For Reid, No Shaking Tea Party Challenger

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
NYT

LAS VEGAS — Senator Harry Reid of Nevada first thought he could scrape his way to re-election by invoking his power as majority leader and reminding voters what that means for his home state. When that didn’t seem to work, he thought he could pull out this election with a scorched-earth campaign aimed at his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, a Tea Party candidate with a rich history of unorthodox statements and politically unpopular positions.

“Sharron Angle: ideas so extreme they are dangerous,” an announcer says in a ubiquitous new Reid television advertisement that focuses on Ms. Angle’s vote in the State Assembly against legislation requiring checks on volunteers working with schoolchildren. Former President Bill Clinton, appearing with Mr. Reid at a high school Tuesday night, said, “For the future of Nevada, for the jobs you so desperately need, it would be unbelievably negligent to say, ‘I know you’re right, but I’m just too mad, I’ve got to vote for this woman.’ ”

But as two new polls this week showed the candidates effectively tied yet again, it appears increasingly likely that Mr. Reid’s fortunes may ultimately turn on the weapon he has long boasted of: a sophisticated voter turnout operation that he has methodically built since President Obama ran in Nevada two years ago.

On the eve of the only debate of this contest, and as early voting begins on Saturday — a two-week period in which 50 percent of Nevadans are expected to cast ballots — Mr. Reid finds himself trapped in the race he has, in many ways, always feared. Ms. Angle, an opponent his campaign had viewed as the most flawed on the Republican bench, has not only held her own, but has become a national symbol of the Tea Party attempt to upend politics in Washington.

(More here.)