Nevada voters don't want Harry Reid, re-elect him
anyway
By:
Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
WashingtonExaminer.com
LAS VEGAS
— At polling places across Nevada Tuesday, researchers conducting
exit polls asked voters one fundamental question
about Harry Reid: Do you approve or disapprove of
the way he has handled his job as senator? The
results were terrible for the Senate Majority
Leader. Fifty-five percent of voters disapproved of
the job he has done, while 44 percent approved. Such
numbers might seem a sure indicator of defeat, and
yet by Tuesday night, Reid was leading his
supporters in a victory celebration.
The exit pollsters also asked whether Reid, running for a fifth
term in the Senate, has been in Washington too long.
Fifty-five percent of voters said yes, while 41
percent said no. And still Reid won.
It's long been common knowledge here that many, many Nevadans don't
like their senior senator. What Tuesday's exit polls
showed was that their feelings go well beyond simple
dislike. And yet, if the exit polls are correct, a
significant number of people voted to re-elect a man
they think isn't doing a good job and who has stayed
too long in the Senate. In the end, Reid won 50.2
percent of the vote to Republican challenger Sharron
Angle's 44.6 percent.
It would be hard to find a more telling measure of Angle's
deficiencies as a candidate or the devastating
effectiveness of Reid's scorched-earth negative
campaign against her. Funded by millions of dollars
from public-sector unions, Reid relentlessly
attacked Angle from the moment she won the GOP
nomination. Many of the earliest attacks went
unanswered, forming impressions of Angle so negative
that they outweighed the voters' negative opinion of
Reid.
And then there was Reid's organizational strength. Both Reid and
Angle held their election-night parties in Las Vegas
casinos, Reid in the new Aria complex and Angle at
the Venetian. That's nothing out of the ordinary in
Nevada, but the difference between them was that
Reid was entirely at home, with the enormous
financial power and organizing muscle of the
gambling industry and its union allies in his
corner, while Angle was relying on votes from people
who live far from Las Vegas. Republicans across the
country who were hoping for a miracle in this race
discovered that raw power wins the day.
And bending the rules, too. On election day there were reports that
casino giant Harrah's had worked with the Reid
campaign and the unions, particularly the Culinary
Workers Union, to herd virtually all unionized
employees to early voting stations to vote for Reid.
According to a report in National Review Online, one
Reid staffer told Harrah's officials that he would
do anything -- for emphasis, he wrote it ANYTHING --
to get those workers to the polls.
By mid-day Tuesday, the Nevada Republican Party had filed a
complaint with the Secretary of State's office.
"Employees' votes were being tracked and supervisors
were instructed by top management to personally
confront employees to find out why they had not
voted," the complaint said. "Further, the evidence
shows that Harrah's management has continually
communicated to employees their concern with
electing Harry Reid and
not
just to ensure that the employees voted for the
candidates of their choice." Such conduct, the
complaint argued, violates Nevada law.
Democrats denied any such violations. And the fact is, Reid won by
about 40,000 votes, a margin difficult to explain by
charges of fraud. Also, squabbling over alleged
irregularities tended to obscure the enormous
advantage that open union support gave Reid.
Nationally, the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees spent $91 million trying to
elect Democrats. A good chunk of that went to Reid,
mostly for get-out-the-vote operations.
Even though they are not a huge part of the electorate, unions gave
Reid an important edge. Exit pollsters found that 18
percent of voters had a union member in their
household, while 82 percent didn't. The voters who
didn't have a union member in the household split
right down the middle between Reid and Angle, 48
percent to 48 percent. But among those who did have
a union member in their household, Reid won 67
percent to 29 percent.
Every single aspect of the Reid campaign was organized to the max.
"For people willing to volunteer, there's a free
lunch afterward in the cafeteria," Reid staffers
told people waiting in line to see First Lady
Michelle Obama at a Reid rally on Monday. Everyone
at the rally was given a sheet of paper with the
phone numbers of people, presumably Democrats, to
call and urge to vote. Speakers at the rally said
they wanted to create the "biggest phone bank in the
country," which sounded like an exaggeration but did
indicate how much emphasis Reid put on getting in
touch with voters.
When it comes to Angle's troubled campaign, one last statistic
tells the story. The exit pollsters asked voters
whether they had a favorable opinion of the
Democratic and Republican parties. Among those who
said they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic
party, Reid won 93 percent of the vote. Of those who
said they had a favorable opinion of the Republican
party, Angle won 82 percent. Reid did a better job
winning Democrats than Angle did winning
Republicans.
So in the end, there was Reid onstage at the Aria, smiling as his
supporters chanted HAR-EEE! HAR-EEE! HAR-EEE! Never
terribly popular, for the last two years, he had
defied the voters of his state as he pushed Barack
Obama's unpopular agenda through the Senate. And as
he did so, unemployment in Nevada climbed to 14.4
percent, the highest in the nation. It was no
wonder, then, that a majority of the Nevadans who
went to the polls Tuesday disapproved of the way
Reid has done his job. The wonder was that he got
away with it.