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Sunday, Nov. 7, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Shortly before the June 8 primary, I was chatting with a Harry Reid operative about my plans for a break after covering the intense Republican scrum, taking advantage of the usual summer doldrums.
“Don’t go anywhere,” the Reidite admonished me. “You are going to want to be around.”
I changed my plans. The Reid folks didn’t change theirs.
From the evening Sharron Angle won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, when the Reid campaign had two lacerating websites ready to go, to the ensuing few weeks, when ad after ad pummeled the Tea Party darling with her own words, the Senate majority leader’s political team exemplified the Boy Scout motto. They were prepared — for anything.
That assiduous preparation and exemplary execution paid off: Two days after the primary, a Rasmussen Reports poll, flawed though it may have been, showed Angle ahead, 50-39. A month later, Rasmussen had it 46-43, a dead heat.
Looking back on the most intense and in so many ways, most incredible, U.S. Senate race in Nevada history, I believe Reid won the race in those four weeks after the primary — or, perhaps, even before that.
Angle’s negatives were soaring — and what goes up doesn’t come down — turning the race into a test of who could mobilize supporters come November. And considering Reid had assembled the best integrated field operation the state has seen and Angle had, well, none, this game effectively was over by midsummer.
Angle’s nutty effusions made headlines and cable TV endless loops. But if her negatives weren’t quite high and the race’s momentum forever changed (even though the flawed public polling didn’t show it), by the time she suggested Second Amendment remedies or suggested Sharia law was on American soil, she might have survived.
But the plan worked. The Reid organization’s Terminator-like single-mindedness, relentlessness and discipline turned preparation into the most satisfying victory of Reid’s career, a resurrection unthinkable most of the year by the Beltway cognoscenti. Combined with an Angle campaign that was thoroughly unprepared for the post-primary onslaught — think of a Little League batter facing Roy Halladay — that by the time the GOP nominee brought in some D.C. pros, the damage was insurmountable.
Truth be told, once the Angle campaign righted itself, the effort was serviceable and, at times, quite good. There was not much more they could have done. They stayed focused on the economy, with some help from American Crossroads, played up (but ultimately overplayed) illegal immigration and fueled suspicions that Reid was out of touch and perhaps corrupt — an attack, I think, Team Reid feared would resonate if it had started earlier. Like Team Reid, Team Angle had a candidate problem — but a flawed candidate with a ground game will almost always defeat a flawed candidate without one.
The success of any endeavor — any sporting event, television program, final exam and, yes, political campaign — is preparation. That is the real story of how Reid won.
And that preparation did not begin in 2010, or even 2009. The seeds for this Reid victory were planted some time ago.
•••
Reid knew he would be targeted the moment he took over for Tom Daschle after the 2004 election. He couldn’t have foretold just how high his negatives would go or just how low the economy would sink. But the goal was to be prepared — for anything.
Step one: Turn Nevada from a slightly red state to a solidly blue one.
The change came as Reid, ever the back-room player and always looking ahead and for himself, maneuvered for Nevada to get an early presidential caucus for the ’08 cycle and the machine started cranking in ’07. Reid publicly challenged his chief political operative, Rebecca Lambe, imported from Missouri, to turn out 100,000 people for the caucuses. I scoffed, as did many others. About 117,000 Democrats showed up.
The rest of that cycle for Team Preparation was dedicated to eliminating possible opponents — they targeted state Sens. Joe Heck and Bob Beers, along with Rep. Jon Porter. All lost.
Even after the cyclical voter registration purge, Democrats maintained a 60,000-vote edge going into 2010, and the Reid folks believed they would need that to offset the GOP turnout advantage and the much-hyped enthusiasm gap.
In 2009, the team dedicated itself to one goal — raising enough money to scare off Rep. Dean Heller or Porter, considered their most formidable opponents. June 16, 2009, helped — the day Sen. John Ensign cast a pall over the Nevada GOP with his stunning revelation of an affair, which left him crippled and Heller frozen in place, perhaps seeing an easier path to a Senate seat in 2012 or if Ensign resigned. Porter received a cushy offer from a lobbying firm; Reid’s letter of recommendation will never be found.
