Harry Reid Fights Low Polls With Cash
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, trailing badly in the polls, is pouring money from his prodigious fundraising operation into the state Democratic party organization to bolster his re-election campaign.
Reid has tapped his campaign war chest for dozens of state and local Democratic candidates as well as party organizations representing African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, women, gays and college students. But the bulk of Reid’s largesse is going to the Nevada Democratic Party, which will play a critical role in his race, especially in getting out the vote this November.
Reid helped funnel nearly $660,000 to the state party in 2009 alone, according to Federal Election Commission records. These funds came from Reid’s reelection campaign, his leadership PAC — the Searchlight Leadership Fund — and a joint fundraising committee created by Reid’s campaign and the state party. President Barack Obama, who will be making another trip to Nevada later this month to stump for Reid, was the headliner at a multimillion dollar fundraiser last year that benefited Reid’s re-election campaign and the state party.
Sources close to the Reid campaign said the veteran lawmaker will pump hundreds of thousands of additional dollars into the state party’s coffers throughout the year, even as he looks to raise $25 million or more for his own race. He has already raised more than $15 million.
Reid’s Senate Democratic colleagues, including Majority Whip Dick Durbin, as well as a PAC founded by former Democratic aides, kicked in an additional $57,000 to the state party, most of which was donated in late December. Even former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Reid’s Democratic predecessor, gave $4,000 to the state committee last year.
Jon Summers, a Reid spokesman, said Reid “has a long history of supporting the state Democratic Party. He has a long history of supporting Nevada Democratic candidates.” He said that Reid, via his leadership PAC, gave $372,000 to Nevada state and local candidates — plus the state party and its affiliated organizations — in 2008. In 2006-07, Reid dished out more than $216,000 back home.
Yet this year, with the Reid money machine in high gear, the Nevada Democratic Party and its candidates stand to gain as well, at least on the fundraising side.
“[Reid] knows that he’s given more with each passing year, and that’s because he has the ability to raise more, which allows him to help more candidates and provide more resources for the party,” Summers added.
Despite his endangered status, Reid this week dismissed rumors that he may be looking to quit the race, declaring on a local Las Vegas political talk show: “I’m running.”
“I have, I think, the best campaign organization that’s ever been set up in the state of Nevada,” Reid said Monday on the show “Face to Face.” “I have key people that are running this campaign. I feel very comfortable where I am at this time.”
To help raise all the money he and his advisers think he needs, Reid is getting financial backing from corporate lobbyists and big shots on K Street, who are bundling together numerous smaller donations intended for Reid’s campaign coffers.
In the last quarter of 2009, Reid pulled in $110,000 “bundled” by individual lobbyists and organizations, a common practice employed by lawmakers from both parties. The Air Transport Association’s political action committee, which represents U.S. airlines, bundled $30,000 for Reid. Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s PAC, which operates rail services in the Midwest and West, pulled together $27,500.
Other Reid bundlers include Paul DiNino, a former Reid aide; Tony Podesta, brother of former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and a top Democratic lobbyist; and Linda Daschle, wife of Tom Daschle and an influential lobbyist in her own right.
Yet Reid is also burning through large sums from his campaign bank account, spending money at a rate never seen in a Nevada Senate race, according to state political experts.
After raising $2 million in the three-month period from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, Reid spent $2.1 million, including more than $1 million on TV ads, yet he still is trailing any potential GOP opponents in the latest public-opinion surveys. Reid reported nearly $8.7 million in the bank at the end of 2009.
According to his latest FEC reports, the bulk of Reid’s money was spent on campaign consultants and media buys, including more than $80,000 for polling work done by the Washington-based Mellman Group.
In addition to big-ticket TV ads, Reid is also engaged in advertising focused on specific demographic groups. For instance, Reid bought $1,680 worth of ads in the Las Vegas Israelite, a Jewish newspaper, and an additional $700 for ads in the Desert Saints magazine, a Mormon-centric publication. Reid even spent $20,000 on Google ads. It’s just the latest sign that the Reid campaign is leaving no stone unturned in its search for potential votes.
