State GOP looks to Ensign for renewal

By Lisa Mascaro

Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Since the Nevada Republican Party endured enormous losses on Election Day, Republican Sen. John Ensign seems to have been channeling his Senate colleague, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.

Sen. John Ensign

Reid rebuilt the Nevada Democratic Party from the ground up after Democrats lost statewide races in 2004 and the party lost its majority in the U.S. Senate.

His labors paid off swiftly. Democrats swept to power in Congress in 2006 and captured statewide races in Nevada.

Two weeks ago, Nevada helped elect President-elect Barack Obama by a double-digit margin unseen by a Democrat in the state since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. Democrats swept into other offices in Nevada and now control both houses of the state Legislature.

The Nevada Republican Party was left a shambles, searching for the leadership that Ensign now promises to provide.

The senator is pledging to work to return Nevada to Republican-friendly terrain. He will assume the role of kingmaker in a state Republican Party that has gone for years without one.

“I remember two cycles ago, when the Democrats got pounded pretty hard, there was a picture of Sen. Reid on the cover of the paper,” Ensign said Tuesday. “He looked pretty depressed at the time. It was reflective of Democrats across the country ... Our party is in the same shape they were in.”

“We have a lot of work to do in my state,” Ensign added Wednesday. “I’m going to be spending a lot of effort over the next several years turning that around.”

Ensign is an obvious if not fully tested figure to refocus a state party that by many accounts is without vision, money or leadership. The Republican governor is highly unpopular and three-term Republican Rep. Jon Porter lost his election.

The handful of other Republican elected officials popular statewide include Rep. Dean Heller, who just won a second term, and in some circles, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki.

One political consultant said Republicans in Nevada would do back flips at the prospect of Ensign taking charge of the party. “He has ability to mobilize and energize in this state like nobody else does,” Republican consultant Ryan Erwin said.

Ensign regularly polls as the state’s most popular elected official, and his fiscally conservative credentials could rally Republican base voters. Ensign is young at 50, and charismatic.

“He becomes the go-to guy in the entire rebuilding process,” Erwin said. “He can be that glue, that leader that pulls all this together.”

Ensign has not played as large a role in Nevada as he did when first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. For the past two years, he has been chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee, which has him traveling across the country in search of candidates and donors. His own reelection in 2006 similarly pulled his attention away from party efforts.

But some think Ensign’s new leadership position in Washington — he was elected this week as chairman of his party’s policy committee in the Senate — will give him a platform to create a national Republican message that could be put to work back home.

The party’s loss this year “was much greater than our lack of organization or a deficit in fundraising, it was the fact that our message is not a strong enough message to win,” said Nevada Republican political consultant Pete Ernaut.

“I could go hire an army of little old ladies and buy a truck full of card tables and plop them in front of every Home Depot in the state and we would register one Republican for every three Democrats.”

If Ensign succeeds, he could create something of a mess in another arena. Reid and Ensign maintain a gentlemen’s agreement not to publicly or privately criticize the other so they can work across the aisle in Washington to benefit Nevada. But if Ensign succeeds as Reid has in invigorating his Nevada party, each would be unmistakably working to take the other down.

Over the past two years, their friendly relationship has withstood its greatest test as Ensign led the national election committee trying to wipe out Reid’s majority in the Senate. (Reid’s party added to its majority.)

Ensign’s efforts come none too soon as Republicans nationally are laying the groundwork to challenge Reid when he stands for reelection in 2010. Ensign said Reid is “certainly vulnerable,” and he imagines several Republicans will want to consider a challenge.

Two years is a short time to reverse political fortunes. Then again, as Nevada Democrats showed, it can be ample time.