On a parallel track, Team Reid was preparing all the research it might need for various opponents, and hiring staff to assist in research and field and creating a synergistic mix of longtime Nevada operatives and newcomers (as opposed to the toxic combination of local Angle sycophants and the political pros Angle was importuned to hire). Reid essentially assimilated the state Democratic Party, which became a formidable force (again, as opposed to the hollow shell known as the state GOP).
People you have never heard of who played key roles and had been working in the Democratic vineyards for a few cycles preparing for this were field director Brian DiMarzio, data/targeting specialist Justin Gilbert and communications veteran Jon Summers. The fundraising team included Jake Perry, with Reid since ’98, and Chris Anderson, the Nevada-based veteran of Jill Derby’s failed congressional hopes. Out-of-state folks who played invaluable roles included campaign manager Brandon Hall, who came from Alaska, and research maven Matt Fuhrmeyer, recruited from Al Franken’s team and aided by locals Paul Smith and Sean Kennedy. Old Reid political hands Shannon Raborn and Megan Jones were ready to go. Before she left for D.C., Culinary political boss Pilar Weiss helped coordinate the labor effort, and Jayson Sime, who ran the ’08 presidential caucus, was tapped to help in the field. And this year, Kelly Steele, a tireless and creative communications specialist with experience in Washington state and Illinois, came in and juiced up the press operation.
This isn’t even the entire team, but you get the picture. And it was all woven together by Lambe, the intense, talented operative who may be the most valuable political commodity in Nevada.
With the team assembled, the campaign began to prepare at the beginning of 2010 to face Sue Lowden, the deep-pocketed, telegenic former anchorwoman and state senator. She was the person, as one insider put it via e-mail, “we were least interested in facing so we set out to make sure that she either 1) came out of the primary bruised and battered or 2) didn’t come out of the primary at all so we would face Sharron Angle or Danny Tarkanian.”
With the help of Patriot Majority, a third-party group run by former Reid spokesman Craig Varoga that began pounding Lowden on TV on April 30, the Democratic effort to drive up the likely GOP nominee’s negatives did not abate. It is a myth that Reid, as many have opined, simply “picked” his opponent — Lowden turned out to be a paper candidate who made the gaffe of the year (chickens for health care) and Angle was indomitable and boosted by out-of-state funds from the Tea Party Express and the Club for Growth.
(One other preparation note: Democrats had lobbied for the primary to be moved back to June from August, thus giving Reid more time to pound whoever won and Republicans less time to rally behind one person. Thus, a dozen candidates caused the entropy that helped Angle emerge.)
As Republicans raised each other’s negatives, the Reid folks weren’t napping. They were hiring more staff, honing the turnout model that would prove the only accurate one this cycle (kudos to pollster Mark Mellman) and targeting Hispanics. “We knew that increasing the share of the electorate who were Hispanic was a key to winning so we invested heavily and ran an aggressive Hispanic program,” a Reid operative told me.
When Angle won on June 8, her campaign had a dilemma — to let Sharron be Sharron or to try to change/massage, deny previous positions. The hybrid solution did not help her and the Reid rapid response team was faster than a speeding news release. The same Democratic Party tracker who caught Lowden in her chickens gaffe followed Angle around and picked up new gems. Others listened to — and called in to — radio programs Angle was on.
In the end, Team Angle didn’t know what hit it. Despite the internal tension between the local yokels and the political pros, despite a campaign manager (Terry Campbell) who chose elective knee surgery during the middle of the biggest race in the country and despite having a thrown-together get-out-the-vote operation, they thought they were crushing Reid among independents. They thought they had the race won, as one insider informed me after I predicted Reid would win the Sunday before the balloting. They believed the public polls that drove the “Angle will win” narrative; they believed their own surveys.
They had no idea.
•••
I have seen the Reid internal polls and they never showed him behind once after they crushed Angle with that advertising blitz after the primary. Not once, despite what the horribly flawed public polls showed. Team Reid left no stone unturned, nothing to chance — UFC, Manny Pacquiao, Republicans for Reid, Dema Guinn, Jim Murren, on and on and on.
