and last week supported a Bush plan that permits harsh interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects.
Despite his obvious partisan differences with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Ensign has forged a nonaggression pact with Nevada's senior senator that has benefited both. While Reid publicly stands behind Carter, for example, some say he is hampered from lending his all-out support by his relationship with Ensign.
The arrangement, Ensign argues, has produced "a synergistic relationship that works well for our state."
Carter dismisses the talk, noting that Reid has contributed $10,000 to his campaign, given the campaign access to his staff and returned phone calls personally. "I don't have any problem with Harry's level of support," he said. "Harry and I will have the same kind of relationship when I'm elected."
After careers in law, agribusiness and commodities, Carter, 59, is running for political office for the first time in his life. He and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Nevada from Bermuda in 2002. She wanted to escape the humidity, Carter quips, and both of them wanted to be closer to their children.
He rebuffs the often-leveled charge that he's a carpetbagger, saying that his short state residency is not an issue. "If the guy I'm running against went to Washington and voted for the administration 96 percent of the time, he might as well be from Texas," Carter said.
Carter describes himself as just a businessman who became outraged at the direction of American foreign policy and deficit spending.
"I'm really pissed off at these guys because of what they're doing to the way I think my country ought to run," he said. "And it's across the spectrum. It's fiscal irresponsibility in the course of a war that's got my compatriots at risk."
The war in Iraq, he said, is the most visible example of the Bush administration's failed policies. And Congress, he said, has failed to hold the executive branch accountable.
"The Constitution created three branches of government," Carter said. "I believe in all three of them. My opponent only believes in one - and it ain't the one that he's in."
Carter said U.S. forces should lean on the Iraqi government by setting a timetable for troop redeployment. Under his plan, American troops would begin to withdraw from Iraq to another position in the region within three to four months as part of a "quick-response" team that could respond to local flare-ups.
He also differs from Ensign on immigration. He supports the Senate bill, which includes a path to citizenship for those living in the U.S. illegally, something Ensign adamantly opposes.
On energy issues, Carter would eliminate all government subsidies for the oil and gas industries, instead directing those dollars to research alternatives, including renewable sources such as sun, wind and geothermal energy.
In the end, Carter is hanging his candidacy on his opponent.
His message: I'm not John Ensign.
"Voters may not know me at all," Carter said. "What I need to be is out there, available to tell them that I'm not that way. I don't belong to anybody."
As of July, the Greenspun family, owners of the Sun, and Greenspun Corporation executives had contributed $7,500 to Ensign's campaign and $1,250 to Carter's campaign.
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