Heller hears it from every side and now in ads, too

Tuesday, April 17, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Nevada's freshman Republican Rep. Dean Heller has not been shy in his support for President Bush's strategy in Iraq.

Heller voted for Bush's troop surge and stepped up when the president called Republicans to the White House for a show of support. He called the Democratic House speaker "Gen. Pelosi," a favorite Republican derision for Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Now, war opponents are not being shy about targeting him.

Heller returns to Washington this week after hearing deep opposition to the war from constituents in Nevada during spring recess. He said he heard similar sentiments in private conversations, in grocery stores and in homes from "some of my friends, neighbors, colleagues."

Heller came away believing that two of every three Nevadans oppose the war - on par with national polls.

Today a national progressive group, Americans United for Change, will begin running television ads in Heller's Reno district , targeting six lawmakers whose war votes it hopes to change. Congress is preparing to vote on final passage of the Democratic timetable for troop withdrawal, which Bush has promised to veto. Heller voted against the plan last month.

"I think this is a process you're constantly reassessing," Heller told the Sun. "I probably spend the majority of my time thinking about Iraq."

Heller has struggled during his three months in office to become an Iraq expert. He keeps a copy of the Iraq Study Group report in his briefcase.

During the House's spring recess, he e-mailed colleagues who were visiting Iraq, pushing them for answer on the question on Americans' minds: Do you feel like we're making progress?

Heller supports the surge because the study group, a bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, said a temporary escalation of troops could help.

But Heller said "at the end of the summer - six to nine months - I'll have to reassess my position."

Despite a broad Democratic victory in the 2006 congressional races, Heller won election to the open congressional seat with 50 percent of the vote . Political observers believe he will have an easier chance at reelection in 2008 as an incumbent with cash .

That has not dissuaded Americans United from targeting Heller. The advertisement shows Heller standing beside Bush and details the war's casualties. "Tell Dean Heller after four years, it's time to end the war," the announcer says.

The organization's spokesman Jeremy Funk said, "These particular folks, we felt holding them accountable in public, they could be convinced to change their own course and do the right thing." Even in Nevada's relatively conservative 2nd Congressional District, Heller "made the wrong decision to support the president and the war in Iraq." Americans United hopes that as a freshman, Heller is not too beholden to his party's leadership to change his vote.

The Americans United campaign has encouraged the early launch of a Web site by a blogger in Germany, Sven Stromann. A former exchange student in Nevada, Stromann hopes to contribute to Heller's defeat in 2008 through the site: helluvaheller.blogspot.com.

But Republican political strategist Ryan Erwin, a former state party official, believes the ad attack has less to do with defeating Heller than whipping up Democratic votes in Reno for the 2008 presidential election. Nevada is a swing state, and a few votes can be decisive.

Erwin noted that Heller is in a relatively safe district where he can, as a freshman, massage his views on the war in either direction and still find support.

"As long as he's explaining to his constituents, he can support what he wants to support," Erwin said.

Heller dismissed the attack ads as an "East Coast liberal group trying to change opinions of Nevadans," saying they would not alter his views on the war.

But his constituents might have more influence, especially after the mixed reviews he got at home.

"Every time you vote on this Iraq war, you're going to reassess the situation," he said. "This is not a black-white answer. How do you measure success in a war against terrorism?"