On Tuesday, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., lost his job as Senate majority leader. Two years from now, he could be out of a job as Senator altogether.
Republicans look likely to gain nine Senate seats in 2014, in an election year in which many of them ran explicitly on the message of firing Reid as majority leader.
The early signs are that minority Democrats will keep him as their leader in the Senate, and Reid has given every indication that he plans to run for reelection in 2016.
But should he seek a sixth term, he’d be doing so as an unpopular incumbent in a state that went deep red on Tuesday.
As the Las Vegas Sun put it, “The scale and thoroughness of the Republican victories across Nevada have rarely, if ever, been seen before.”
Republicans swept all six statewide offices — governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, controller and attorney general. They gained control of the state senate and the assembly. According to Nevada political reporter Ray Hagar, this will be the first time since 1929 that Nevada has had a GOP governor as well as control of both chambers of the legislature.
At the same time, Republicans won three of the state’s four House seats — including a stunning upset by Cresent Hardy to unseat Democratic incumbent Rep. Steven Horsford.
The Republican gains in the state not only mean a major power shift in the state, they also mean there will be more potential credible challengers for the party to put against Reid.
Reid only survived reelection in 2010 because of a terrible slate of Republican candidates, and even then, he barely captured 50 percent of the vote against Sharron Angle.
True, the presidential year electorate in 2016 will likely be more favorable to Democrats. But it’s difficult to see how he would compete against Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who just got reelected with 70 percent of the vote, should Sandoval choose to run. Barring that, any credible challenger should put the seat in play.
