Campaign Diaries

As had been anticipated ever since she resigned from her position as the chairwoman of Nevada’s Republican Party last month, Sue Lowden announced today that she would challenge Harry Reid in 2010. She joins an increasingly crowded GOP field: real estate developer Dennis Tarkanian and state Senator Mark Amodei are already in the race while former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle has formed an exploratory committee. All have a path to the GOP nomination and, given Harry Reid’s numbers, to the U.S. Senate.

Let’s first and foremost state the obvious: Whenever a challenger has led a veteran incumbent in four different polls before even announcing her candidacy, she has to be treated as a major candidate and there can be no doubt that her entry is an important development.

Yet, we can wonder why the GOP looks so excited by this news in that there is little in Lowden’s resume that suggests she’s better suited to win the general election than are the other Republicans. She used to serve as a state Senator, a position Amodei now holds. The reason she looks like a more promising get is that she served as state GOP chairwoman: That position that might have introduced her to watchers of statewide politics but it remains too low-profile to give Lowden much name recognition or to prepare her for the rigors of campaigning against a Senate Majority Leader .

The bottom line is that Reid’s tremendous vulnerability rests on his own unpopularity rather than on the strength of his competitors. Former Rep. Porter and current Rep. Heller could have made the race competitive on the strength of their own name, but none of the Republicans who are now running would be in striking distance if it wasn’t for Reid’s self-implosion.

The incumbent is marred in such level of unpopularity that it might not matter who Republicans nominate next year; and inversely, if Reid miraculously turns his reputation around and improves his approval rating, none of these four Republicans look strong enough to remain in contact.

And yet, I have the impression that the Republican establishment has already sent signals that it would prefer Lowden win the primary. (The NRSC is unlikely to get actively involved in this primary, but it does not need to do so explicitly to send a message to wealthy donors and local officials.) That contributes to establish a conventional wisdom that Lowden is the most electable of Republican contenders.

Perhaps is it just that her statewide role paints her as a different sort of candidate. Or perhaps is it that the 3 other major contenders in the race have clearer liabilities: Tarkanian has no experience in the public sector, Amodei has some ethical issues following him and Angle is the closest to the conservative movement. But I doubt those are serious enough issues for them to stand in the way of the race being a referendum on Reid.

As such, the GOP primary can prove the opportunity for Republicans to choose the candidates that looks strongest without too much angst about ruining their chances. As I said last month, I would argue that given the low-profile of all these challengers a hard-fought primary should be helpful to the GOP: It will introduce them to voters months before the general election and give the eventual victor a name recognition boost that should prove crucial in the fall.

All in all, the biggest threat the NRSC has to worry about is that scandals surrounding Governor Jim Gibbons and Senator Jon Ensign will weigh down the GOP brand even more than Reid damages the Democratic one, making it difficult for the Republican nominee to take advantage of Reid’s unpopularity. (Talk about a state with unpopular incumbents!) Republican voters can remedy the Gibbons problem by ousting him in the primary, but they’ll have to deal with Ensign for quite a bit longer.

New chapter in the Ensign scandal

This morning, The New York Times published a very lengthy article that delves into the ethical and legal questions raised by Ensign’s actions. For those who need a primer, I went through some of the case’s gray areas back in July: Did the terminate the employment of his mistress’s husband based on personal reason? Is his attempt to pay off the couple with $96,000 a severance package, in which case his failure to report it could be a federal crime? Today’s Times article still more questions, in particular over the relationship between Ensign and Doug Hampton after the latter became a lobbyist thanks to the senator’s efforts to find him a job:

The senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.

While the affair made national news in June, the role that Mr. Ensign played in assisting Mr. Hampton and helping his clients has not been previously disclosed. Several experts say those activities may have violated an ethics law that bars senior aides from lobbying the Senate for a year after leaving their posts…

Mr. Hampton said he and Mr. Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it. He recounted how the senator helped him find clients and ticked off several steps Mr. Ensign took to assist them with their agendas in Washington, activities confirmed by federal officials and executives with the businesses…

With NV Energy, for instance, Mr. Hampton spent the summer of 2008 strategizing with John Lopez, the senator’s chief of staff, about how Mr. Ensign could intervene with the Interior Department to get the coal-plant report completed, Mr. Hampton said.

This entire story is really a must read; it’s filled with many revelations to which I cannot do justice with short summaries. The bottom line here is that much of this is new information that raises all types of questions we were not previously asking, on top of the already existing question marks on unrelated issues - the termination, the disclosure of the severance package. And yet, Ensign has been able to get himself back on track and for now avoid any investigation into his conduct:

Several legal experts said, however, that the communications between Mr. Ensign’s office and Mr. Hampton might have been improper. If Mr. Ensign knew that Mr. Hampton was lobbying his office and facilitated the arrangement, he could face an inquiry, said Stan Brand, a former House general counsel who specializes in government ethics issues. “You can’t advise someone to do something against the law and not run into trouble on that,” Mr. Brand said…

While several citizens’ watchdog groups have called for an ethics investigation into Mr. Ensign’s conduct, there are no signs of any active inquiries.

We can only hope that The New York Times piece will force a more proactive investigation. What I find most shocking in this piece is the conviction of impunity that oozes through Ensign’s breaching ethics rules - a feeling that is probably all too common among politicians.