Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, is currently favored in her bid to knock off Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in tomorrow's elections. But Saturday's front-page story by Dan Barry and Michael Cooper from Nevada, "For Nevadans, It's Hold Nose And Cast Vote [1]," portrayed the vote as an equal opportunity stinker, even suggesting "Some Republicans fear losing" Reid as an ally.
Some Republicans fear losing such a powerful ally in Washington - no matter that his name is Reid - at a time when Nevada is in precarious economic shape. And Ms. 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.
But as Terry Jeffrey at CNS News [2] (a sister organization of Times Watch) pointed out, "the story does not quote a single Republican from Nevada or elsewhere, or site a single poll, that indicates that Republicans, either on the grassroots or in the leadership of the party, fear that Harry Reid will lose."
Barry and Cooper dutifully recited the liberal litany against Angle:
Still, it seems that no adviser can stop Ms. Angle from being herself, as when she suggested to a rural community that Islamic religious law had taken hold in Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Tex., which no longer exists. ("I think that's arguably the craziest thing that she has said, and the most dangerous," said Jon Ralston, who writes the state's most influential political column for The Las Vegas Sun.)
Her candor has 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 Ms. Angle's whereabouts.
But Ms. 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, and her advisers say their ground game is better than people might imagine.
While the Times didn't find an abundance of pleasant things to say about the dour Reid (pro-Dem sympathies only go so far) the paper did try to portray him as a "Horatio Alger character from Nevada."
Union members have knocked on 200,000 doors and made 48,000 calls as part of a one-vote-at-a-time effort by Democrats to counter a general disgust with the establishment - personified these days by Mr. Reid, who might otherwise be seen as a Horatio Alger character from Nevada: a poor, pugnacious kid from Searchlight who rose to become a power broker able to secure federal money for large, jobs-creating state projects.