They had faith in their model, faith in their team, faith in their field.
But more than all of that, they were prepared — for anything.
Thanks for the big picture Jon.
Ralston - why don't you and Harry get a room and get on with it?
Fascinating insight
great article except for one other word: halladay. If you're going to use a pitcher, use one from the world champs; how about Lincecum!
Haha. Those tea-nuts must be enjoying those sour grapes and "lemon situation into lemonade" from Queen Sharrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrron of the Tea-nuts.
And Ralston came closer to nailing this election than any of the DC pundits who weren't really seeing what was happening here in Nevada.
So all the fun and joy of Election 2012 begins... ;-)
Hey Jon...Thanks for this and the amazing work you did during this last 6 months of trying to pry yourself thru the insidious hate-based noise machine that every candidate that even hints at being like Angle seem to have hanging around..
Where do these people come from is still a mystery to me. I grew up in the deep south and watched SOME of this level of hated, threats, as Angle would phrase it "Second Amendment" remedies that made a LOT of people just disappear. That's the scary part..even in NON-election season the hate mongers just keep the brewing pot gurgling.... But WHY??
Very interesting, but... why in the world did you declare Angle the winner of the debate when every sane person in Nevada and outside still thought Harry had her on the facts and why were you so tentative in your prediction? How would you characterize your role in this election? Commentator, advocate or journalist?
If Alan Stock says there was voter fraud because the tin-foil hat nutbars called into his show and said so, and Heidi Harris said the election was "rigged," why didn't the dastardly Democrats fix the Heck-Titus race?
Even your typical dittohead on Oxycontin can work a voting machine.
And why did Dick Morris say Reid was going to lose 50 gazillion times? was he suffering from "athletes mouth."
One word: Preparation H...
That is one way to say it there dippy. Another way of saying it would be:
Harry Reid was willing to sell out Nevada to get himself re-elected...
Jon: You used a lot of high-priced words in this essay, big words that the Baggers probably never heard. Thus, I imagine they won't understand what happened to their beloved Crazy Angle.
But the words that really sum it up, TeaBaggers, is, "They had no idea." You see, TeaBaggers, ignoramuses believe what they want to believe. Then, when the facts bite them in the A$$, they turn to dolts like LarryV for explanations.
Don't listen to LarryV, TeaBaggers! He's sure to lead you down the garden path as he digs into your pockets for new campaign funds for another nutjob loser.
Preparation H indeed, Larry V. You sell it by the truckload.
The bottom line is this-
Harry knocked it out of the park.
Jon braggs about the FEAR and SMEAR campaign Reid ran.
Not one word above about the despiscable polices that Obama has spent to last week running from.
Jon brags "From the evening Sharron Angle won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, when the Reid campaign had two lacerating websites ready to go, to the ensuing few weeks, when ad after ad pummeled the Tea Party darling."
Who were Reid's Fear and Smearmisters were field director Brian DiMarzio, data/targeting specialist Justin Gilbert and communications veteran Jon Summers.
Reid will NEVER gain our respect and Reid will not hold the power to benefit Nevada. Watch the rise of Yucca soon.
Of course, the $25 K-Mart gift cards didn't influence the Nevada voters in the least....right, Harry?
Preparation? That's not the word that I would have used.
Stupid? Insane? Retarded?
Any one of these, I believe, would be a better fit for what happened.
15% UNEMPLOYMENT. Record FORECLOSURES. Record BANKRUPTCIES. 42 MILLION Americans on FOOD STAMPS. Record HOMELESSNESS. SOUP LINES around the Block. Soviet Style takeover of Health Care.
HARRY REID.
Barack Hussein Obama + Harry Reid + Nancy Pelosi = Everything that I just listed.
And who did the STUPID, Insane, Retarded people of Nevada vote for?
Let the BOYCOTT begin.
See, what i'd I tell you? the people will boycott Las Vegas. You've got your homeboy, now start digging your grave. Vegas is doomed. Done! History and no matter what Dip$hit tells you, Yucca mountain will be revived.
