State of the state’s biggest races

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Sept. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Four weeks from Saturday, Nevadans can begin voting and the days already are a blur. So now seems a propitious time to slow down the speed and see where the state’s three major races are. Here’s your Friday Flash:

• U.S. Senate: Ms. Angle went to Washington, survived Foxman’s Bill O’Reilly, opened up to The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and surely raised a little money. Mr. Reid already was in D.C., referred to the newly minted Delaware Senate favorite as his new “pet” and reacted to a new illegal immigration ad by his opponent by putting up one of his own. This after five — count ’em — polls in one week showed the race even, despite some of the samples being demonstrably slanted in an Angular fashion.

The race still seems to lean slightly to Reid, but I am reminded of the 2006 governor’s race for some reason. There, a former Assembly backbencher and obviously inferior candidate used the issues of taxes and illegal immigration to defeat a more seasoned pol who suffered from her legislative record and too many voice-overs.

Is Sharron Angle the Jim Gibbons of 2010 and is Harry Reid the Dina Titus of this year? Angle has the patter down as Gibbons did and, more guided by God than Sig (a slight difference), is unlikely to arrive at McCormick & Schmick’s before early voting starts Oct. 16. And Reid, while he does not have the Titus drawl, what comes out of his mouth can often be even more fingernails-on-chalkboard for his campaign.

I am still astounded that Angle and Reid will only debate once, with the GOP nominee repeating the silly excuse to O’Reilly for not doing “Face to Face” on Oct. 21 that she wants an “informed electorate” even though 80 percent will not have voted by then. She also keeps telling national outlets that there is a debate on Sept. 23, even though that is patently false. And she can flip-flop within 10 days on erasing the federal Education Department and reiterate to Balz that she wants to phase out Social Security, yet I wonder if anyone much cares about that anymore.

Raise your hand if you are undecided on the race. I can’t see you.

• Governor: The polls this week showed Brian Sandoval not just beating Rory Reid, but obliterating him by margins that included 27 and 29 percentage points. Those samples were skewed to the GOP, but if they are right then the Democrats this cycle will suffer a historical drubbing in this state.

Reid the Younger clearly knows he is behind by a substantial margin — thus his launching this week an attack on Sandoval as some kind of special interest puppet bought and paid for by banks (don’t you hate ’em, too?). It was a desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures maneuver, but it was poorly executed and then it boomeranged with the disclosure that Rory’s law partner helped pass the bill that President Bill Clinton was told to use Wednesday to pound Sandoval (that story is on my blog on the Sun website).

That’s emblematic of the Reid the Younger campaign: A candidate fettered by the unshakable sins of his father performing admirably as a candidate but pursuing strategies (The Man With No Last Name and The Senator’s Son Complains About Special Interests) that appear to have been generated by James Carville’s evil (or is that good?) twin.

(For the record, Reid’s folks argued late Thursday that Rory was not at the firm when the banking deregulation bill passed. Weak. But the major point is a guy working for a law firm that represents all the state’s special interests and has taken hundreds of thousands in special-interest cash is not just a flawed messenger, but he is also one who should hold his tongue lest it be shown to be forked.)

• CD3: Rep. Dina Titus better hope money can buy love — or at least diminished disgust. Fighting against the coming GOP wave and a nationally touted GOP candidate in Joe Heck, Titus is throwing everything at the former state senator but hardly pulling away. She had a 4 percentage point lead in the latest Mason-Dixon poll, but that’s after $1 million in ads disingenuously portraying Heck as a doctor who wants to give women cervical cancer and who is a Sharron Angle mimic.

This is one race — Pollyanna alert — where debates might actually matter. Unlike Reid the Elder and Angle, who only have one, Titus and Heck are likely to have at least four and maybe more. These are two strong candidates and my guess is news is made at every one.

Considering how nothing is new in the U.S. Senate race, that’s something to look forward to before Nov. 2.