Nevadans hold their nose in this race - Minneapolis Star Tribune

HENDERSON, NEV. - The knock on the front door elicited the annoyed yapping of an unseen dog, followed by the appearance of a gray-haired man busily eating chips from a bag. His callers were two union workers, canvassing the neighborhood on behalf of Democrats, especially Sen. Harry Reid.

The man said that he knew Reid -- and that Reid was an idiot. So was his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle. In fact, said the man, a retired steelworker named Mario Mari, he might very well choose a third option: the phantom candidate known as None of the Above.

"This country is going down," Mari said before closing the door to a bleak Nevada landscape, where jobs are few and foreclosures many.

This is the up-for-grabs Third Congressional District, the most populous in Nevada and the most contested in this state's contentious Senate race, sprawling across the dry terrain to form a kind of martini glass around the olive of downtown Las Vegas. It is here in this packed suburban stretch of terra cotta roofs and crushed-rock yards that the battle for the country's direction is being waged.

The two candidates could not be more ideologically different. But in these last frantic days of an extremely tight and unpleasant campaign, one with implications for the balance of power in Washington, they are united by the same problem: The voters of Nevada do not particularly like either of them.

"More people in Nevada dislike these candidates than like them," said Ryan Erwin, a Republican consultant in Las Vegas. As a result, he said, "It's going to be about which side is going to persuade voters that the other candidate is worse."

Different views

On one side, the incumbent of two dozen years: Reid, 70, the Senate majority leader, a close ally of President Obama and, behind the scenes, a flinty old-school Nevadan. But if a microphone appears, he assumes the persona of a wan undertaker whose own pulse needs to be checked.

On the other side, the challenger from out of nowhere: Angle, 61, an anti-Obama Tea Party standard-bearer. A former schoolteacher, state legislator and competitive weight lifter, she has choice words for Washington and curious words for the rest of the country, as when she suggested that Islamic religious law had taken hold in two American communities. But if a microphone appears, she begins to play hide-and-seek: She hides, reporters seek.

Although Angle usually flees microphones, she speaks clearly through her campaign commercials, which question the source of Reid's wealth and portray him as a calcified Obama toady who all but invites thuggish undocumented immigrants to your family's Thanksgiving.

In their own ways, then, both candidates are asking the same plaintive question in this close race: What are you thinking, Nevada?

Some Republicans fear losing a powerful ally in Washington -- no matter that his name is Reid -- at a time when Nevada is in precarious economic shape. And Angle's relationship with Republicans in Washington is complicated. She eyes them warily, while they fret that their overt help might offend her Tea Party supporters.

Even so, Angle is not above accepting the help of the Republican establishment, whether by receiving significant financial support from, say, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina or promoting an event with Sen. John McCain of Arizona. She melds the inside with the outside, as when, during a recent appearance with Newt Gingrich, she told her supporters that she wanted to cut any federal spending not provided for in the Constitution.

Being herself

Angle's candor caused advisers to suggest that she lie low in these last days, so low that reporters have relied on the Twitter messages of a Democrat dressed as a chicken to track Angle's whereabouts.

But Angle's outlandish comments and harsh commercials -- juxtaposing menacing dark-skinned men with anxious white people -- have not affected her ability to raise and spend money. From July 1 to Oct. 13, her campaign spent $16.9 million, well more than the $11.2 million spent by the Reid campaign.

Well aware that polls show Angle slightly ahead, Reid has been forced to shed his dour Washington persona and stump like a challenger.

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