Well Jon , you've worked for that pedestal you're hanging on to, who's next on the list Jon? Anyone for a paycheck, a family member?
You are the Badboy Jonny, making it on the nationwide news talk shows, saying one thing then babbling or writing something different here in town. Are you trying to become a member of the Reid Family of liars?
When a journalist lies and/or flip-flops his views to the public, he has lost the public trust as a newsman. Jon saw what Harry was doing and decided that lying was the better way.
When a reporter has lost his image from lying, he just threw away his career.
I hope you got a mean paycheck after the elections Jon, everytime you speak people are going to wonder if you are telling the truth or not. They might just use you during the election times, when all anybody wants is a journalist that lies.
Go ahead and celebrate and feel good while it lasts. Not that any of us thought Angle was any great shakes, but Harry? Here's a news flash Nevada... America was counting on you to think bigger this time. Since you gave us Reid to begin with, we wanted you to take him back after all the ridiculous shenanigans he has been a part of. Instead, you trust your unions and vote as they instruct. I hope for your sake they are willing and able to pay your mortgages.
I for one, have cancelled my trip to Vegas for the spring and will not return until you folks make it right. At least all the high-roller drug dealers will keep spending money in Vegas. Hopefully, their crumbs will keep you afloat. For a place completely reliant upon voters from other states spending money to keep you in groceries, you people sure "bit the hand". Enjoy.
Horatious,
Thanks for canceling your LV visit as your presence here only soils our reputation as Entertainment Capital of the World.
Sin City does not have nor ever will have a lesbian bondage strip joint like those you republicans often patronize. Our cabarets offer only American-style wholesome, healthy fun.
And please tell your friends, all sick bast*ds as well no doubt, to stay away. We're having a good time here and you GOPers are like wet blankets.
Thanks again.
Since Las Vegas has been built for everyone in mind, it seems very foolish that anyone feels they have the right to tell someone not to come to our city.
Those people who think they are better than anyone else are they ones with personality problems. It never works when anyone puts themselves on a pedestal hoping to be seen as more than anyone else, it always seems to backfire.
If I ever run into anyone who is abusing someone, I know who to send to the resue, LastThroes and Dipstick. They seem intelligent enough to handle any situation put in front of them.
Throe the bums out and lock them out of the city.
You two really got it going....
> See, what i'd I tell you?
if it came from you it certainly couldn't of been all that important.
>the people will boycott Las Vegas.
if they're nickle slot players like you we'll probably make it just fine.
but thanks for your faux concern.
@ Barrett --- so a couple of guys who don't think we need extra haters in town are out of line but then you want to banish them? LOL. Only in the head of a bagger, I suppose.
Don't stand down to the threats of haters --- we don't need a single extra one here. We've got plenty already.
Conservatives are known to be lousy tippers. Example: I went to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law, longtime staunch GOPers, in the Houston area. He left a $2 tip and said that had always been his limit (and these are people with substantial assets.) I added enough to make it the standard 15% of the bill.
Plus, Vegas has many unionized workers in the resorts which teabaggers hate, of course.
Two reasons actually - unions and illegal aliens.
Great article Jon.
The Reid campaign alone should show voters that Reid would be a better senator than Angle. His organization and execution was incredible. These are the same qualities that has propelled Reid to be the Senate Majority Leader.
For every hayseed like Horatious that won't come to Vegas there will be two well heeled visitors from California and other places that will. Also, who really thinks of going to Vegas and says to themselves, gee, I wonder who the senator is?? The only people who would do that is a penny or nickel slot buffet eater who thinks they are generous when they tip a cocktail waitress a quarter for a free drink!
No, the one word is union, public & private. I wonder how the private sector workers feel about that ? At least you know your union neighbor is being taken care of on your tax dollars.......
Ok, Dems, let's get a grip. Reid won because the Dem national party, in order to avoid the embarrassment of their majority leader going down in flames, pumped a huge portion of their election budget into his race and had a bus in every back alley of Henderson County to round up every vagabond and vagrant to get them to the polls, plus they had Reid's regulated friends in the casino industry sending every maid and groundkeeper to vote early and often. That's why his margin was so much higher than projected. Well, congrats, Reid won, but at what cost? By sucking up all that money and attention, how many Dems went down the toilet?
