Campaign Diaries

Mason Dixon’s August poll was the first shot clear sign that Harry Reid was in huge trouble next year. Since then, other pollsters’ confirmed that the Senate Majority Leader is unable to stay in contact with low-profile opponents like former state party chair Sue Lowden and real estate developer Danny Tarkanian, which makes Mason Dixon’s new poll unsurprising - but no less worrisome for Democrats.

Plagued by a 38% to 51% favorability rating, Reid trails Tarkanian 48% to 43% and Lowden 49% to 39%. That’s an improvement against Tarkanian (he trailed by 11% in August) but a downward trend against Lowden (he trailed by 5% in August). In the GOP primary, Lowden and Tarkanian are in a statistical dead heat - 23% to 21% - with former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle coming in at 9%.

A 5% deficit can certainly be overcome but keep in mind the name recognition differentials at play here. as they bode ill for the Senate Majority Leader. However, one figure I think is somewhat reassuring for Reid is the 43% he receives against Tarkanian: While nothing to celebrate, that suggests a substantial share of Nevadans are willing to support him.

That’s more than we can say about other Governor Jim Gibbons.

Indeed, Reid can rejoice: He is not in as much trouble as Gibbons. The main question regarding the governor is whether he loses in the Republican primary or in the general election, but even that is hardly suspenseful at the moment: former Attorney General Brian Sandoval has already made it clear he is running, making it it more than likely GOP voters dump their incumbent.

These are the lessons of the Mason Dixon poll, which finds Gibbons’s approval rating at a catastrophic 14%. For those of you keeping track, that makes him the most unpopular governor in the country, hardly surprising giving his constant presence on the first page of tabloids, his financial scandals and Nevada’s fiscal problems. Gibbons handily loses all his match-ups:

• He trails 41% to 20% against Sandoval in the GOP primary.

• In the general election, Gibbons loses 47% to 37% against Rory Reid; if Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman runs as an independent, Gibbons comes in third, with Goodman at 36%, Reid at 27% and Gibbons at 24%.

• If Sandoval is the Republican nominee, he crushes Reid 50% to 32%; in a 3-way race, he ties Goodman at 33% with Reid at 25%.

Given Gibbons’s approval rating, we might have expected him to face larger deficits in the general election, which gets us to what is the GOP’s best hope of retaining this governorship: Rory Reid is likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee ever since Speaker Barbara Buckley passed on a run. Whatever Reid’s assets, the unpopularity of his father dramatically lowers his electability; that is reflected in the drubbing he receives against Sandoval.

There is still a long time to go, but the ease with which Sandoval dispatches both Gibbons and Reid make him the early front-runner to win the governorship. Of course, the biggest wild card in the race is the possibility that Goodman jumps in the race, as he would have an excellent chance of reaching the Governor’s mansion - not to mention breath new life into everyone’s candidacy.

Note that Goodman is a registered Democrat. He has expressed clear preference for running as an independent (”I think it’s a wonderful thing when you don’t have to get involved in party politics”) but I don’t believe he has ruled out seeking the Democratic nomination. As such, I wish Mason Dixon had also polled match-ups with Goodman as the Democrats’ nominee. That would have given us useful information not only about just how formidable a candidate Goodman would be but also how much Reid underperforms compared to the state’s Democratic potential.

Another potential wild card in this race was taken care of last week: former state Senator Joe Heck, who was running for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination since the spring, announced he was dropping out of the race to challenge freshman Rep. Dina Titus in NV-03.

The GOP’s best chance at keeping the governorship is to dump Gibbons in the primary so Heck’s move is good news for the RGA: Gibbons’s main hope of clinching the GOP nomination would be to face such a crowded face that the anti-incumbent vote is divided. Sandoval could not have been sure of emerging as the undisputed Gibbons opponent had Heck stayed in the race because of areas of tension between Sandoval and the conservative base, most notably the former AG’s support for the state’s domestic partnership law.

Now, however, North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon is still in the race but Heck’s exit does leave Sandoval as Gibbons’s main alternative. The main obstacle in Sandoval’s route is Rep. Dean Heller, who ruled out running for Senate but has not done the same about the gubernatorial race. Yet, it does not look likely that Heller will leave his relatively safe House job for this chaotic a statewide run.

Heck’s entry in the gubernatorial race is also good news for the GOP at the House level - but I’ll keep that for a post to come up later. For now, let’s move to the last incumbent we have left in the Mason Dixon poll: John Ensign, who is contributing to weighing down the Republican brand: His favorability rating (23/43) is far worse than Reid’s - yet better than Gibbons’s, which tells us a lot about the governor’s vulnerability.

Gibbons and Ensign’s unpopularity will make it harder for the GOP to enjoy the dividends of a favorable national environment and a red wave will have a harder time submerging the Silver State. That makes Titus - more so than Reid, who is plagued by the hostility that voters are feeling towards their state’s most established politicians - harder for the GOP to defeat.