Sharron Angle answers questions for nearly an hour in first press conference in race for Congress

By Anjeanette Damon

Published Monday, March 21, 2011 | 2:20 p.m.

Updated Monday, March 21, 2011 | 6:19 p.m.

In a wide-ranging 54-minute press conference, Republican Sharron Angle made a concerted effort today to put to rest her loss to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, repair her strained relationship with the press and convince Nevadans she can win an election.

The recurring theme of her press conference: I beat Reid by 19,677 votes in the 2nd Congressional District.

“I have the best chance of winning in this district no matter what the composition of the district is,” she said.

Angle acknowledged she and her campaign team were ill-equipped to deal with the nationalized race she launched herself into against Reid, likening it to “drinking from a fire hose.”

During the 2010 election, Angle developed a reputation of running away from the press and refusing to take interviews. She wanted to dispel that reputation immediately heading into next year’s race, by putting herself before reporters for nearly an hour.

But she clearly remained rankled by the combative relationship from 2010, and asked that reporters not to “charge barriers to make it appear something is going on that really isn’t.”

She also urged conservative voters to take a bigger picture view of her loss Reid, who she described as “the most powerful man” in Congress who has only lost one election in 70 years. While Angle described Reid as only having lost once in "70 years," he's actually lost twice -- once for the U.S. Senate and once for Las Vegas mayor. (Angle's press person clarified later that she was describing the position of majority leader, not Reid. Only one incumbent majority leader has been defeated in 70 years, Tom Daschle in 2004.)

Angle didn’t leave all of 2010 behind, resurrecting her famous line from her single debate with Reid.

“Congress needs to man up and stop using the (Social Security) trust fund as their personal piggy bank,” she said, dodging the direct question of whether she wanted to privatize, personalize or simply do away with the program.

She demonstrated a similar parry with the press on Yucca Mountain, refusing multiple times to say whether she believes radioactive waste should be stored outside of Las Vegas in the wake of the tsunami in Japan.

“We need to find a safe place to put that and it’s obviously not on our sea coasts,” she said, criticizing Reid for quashing the project without a full discussion of what to do with the waste.

Her biggest lesson from 2010?

“We needed a commercial up the day after the primary,” she said.