I wish more journalists were like Jon Ralston. He does great investigative reporting and unfortunately, some of our better known journalists, have sold their souls to the media bosses.
Reid had all the money he needed and used less than that..so much for your theory jdel!!!
Non-working union members are having as hard a time as anyone else, unemployment knows no labels.
Right, Notacon, every Dem in the world got swamped, except for Reid, who mysteriously got significantly more support than he ever polled at in the weeks leading up to the election. How can this be? We know it's not because Reid's an impressive political force -- he's an unattractive, uncharismatic, petulant little man with a mediocre mind. It's obvious -- the Dem Party went all out to save his little behind and ignored all their other candidates as they built a firewall around him. I have no doubt that if you study the voting rates, you'll see that Democrats voted at a far higher level in Nevada, and in particular Henderson County, than around the country. That's not because they love their little Harry -- it's because Democrats were shoving every poor person they could find roaming the streets of Las Vegas into buses, dropping them at the polls telling them to Pull the H. Reid lever and giving them a McDonald's coupon after they came back out again. Apparently they were too stupid to pull the Rory Reid lever too.
jdelvecchio..read the article. Reids internal polling ALWAYS had him ahead! Only push polling by the Review Journal had her with a solid lead.
By the way, Henderson isn't a county. What state are you writing from? Go back to Teabagging, your BS doesn't play well in these parts.
"Go back to Teabagging, your BS doesn't play well in these parts."
Some Liberals just cant get away from their vulgar name calling...
Whoops, my mistake. I meant Clark County. Confusing it with Henderson, outside LV.
And my point still stands -- Reid won because he had a huge machine there, paid for by gazillions of dollars from the Democratic Party, to turn out or collect an absentee ballot from every registered Democrat or other ignoramus they could find. Those dollars were spent there instead of elsewhere, so it represented a sacrifice. The Dems tossed lots of other candidates overboard to save Capitol Police Officer Harry.
They called themselves Teabaggers from the start..I am just sticking with their original moniker! Maybe I should go with their even earlier moniker..The John Birch Society!
I'm so happy to have stirred you all up... I'll try to respond in kind;
Dipstick... "back it up"? I made a subjective statement. Your handle is apparently very apropos.
Lastthroes... my presence may soil your otherwise pristine environment, but my money would have helped to redeem. You sound frightened... probably because you know I'm right. We'll see how the LV economy gets by. Wanna bet?
Notacon... Hayseed? Huh. Look at your statement and tell me you aren't a condescending DB. Can't do it, can ya? So, even if I was a hayseed, you aren't getting 2 "well heeled" Californians for every hayseed who passes. Why? Because the only thing they're willing to gamble with are carbon credits and the future of the children of CA. Plus, many a hayseed can translate to lots of mullah. Trust me, the LV economy isn't supported by Obama limousine liberals... think about it.
Haven't any of you learned a thing? Insult middle America and you will perish. Simple as that.
All hail Harry Reid!!!
Six more years!
Six more years!
Six more years!
The Tea Party is now ICED in Nevada!
horatius
Las Vegas will get 38.5 million visitors this year whether you and your Reid-hating, penny pinching friends come or not.
Trust me, the $9.99 buffet line will still be a mile long without you.
Last,
Well no worries then. Live it up! What's wrong with my penny-pinching friends? Like all libtards, you will only believe what you wish. I'm sure Nevada and Vegas will be just fine... Tee Hee. You might not miss my paltry personal leavings, but make no mistake, LV WILL see a decline. It's not like you have some economic buffer for down times - these ARE the down times. And you will soon realize things can get much, much worse. Don't believe me? I couldn't care less. After all, I don't live there - and never would.
One word: amnesty
Mark my words, in one year Las Vegas will be in a solid upswing. And no, I won't credit it to Reid (although I would like to), it will be because the economy will be showing solid growth and people will be more confident.
