Berkley on easy street

Michael J. Mishak

Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

Like the Las Vegas-area district she represents, Shelley Berkley is electric.

On Monday, at a candidates' fair in Bally's grand ballroom, Berkley, a Democratic congresswoman seeking a fifth term in the House, attracted attention like a neon sign.

Dressed in a bright red suit and wearing a pair of stars-and-stripes high heels, complete with matching handbag, Berkley demonstrated the fine art of schmooze, working a perpetual circle of supporters for the better part of an hour.

It was an easy task for the one-time cocktail waitress and keno runner turned lawyer.

She shook hands, exchanged hugs, posed for photographs and traded words on everything from the Nevada Test Site to dog purses - that is to say, purses shaped like dogs.

"All politics is personal," Berkley said, taking a break. "I always run my races as if they were the most difficult of my career - no matter who's on the other side."

Still, it doesn't take a political scientist to see that Berkley is coasting to re-election on the power of incumbency, which brings with it big money and big name recognition, two things that her Republican challenger, Kenneth Wegner, clearly doesn't have.

In fact, despite her protests to the contrary, this may be the easiest campaign of Berkley's career.

First, there's her financial advantage.

As of July 26, the end of the last federal campaign finance reporting period, she had more than $1.3 million in cash on hand, much of it coming from Nevada's gaming industry and labor unions.

Wegner, on the other hand, has refused contributions from political action committees and special-interest groups, instead bankrolling the bulk of his campaign with his own money, as a matter of principle. He said he has taken out a second mortgage on his home and expects to spend an additional $20,000 in personal savings, plus whatever he gets from selling his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Then, there's the demographics.

Nevada's 1st Congressional District is the very definition of safe. Democrats hold a 48 percent to 33 percent registration edge - 38,000 more possible voters - over Republicans. Those numbers help explain why both the national and state Republican parties have all but abandoned Wegner's candidacy.

Narrowly elected to the House in 1998, when Republican John Ensign gave up the seat to run for the Senate, Berkley has since fended off two strong challenges, the first of which came in 2000 from then-state Sen. Jon Porter. She won by 8 percentage points that year, and her margin of victory has grown in the last two election cycles. In 2004, she cruised to a fourth term with 66 percent of the vote.

"I'm not anticipating a certain percentage this year," she said in an interview. "I'm going to wake up Nov. 8 knowing I worked as hard as I can."

In the nearly four weeks before Election Day, Berkley's political work - limited though it is, with fewer than a dozen events on her public schedule during that period - will involve campaigning on her legislative record, often as it relates to a number of incendiary issues this election cycle.

Immigration has taken center stage in this campaign, if for no reason other than Wegner has put it there, taking to the airwaves with radio ads that attack Berkley for supporting "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.

Berkley voted against last year's tough House bill to tighten the borders and to make felons of anyone living in this country illegally or any U.S. citizen who helps an illegal immigrant here. She faulted Republicans, including her Nevada colleagues, Republican Reps. Jim Gibbons and Porter (who rebounded from his 2000 loss to Berkley to join her in Congress in 2003 from Nevada's new 3rd Congressional District), charging that their support for the legislation showed a lack of leadership.

Berkley said that while she favors a comprehensive approach to immigration - one that includes both a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for those living here illegally - the GOP leadership in the House has stymied discussion, advancing only piecemeal legislation.

Nevertheless, she voted for a House bill last month that authorizes the building of a 700-mile fence along the border. "There's no sovereign nation on the planet that could survive if they didn't have control of their border," she said afterward.

Berkley also has pushed to enforce existing immigration laws, supported hiring more Border Patrol agents and fought - without success - to toughen the country's visa program.

"I don't think you can be tougher than I have been," Berkley said. "If (Wegner's) got a problem with the proposal in Congress he ought to talk to his own party and the president (who) proposed it."

As in other campaigns across the country, the war in Iraq also is a central issue in the 1st District race.

A hawk on defense, Berkley has called for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and says Congress was misled by the Bush administration when it asked for authority to use military force against Iraq in 2002.

The war in Iraq, she said, has been a "deadly diversion" from the global war on terrorism, siphoning critical resources from Afghanistan.

Breaking with prominent Democrats, Berkley, who sits on the House International Relations Committee, opposes the idea of setting a timetable for troop withdrawal. The best way to correct the nation's course in Iraq, she argues, would be for voters to elect Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate next month.

"The Bush administration has got to level with the American people," she said. "We deserve an honest assessment of where things stand on the ground. How many lives will it take to be victorious? And what is the definition of victorious?"

Until recently, Democrats have failed in their responsibility to hold the administration accountable, Berkley said. "I think the Democratic Party has found its voice," she said. "And the timing couldn't be better."

If Democrats retake Congress, Berkley said lawmakers would aggressively pursue an agenda that has been blocked by the Republican leadership.

Among their priorities: increasing the minimum wage, fully implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, giving the government authority to negotiate prices for the new Medicare prescription drug program and repealing last year's energy bill.

For Berkley, the energy legislation, which awarded billions in oil and gas subsidies as those industries recorded record profits, is a sticking point.

"With an oil man sitting in the White House and a Republican Congress that doesn't know how to say anything but 'Yes, sir,' we're never going to have energy independence in this country," she said.

She introduced her own energy bill in August that would eliminate tax credits to the nuclear and fossil-fuel industries, instead directing those resources to the research and development of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind and geothermal power. The legislation also would raise average fuel economy standards, from the current 27 miles to the gallon to 33 mpg by 2015.

Then there's Nevada's perennial issue - Yucca Mountain.

Berkley has been perhaps the loudest opponent of the proposed nuclear waste repository about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Unable to convince her House colleagues to vote against funding for the project, she pledged to put her own life on the line to block the project earlier this year.

"I will lie in front of any train that attempts to send nuclear waste to Nevada," Berkley said from the House floor. "Nuclear waste will come to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, over my dead body, I promise you that."

Important as those issues are, however, at the end of the day, Berkley said, political success depends on constituent service.

"It takes more than money," Berkley said. "Legislation is important. And votes can be forgiven. But not returning that phone call can lose you an election."

As of July, the Greenspun family, owners of the Sun, and Greenspun Corporation executives had contributed $18,100 to Berkley's campaign.