Bill McGurn points out in his Wall Street Journal column today that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, having called those who are protesting Democratic health care bills as “evil mongers,” is not going to conduct in-person town meetings in Nevada during the August recess. Instead he’ll hold a tele-town hall next week. Reid’s transparent excuse is that he can reach more constituents that way. This is nonsense. Some 72% of Nevada’s population live in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County and another 20% in the Reno area (Washoe and Douglas Counties and Carson City). Plenty of meeting sites could be found in Las Vegas and Reno which would be within an hour’s drive for 92% of Nevadans.
Reid’s poll numbers in Nevada have been pretty terrible, even though Barack Obama carried this state which had been exceedingly marginal in four straight presidential elections by the handsome margin of 55%-43%. An additional problem for Reid is that the state’s population has risen 20% from this point in the last cycle in which Reid was up for reelection. For the moment, Reid does not seem to have a serious opponent in the 2010 race; Dean Heller, the state’s one Republican congressman, has announced he’s not running and Jim Gibbons, the Republican governor, has one of the nation’s lowest job ratings. Other well-known Republicans are shying away from the race. Nevada’s Republican Senator John Ensign is presumably hors de combat after revealing his affair with a leading aide’s wife—though since Ensign nearly defeated Reid in 1998, the two have had a kind of mutual nonaggression pact, with both receiving major support from Las Vegas gaming interests. But this doesn’t exhaust the possibilities if 2010 turns out to be the kind of year where an unknown could come along and take Reid out.
