Controversial Republican

GOP tries to head off Angle Senate bid

The controversial Republican is mulling another bid for Harry Reid's Senate seat after her ill-fated 2010 campaign.

By Burgess Everett and Elena Schneider

Republicans have had enough of Sharron Angle, the one-time Senate hopeful who crashed and burned against then-Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010. And now the GOP in Nevada and Washington is trying to chase her out of another campaign that could again jeopardize the party's chances of capturing Reid's Senate seat.

Angle’s very public flirtation with a primary bid against Rep. Joe Heck, the party favorite to take on Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, is reviving Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares from the 2010 election. Angle — along with lackluster candidates Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck — blew a winnable race for the GOP, and her name still causes eyerolls among Republicans of all stripes.

And now that Republicans finally control the Senate, they aren’t about to let Angle screw things up.

"[Heck] can win. It is about winning elections after all,” said Texas Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during Angle’s run. Angle “had a shot and has been unsuccessful. So my money is with him.”

Indeed, Republicans do not believe that Angle can beat Heck, who is a major recruiting coup for Republicans in one of the only competitive open-seat elections in 2016. But there are two worries: That she could drag Heck to the right and leave Cortez Masto running room in purple Nevada, and that she could drain Heck's resources before an expensive general election.

“Angle doesn’t have a prayer, but she’ll cause some damage to Joe and make him spend some money,” said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist in Nevada. “We’ve got an excellent chance with Joe Heck to pick up that seat, which could possibly determine if Republicans or Democrats control the U.S. Senate, and I would hate to see her blow it again.”

A divisive GOP food fight in Nevada would unquestioningly aid Democratic efforts to win the four or five Senate seats the party needs (depending on the result of the presidential election) to win back control of the chamber. Republicans already are defending seven seats in states President Barack Obama won in both presidential elections, six of which are very competitive.

Republicans view Nevada as much-needed insurance to preserve their majority. Democrats know that losing Nevada makes the math that much harder for a party that already has little margin for error.

Reid, the outgoing Democratic leader who withstood the 2010 GOP wave to defeat Angle, is inflating her candidacy in vintage fashion to annoy Heck and the Republicans.

“People shouldn’t minimize what a good campaigner she is, how aggressive she is — and frankly, she’s no dope,” Reid said in an interview. “If people think that Heck is some kind of a moderate, she’ll certainly show that’s not the case.”

Neither Heck nor Angle would comment for this story. But Republicans are at their first stage of grief with the possibility that she might enter the race: denial.

“I don’t think it’s even true,” said Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. ”Heck’s going to win this thing. He's going to win no matter what. He’s going to beat the Democratic opponent too, but he doesn't need to spending a lot of money in the primary to get there.”

Officially, the NRSC does not take a position in open-seat primaries. Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi said in an interview that the group would hear Angle out if she came to them with a campaign plan.

But Angle hasn’t made that step.

“We haven’t visited about that. I haven’t visited with her since 2010,” Wicker said.

Republicans in Nevada said rumors about a second Angle run cycled through the state’s political class several weeks ago, but speculation turned to concern this week when two Nevada legislators published a letter, urging her to run. State Sen. Don Gustavson and Assemblyman Brent Jones, longtime Angle supporters, called on voters to donate, setting a $5-million watermark for the “Run Sharron Angle For Senate” cash effort; a post-script from Angle on the letter read: "We can do this."

In the 2010 primary, Angle, buoyed by an endorsement from the Tea Party Express, beat former state Sen. Sue Lowden and several other opponents, to some surprise in the state. Outside groups spent heavily in the general election, shelling out $2.8 million in support of Angle, according to estimates compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, and $7.7 million opposing Reid.

Her 2010 campaign is best remembered for a series of gaffes, including telling a group of Hispanic high-school students that “some of you look a little more Asian to me,” and her controversial campaign manager.

Angle lost to Reid by a 6-point margin, with 2 percent voting for “none of the above.” That's despite raising a staggering $28.3 million over the course of the campaign — much of it from small donors — more than Reid brought in.

Some in Nevada say that dollar figure inflated her sense of her own popularity in the state.

“Her campaign was run from her kitchen table, done by a group who had no experience in Nevada politics or campaigning, who fell into that win because of the Lowden campaign mishandled things,” said an Angle staffer from her 2010 campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the race. “That’s something that Sharron and her supporters would never admit to, because they think Nevada still wants her.”

“She snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” added Ryan Hamilton, a Nevada GOP consultant. “There is no appetite, even among the most anti-establishment GOP activists at [the] grass-roots level, to see Sharron Angle on a statewide ballot again.”

Without “some kind of positive gesture” from national conservative groups, Angle might decline to run altogether, Hamilton said. And so far, those conservative groups who backed her in 2010 are not falling into line.

“We would have serious doubts about whether a Senate candidacy in 2016 would turn out differently from her Senate candidacy in 2010,” said Doug Sachtleben, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, which spent more than $800,000 backing her and opposing Reid in 2010, according to estimates from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks collectively spent $280,000 in the 2010 race, but both groups indicated they were unlikely to get involved in the primary on Angle’s behalf. With so many races to watch and influence, conservative groups may get more bang for their buck elsewhere with a candidate that has greater general-election potential.

“There are some people out there that say Joe’s not conservative enough, and some people say he’s too conservative and everything in-between. But it’s like: This is the ultimate scoreboard business,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.). “Joe Heck has won races in Clark County, and Sharron hasn’t.”

Still, some activists remain wary of Heck, who has lower ratings on scorecards from conservative groups — even if those votes could help Heck in a general election in a blue-leaning state.

“It’s not that they like Sharron, but they’re not happy with Joe’s voting record,” Muth said.