Reid launches first of his 2010 reelection ads

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will start running the first advertisements on behalf of his 2010 reelection campaign on Friday, the campaign announced.

The advertisements will come more than 12 months before Reid faces voters in his bid for a fifth term, a move analysts say speaks to Reid’s precarious position.

“What choice does he have? He’s going to outraise anybody by a huge factor, and he’s going to have to do something with that money,” said Jon Ralston, a leading Nevada political expert, noting that Reid has pledged to raise and spend $25 million for his race.

One advertisement portrays Reid’s life growing up as the son of a miner in southern Nevada, touting his work to create jobs and clean-energy tax credits. Another highlights his work on behalf of City Center, a massive construction project in downtown Las Vegas slated to open in December.

“That man called every CEO of every bank that I know, and said, ‘Look, this is important to my state. Get it done,’ ” says James Murren, CEO of MGM Mirage, one of the largest property holders in Las Vegas. “There’s no one else that could have done that.”

Public polls have shown Reid trailing two little-known candidates running in the Republican primary. Reid’s campaign seemed to deny that recent poll results forced them to mount an early advertising campaign.

“This long-planned ad release will help the hundreds of thousands of new Nevada voters get to know who Sen. Reid is, where he comes from, and what his track record is when it comes to fighting for the people of his home state,” Reid’s campaign manager, Brandon Hall, said in a statement. “It’s important that voters hear how his story growing up in Searchlight, working his way through school has made him determined to deliver for the hardworking families struggling to make ends meet as the economy slowly begins to recover.”

The same polls have shown Reid to be widely unpopular among Silver State voters. The latest Mason-Dixon survey for the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed 38 percent of Nevadans saying they view the majority leader favorably, while 50 percent view him unfavorably.

Still, Reid maintained his polls show him doing better than public polls. During a press conference Thursday, Reid said “everything is going well” in his home state.

“As far as all the work that we’ve done, all my polling numbers are fine,” Reid said. “They’re not from a newspaper in Nevada that you guys tend to focus on. All my polling numbers are fine. I’m continuing to do the best I can for the people of this country and the people of Nevada.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) called on Reid to release those polls if, in fact, they show better numbers for the incumbent.

“If Sen. Reid would really have everyone believe that his own polls run contrary to every public poll we’ve seen so far, why doesn’t he release it?” asked Brian Walsh, the NRSC’s communications director.

Ralston said the advertisements will “presage” Reid’s larger message during the campaign — that, as majority leader, he is the only one able to bring money and jobs back to the state in such quantities. His goal will be both to remind voters of what he has done and to introduce himself to the hundreds of thousands of new voters who have flooded into the state since his last reelection, in 2004.

One of the advertisements will run in Reno, a population center Reid has long relied on for votes and one that has made him more successful than other Democrats who have run statewide.

“He has to make a pitch up there, so he’s now going to try to either reinvent himself, or invent himself, or tell the truth about himself, depending on how you look at it,” Ralston said.

But the poll numbers have made Reid one of the GOP’s top targets in 2010. The NRSC has maintained it will aggressively target Nevada voters in an effort to make Reid the second consecutive Democratic leader, after former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), to lose his seat.

“Harry Reid is running TV ads over a year out from the election for one reason — he is one of the most unpopular and endangered incumbents in the country and he knows it,” Walsh said. “His fundamental problem is that everyone in Nevada already knows him and a strong majority just don’t approve of his liberal, partisan politics. They want a change.”

Meanwhile, Republicans have yet to settle on their own candidate in 2010.

Businesswoman Sue Lowden, the former chairwoman of the state Republican Party and a former state senator, is locked in a GOP primary battle with Danny Tarkanian, the son of basketball coaching legend Jerry Tarkanian and an unsuccessful candidate for secretary of state in 2006. Investment banker John Chachas (R) gave $1 million to his own campaign earlier this month, making him a player in the primary as well.

And Reid, who has a reputation for hardball politics, will lie in wait for whomever survives the primary next year.

“The only way he can get independents is to convince them that he may be bad, but he’s not as bad as the alternative the opposition is offering,” Ralston said. “The warm and fuzzy Harry Reid will last for a while, but I don’t think he’s going to be spending his millions on positive ads.”

The early blitz follows the playbook of another Senate leader who found himself in trouble early. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) began running advertisements on behalf of his own reelection efforts just days after the 2007 election, nearly a year before he won a fifth term in 2008 after being targeted by Democrats.