Site search
sponsored by
News
ENLARGE
Dennis Myers
Reading the Nevada and national press these days, one could get the impression that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's defeat next year is a scientific certainty. But politics is an art, not a science.
These early assumptions are a reflection of how poor political coverage is these days — first, because reporters are so willing to predict; second, because they rely so heavily on opinion surveys more than a year before the election; and third, because so many reporters lack political savvy.
One of the oldest lessons in political journalism, for instance, involves the situation of an unpopular incumbent facing a field of contenders in the opposite party. The incumbent is the target, facing crossfire from many challengers. It's one Reid against many vaguely supposedly perfect Republicans.
In this case, Reid is taking fire from Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian, Mark Amodei, John Chachas, and other candidates while he is tied down in D.C. on health care changes.
But after the Republican primary, it will be one of these candidates against Reid. His crossfire ordeal will be over, and he'll be up against one candidate who will have his or her own baggage and will suddenly become far less than perfect.
Danny Tarkanian will face raising money from some of the same sources he tapped in two previous losing races and explaining why so many Republicans who know him well are supporting Reid.
John Chachas will have to explain why he abandoned Nevada until he wanted to run for the Senate.
Sue Lowden, for instance, will have a Nevada Legislature voting record Reid can exploit, and she'll have to explain why she switched sides on the Yucca Mountain issue and why, if Reid is so bad, she supported him and gave him money.
Mark Amodei has the same legislative voting record to make him vulnerable and will have to explain becoming a lobbyist while continuing to serve as a legislator (his answer will probably be that he was Nevada's chief mining lobbyist while the legislature was out of session, but that's when much of Nevada's lawmaking business gets done).
All this reminds me of the period leading up to the election of 1970, when U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada was facing re-election. Incumbents tend to be down in the polls in the fall of odd-numbered years, and Democrat Cannon was no exception. In autumn of 1969, there were plenty of people writing him off. Unfortunately for the Republicans, no major candidate was willing to step forward to challenge Cannon. (Does this sound familiar?)
So President Nixon and Vice President Agnew browbeat Washoe County District Attorney William Raggio into withdrawing from the governor's race to run against Cannon.
Cannon's campaign was like a well-running machine, following the strategy of reminding Nevadans what the senator had done for the state. His slogan was, “Seniority. Strength.” Direct mail was used extensively. By one report, the campaign was so carefully plotted that voters who lived in the flight paths of airports received different mailings than those who lived outside the flight paths.
Raggio had all the money and big names he wanted. Most of the cabinet, the president, vice president and first lady all came to Nevada to assure his victory. He ended up getting 41 percent of the vote. Cannon beat him by 24,000 votes in a race in which only 147,000 votes were cast.
When Reid was a young lieutenant governor, he read a book by political consultant Joe Napolitan that fascinated him. These days, I keep recalling one of the tales Napolitan told in that book. In 1970, John Burns of Hawaii was enormously unpopular as he prepared to run for a third term as governor. Napolitan came up with a three-stage campaign called “The plan, the plan and the man, the man.” In the first stage, television spots reminded Hawaiians of Burns' record of accomplishment but avoided showing Burns himself. The second stage continued this tactic but started bringing Burns himself onstage. By then, Burns was rising in opinion surveys. The last stage was all about Burns himself, who was easily reelected.
I'm not the kind of foolish reporter who predicts campaigns, but Reid has plenty of material to use in the kind of campaigns Cannon and Burns ran — every community in the state has received sewer grants, road funding, law enforcement support, or other goodies as a result of Reid's influence — and will receive plenty more if he returns to Congress. He may well be done in by larger economic factors such as mortgage defaults, unemployment, and recession, but those who count him out this early are making a mistake.
Dennis Myers is a veteran Nevada reporter.
These early assumptions are a reflection of how poor political coverage is these days — first, because reporters are so willing to predict; second, because they rely so heavily on opinion surveys more than a year before the election; and third, because so many reporters lack political savvy.
One of the oldest lessons in political journalism, for instance, involves the situation of an unpopular incumbent facing a field of contenders in the opposite party. The incumbent is the target, facing crossfire from many challengers. It's one Reid against many vaguely supposedly perfect Republicans.
In this case, Reid is taking fire from Sue Lowden, Danny Tarkanian, Mark Amodei, John Chachas, and other candidates while he is tied down in D.C. on health care changes.
But after the Republican primary, it will be one of these candidates against Reid. His crossfire ordeal will be over, and he'll be up against one candidate who will have his or her own baggage and will suddenly become far less than perfect.
Danny Tarkanian will face raising money from some of the same sources he tapped in two previous losing races and explaining why so many Republicans who know him well are supporting Reid.
John Chachas will have to explain why he abandoned Nevada until he wanted to run for the Senate.
Sue Lowden, for instance, will have a Nevada Legislature voting record Reid can exploit, and she'll have to explain why she switched sides on the Yucca Mountain issue and why, if Reid is so bad, she supported him and gave him money.
Mark Amodei has the same legislative voting record to make him vulnerable and will have to explain becoming a lobbyist while continuing to serve as a legislator (his answer will probably be that he was Nevada's chief mining lobbyist while the legislature was out of session, but that's when much of Nevada's lawmaking business gets done).
All this reminds me of the period leading up to the election of 1970, when U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada was facing re-election. Incumbents tend to be down in the polls in the fall of odd-numbered years, and Democrat Cannon was no exception. In autumn of 1969, there were plenty of people writing him off. Unfortunately for the Republicans, no major candidate was willing to step forward to challenge Cannon. (Does this sound familiar?)
So President Nixon and Vice President Agnew browbeat Washoe County District Attorney William Raggio into withdrawing from the governor's race to run against Cannon.
Cannon's campaign was like a well-running machine, following the strategy of reminding Nevadans what the senator had done for the state. His slogan was, “Seniority. Strength.” Direct mail was used extensively. By one report, the campaign was so carefully plotted that voters who lived in the flight paths of airports received different mailings than those who lived outside the flight paths.
Raggio had all the money and big names he wanted. Most of the cabinet, the president, vice president and first lady all came to Nevada to assure his victory. He ended up getting 41 percent of the vote. Cannon beat him by 24,000 votes in a race in which only 147,000 votes were cast.
When Reid was a young lieutenant governor, he read a book by political consultant Joe Napolitan that fascinated him. These days, I keep recalling one of the tales Napolitan told in that book. In 1970, John Burns of Hawaii was enormously unpopular as he prepared to run for a third term as governor. Napolitan came up with a three-stage campaign called “The plan, the plan and the man, the man.” In the first stage, television spots reminded Hawaiians of Burns' record of accomplishment but avoided showing Burns himself. The second stage continued this tactic but started bringing Burns himself onstage. By then, Burns was rising in opinion surveys. The last stage was all about Burns himself, who was easily reelected.
I'm not the kind of foolish reporter who predicts campaigns, but Reid has plenty of material to use in the kind of campaigns Cannon and Burns ran — every community in the state has received sewer grants, road funding, law enforcement support, or other goodies as a result of Reid's influence — and will receive plenty more if he returns to Congress. He may well be done in by larger economic factors such as mortgage defaults, unemployment, and recession, but those who count him out this early are making a mistake.
Dennis Myers is a veteran Nevada reporter.
