Harry Reid set for campaign bus tour across Nevada

Associated Press

Sunday, April 4, 2010 | 12:26 a.m.

It's been six years since Harry Reid toured Nevada on a campaign bus, and 12 years since he has faced a tough re-election battle.

On Monday, the politically vulnerable Democratic majority leader of the Senate plans to hit the road from his hometown of Searchlight for a three-day bus tour of the state he has represented in the Senate since 1986.

"This bus tour is a great opportunity for me to visit and hear from people in communities I know and love across Nevada," the 70-year-old Reid said in a statement. "I'm looking forward to discussing how we can put Nevadans back to work, ensure Nevada leads the nation in clean energy jobs, keep families in their homes, and make health insurance more affordable."

Reid's campaign is calling it his "Driving Nevada Forward" tour. When the wheels of his motorcoach begin rolling, he'll have much at stake.

A statewide poll conducted in February for the Las Vegas-Review-Journal showed Reid trailing two possible Republican challengers by more than 10 percentage points each.

But primaries are two months away, with the general election in seven months. Reid has time and plenty of campaign cash. But he needs to build support among a Nevada electorate that swung for President Obama in 2008 before being rocked by double-digit unemployment and record foreclosures and bankruptcies.

In recent months, Reid, once an amateur boxer, has taken a few hits for his role in marshaling support for Obama's agenda in Congress. One political analyst thinks Reid recognizes he has to rebuild his base after spending so much time and energy in Washington.

"Reid has said that one-third of Nevadans really don't know him since the last time he ran for office," said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "For being the majority leader of the Senate, many Nevadans really don't know him that well."

Herzik recalled that Reid handily defeated Republican Richard Ziser by a two-to-one margin in 2004 and that Reid's last close contest was in 1998, when he squeezed out a 428-vote re-election victory over now embattled Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign.

But this year is different. Reid faces four little-known Democrats in the June 8 primary.

He is expected to then square off against one of a record 12 GOP challengers. He could face dark horse GOP contenders in John Chachas, a former Wall Street investment banker who grew up in Ely and has pumped $1.5 million of his own money into his campaign, and former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who has a loyal conservative base.

Two GOP front-runners have already traveled the lonely roads of far-flung Nevada: Sue Lowden, a businesswoman, former state senator and state GOP party chairwoman, and Danny Tarkanian, a lawyer and son of legendary former University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.

"Lowden has done it. Tarkanian made a similar trip," Herzik said. "And multiple candidates took busloads, literally busloads, to Searchlight."

Herzik referred to Reid's bus tour starting point _ a wind-whipped former mining town that became a March 27 rallying point for at least 9,000 tea party and conservative activists and former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. They dubbed it "the Showdown in Searchlight," and chanted for Reid's defeat in November.

Reid wasn't home. He spent part of the day 60 miles away, at a new shooting range in Las Vegas with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

On Monday, Reid plans to serve breakfast to friends and neighbors before hitting the road.

"The tour will take him to communities throughout Nevada to highlight his continuing efforts to create good-paying jobs and his ability to deliver like no one else can for Nevadans in these tough economic times," his campaign said in a statement.

Stops Monday are set to include a solar power plant in Boulder City, a meet-and-greet and another stop at a renewable energy facility more than 90 miles away in Pahrump, and a campaign barbecue and rally at a park near the historically black West Las Vegas neighborhood.

He'll tout "green" energy and jobs _ two campaign points he's hammered on in recent weeks while hosting key party officials at staged campaign events around the state. Obama in February headlined a private, million-dollar fundraiser in Las Vegas for Reid and the Democratic National Committee.

Tuesday's tour is set to start in Minden and head to Carson City, Fallon, Fernley and Reno in Washoe County, Nevada's second-largest population center.

On Wednesday, Reid boards the bus for an almost 300 mile trip from Reno to Elko, with stops in the Interstate 80 towns of Lovelock, Winnemucca and Blue Mountain on the way.

Nevada Republican party spokeswoman Ciara Turns called it ironic that Reid was embarking on a bus tour so similar to tea party events.

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery," Turns said Friday. "Conservative voters have come out en masse to have similar bus tours. He's obviously trying to blunt the effect the Searchlight rally had _ the message about Harry Reid and his lack of service to the State of Nevada."

"He is in no way going to derail the movement to throw him out of office," Turns vowed.

Herzik observed that bus travel was emerging as a campaign motif, with "a populist kind of 'connect-with-the-people' appeal."

"It may be more symbolic than substantive," Herzik said, "but Reid will get free media, he'll make campaign stops, and then he'll get to spending his money on a media campaign."