With so much money to spread around, Reid is handing out checks to nearly every Democratic group in the state. Just in December, the Searchlight Leadership Fund donated to Democratic Party groups in six Nevada counties, and the state party received a $75,000 donation.
Reid also gave a $1,000 donation to the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association, an Arizona-based group that holds rodeos in Nevada and other states. An additional $2,400 went to the Nevada Arts Advocates, a statewide organization promoting the arts. A food bank in Northern Nevada got $2,400, and Reid cut another $2,400 check to the Nevada Outreach Training Organization, an advocacy group that helps victims of abuse and the poor, located in the GOP stronghold of Pahrump, about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
Why Harry Reid Is No Tom Daschle
It’s no secret that Harry Reid is in trouble in Nevada. For months, the Senate Majority Leader’s approval ratings back home have been in the dumps. A poll conducted last week for the Las Vegas Review Journal found Reid with a paltry 38 percent approval rating, down more than 15 points since he won re-election back in 2004. But Reid’s falling popularity with Nevada voters isn’t the only thing that has Dems worried. The last two Mason Dixon polls in the state have found Reid losing against two potential GOP challengers: businessman Danny Tarkanian, who beat Reid 49 percent to 43 percent in a projected match-up; and Nevada GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden, who edged out Reid 49 percent to 39 percent. The upside for Reid: The GOP has struggled for months to find a candidate to run against the Senate Majority Leader, and of these two, only Lowden has officially declared, something she did only two weeks ago. The downside for Reid: He’s still losing even as Republicans have struggled to get their act together, so what does that say about his vulnerability?
For months now, Republicans in Washington have giddily eyed Reid’s numbers back in Nevada as a sign that they could take him down in the same way they brought down his old boss, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who lost his own re-election bid in 2004. Back then, the GOP and its allies put millions of dollars into issue ads and get out of the vote efforts aimed at Daschle’s defeat. No doubt, there are similarities. Like Daschle, Reid is one of the most high-profile Democrats in the country. But there are major differences--including the fact that Daschle, for most of his campaign, led in the polls. On the upside for Reid, Republicans haven’t found their John Thune in Nevada. When Thune ran against Daschle, he was already a well-known Republican member of Congress, someone with a proven fund-raising ability and wide voter base back home. But on the downside for Reid, he’s definitely no Daschle, someone who had extremely high approval ratings back home with both Democrats and Republicans. “That was what was so shocking about Daschle’s loss,” veteran-election watcher Charlie Cook tells Newsweek. “He was beloved back home… Reid is not.”
Is there a way for Reid to turn it around? On Thursday, a full 383 days before Election Day, the Senate Majority Leader unveiled his first ads of the 2010 campaign, including one that’s a straightforward bio ad about his humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nev., how he hitchhiked to school and put himself through college working as a janitor, to his time in the political spotlight, taking on the mob in Las Vegas. A second ad talks about Reid’s efforts to bring jobs to Nevada. It’s a strategy Reid’s camp has been planning for months—to remind people who Reid is and what he’s done for them. And over the next year, he’ll do it again and again—thanks in part to an already significant fund-raising advantage he has over his potential GOP challengers. According to fund-raising reports filed this week, Reid has raised more than $7 million this year for his re-election campaign and has almost $8 million in the bank—a pretty good head-start on what could be a more than $20 million Senate race. He’s also trying to take a higher profile on health care reform, after leaving most of the details to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, and playing up his ties to President Obama, who won the state with 55 percent of the vote in 2008.
But will that be enough to give Reid the boost he needs? At 13.2 percent, Nevada has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, and critics have accused Reid of being out of touch—a charge the Senate Majority Leader has strongly denied. “The people in Nevada know me very well,” Reid told reporters a few weeks ago. “They know what I’ve done over the years.” Recovery, he acknowledged, has been slow, but once it hits Nevada, “I think there’s going to be a general good feeling.” But privately, his colleagues aren’t so hopeful. Senate Democrats are “scared to death” about Reid’s prospects, a top party operative, who declined to be named to speak more frankly, tells Newsweek. “If the election were held today, he’d lose. Period.” Luckily for Reid, Election Day is still a year away—an eternity when it comes to politics.
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Sources: Politico, Newsweek, Youtube, Google Maps
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