Politicians have only a limited influence in these economic cycles.
All hail Prince Harry Reid!!!
Six more years!
Six more years!
Six more years!
But in two years, Democrats will lose the Senate and Harry will get to spend his last four years as a regular Senator. And no, the remaining Democrat Senators will NOT elect Harry as the minority leader...
"But in two years, Democrats will lose the Senate"
Larrygbigs' predictions are as accurate as Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen polls.
Larrygbigs, 2010 is the GOP's high water mark. Anyone who pays attention knows that mid-terms always favor the party OUT of power and the election years for a president seeking a second term always favor the party IN power.
After you're finished reading The Pet Goat try doing some political science research.
In two years, Democrats will keep the Senate and
President Obama will be re-elected.
In two years, Americans will have more proof of
how inept republicans are.
Hmmn. Yes. Well the state has the highest unemployment, the most foreclosures and one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. And Reid won. Hooray. Yeah. There you go.
Boy, Are these radical Liberals commenters a mean spirited group today. They must be upset how the mid-term elections went.
The Republicans now have total control of the House of Representatives, and the Republican gains in the Senate has made Harry Reid ineffectual as the Majority Leader and just a mouthpiece for the Obama administration.
President Obama and Harry Reid still run this
country, larry.
They won't let greedy republicans ruin it.
HARRY REID IS THE MAN.
"One word: Preparation"
One word:
If you have something to say, you usually don't need more than a couple of sentences to say it - in the end the best way to talk is in symbols.
TonyCrago: "Yes MaryVegas the GOP has control of the House - so guess what. Now THEY own the economy."
HAHAHAHAHA! I suppose, therefore, that Mr. Tony subscribes to the view that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have "owned the economy" since 2006 and was constantly and consistently correcting his friends in a calm and learned manner when they blamed they downturn on GWB.
Truthfully, though, the Repubs in the house will put a stopper on all the stupid ideas that have been percolating on the left, which will give business interests some confidence they can invest without fear that Congress will pass something totally nutty. The economy will benefit, and Mr. Tony will claim in 2012 that it's all due to the brilliant management of Obamalamadingdong.
Of course, if Obamalamadingdong pushes his plan to use regulatory action (e.g., carbon restrictions through EPA rulemaking, card check through NLRB rulemaking, nutty Obamacare implementation through HHS and IRS action) he may be able to maintain the current state of chaos he has so successfully created since 2009 to disincline businesses from risking their capital and keeping the economy in the toilet.
Turkey trot or chicken dance? Chicken dance wins
everytime.
I never blamed the recession on the Dems in the house since 2006; I blame it on government promotion of loose lending standards over at least the last 15 years to promote lending to people who lacked the ability to repay. Hey, do me a favor and drop the partisanship for 5 minutes and do a Google search on "Bush" and "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" and check out how frequently and consistently the prior administration tried to rein those monstrosities and were rebuffed by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and friends. The mortgage market was being abused by the government to redistribute wealth. Guess that didn't work out too well.
Is TonyCrazo talking about a social disease?
"Now you're going to get a double dose of it in return."
The bottom line is this.......
Harry Reid kicked those crazy teabaggers square
in the can.
Nevada has no use for teabaggers.
Boy, why are some Liberals so upset at the Tea Party Movement?
Are Liberals upset because Tea Party Supporters dared to challenge their savior, Harry Reid in an election?
It is called exercising your rights and being able to voice one's opinion.
How dare Liberals try to deny others one of most precious freedoms given to us by our founding fathers...
One can gulp a lot of tea in six L-O-N-G years!
Harry!
HARRY!
Harry!
"Las Vegas will get 38.5 million visitors this year whether you and your Reid-hating, penny pinching friends come or not.
Trust me, the $9.99 buffet line will still be a mile long without you."
Yup. We are all going to see comedian, George Wallace for my birthday! He talks so much smack about Republicans in his show. CAN'T WAIT!
Larry, nobody is trying to deny the crazy
teabagger's right to voice their opinion.
We're just pointing out how crazy and stupid
they are, that's all.
That's my opinion.