Sen. Reid and son Rory each considered a burden for the other's campaign in Nevada

By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 12, 2010; A01

LAS VEGAS -- As if Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) didn't have enough problems, say hello to Rory Reid, his eldest son. Looks just like him. He's running for governor of Nevada.

It will be Reid and Reid atop the November ballot in this state, the father running for his sixth term, the son making his first bid at statewide office. So far, this double bill is not going so great. Each candidate is dragging down the other, to look at the polls and listen to the Silver State's political oddsmakers. And neither is mentioning the other's campaign.

The elder Reid, 70, is fighting for his political survival. He has been a fixture in the state for 40 years, and he's worried that the last thing voters want is a Reid dynasty. He's already badly trailing two Republican candidates who haven't even hit 50 percent in name recognition.

Instead of getting credit for putting down insurrections and wrangling his fellow Democrats into passing a health-care reform bill on Christmas Eve, Harry Reid is getting hosed for it. Republican leaders were licking their lips at the prospect of picking him off. And that was before Reid had to activate a one-man phone tree of apology this weekend for what he called "improper comments" he made during the 2008 presidential campaign about Barack Obama's light skin and absence of "Negro dialect."

Reid, who was in Nevada on Monday to announce an electricity project, said he has "apologized to everyone within the sound of my voice," adding, "I could have used a better choice of words."

Obama and Reid's fellow Democrats have accepted his apology, and on Monday the Las Vegas and Reno chapters of the NAACP put out a statement supporting Reid. But the chant from Republicans for Reid's head continues. The Tea Party Express will begin its next tour from his home town of Searchlight, and on Monday, the group went up with $250,000 in "Defeat Harry" ads statewide.

The younger Reid, 47, is keeping his head down, raising money, trying to fend off any Democratic rivals. He is doing meet-and-greets and tending to his day job as the chairman of the Clark County Commission, the governing body of this boom-and-bust neon desert with nearly 2 million people. He's a man with a Prius and a wife on the school board and three kids.

About his race, he said: "We're doing what we need to do to win. The early polling, I'm ignoring. In statewide elections, in this state, the races are close. And the candidate with the best ideas is the one who wins."

As for his father's newest predicament, the son said, "I know my father better than anyone else who has spoken about this. . . . I know how he feels. It's clear that he misspoke. And he apologized immediately, and genuinely."

He added: "And I think he should go back to making the health-care bill be the best that it can be and doing whatever else he does."

Focusing on job at hand

This father-and-son-but-not-a-team ticket strikes plenty of people as a brazen move. But this is Vegas, where the billboards for Jesus! (the savior) and Cheetahs! (the strip club) live happily near each other off the interstate, sanctuary wherever you want to find it.

The city's current showboating mayor, Oscar Goodman, he of the fondness for Bombay gin and showgirls as official escorts is toying with running for governor as an independent. That would soak up Democratic votes that should accrue to Rory Reid, now running unopposed, with a fat war chest that former president Bill Clinton and the casino industry helped him build.

The state's current governor, Jim Gibbons (R), survived salacious accusations in 2006 of groping a cocktail waitress, but his marriage didn't. Nevada GOP leaders grit their teeth and hope that Gibbons will see his reelection prospects as hopeless, but admit that no one knows what he will do.

Waiting in the wings is Republican Brian Sandoval, a former state attorney general and judge who is the first Hispanic elected to statewide office, in a state where Hispanics make up a quarter of the population and Democrats have a 100,000-person registration edge.

The way Rory Reid seems to address all these theatrics is by sitting in his chair at the Clark County Commission meetings downtown, listening intently. Nevada is racked with unemployment. Its foreclosure rate is among the highest in the nation; its high school graduation rate is among the lowest. He loves the state. Rory had a map of Nevada above his bed.

Of his run for governor, Reid says, "This is a unique opportunity to unleash the innovative spirit of the people here and build a new approach to economic development toward a better future."

On a day in mid-December, his father, the majority leader, is summoned to the White House for a strategy session on health-care reform; Rory Reid, the county chairman, is presiding over a meeting that lasts seven hours, with 111 agenda items and then public comment -- the place at the end for people to yell at him. And they do.

There's a "common-sense" amendment about the liquor law, and a discussion about guidelines for the hundreds of billboards ringing the Strip. There are pitches for contracts, for billboard maintenance, the moving walkway at busy McCarran International Airport, for an urban grant to help train poor youngsters in the green jobs of the future. The burly men in union jackets shift in their seats. Things gets heated. Reid listens, then smoothly cuts off debate and moves to a conclusion.

He will, in the weeks ahead, work to find agreement on tough decisions, slashing the budget, cutting jobs. "I really do think," he says, "if you put people in a room who disagree with each other and listen to each other, the truth will emerge. It's organic. You have to be patient, and dogged. But I've seen it happen every time."

While this seems to play as milquetoast in flamboyant Sin City, he has enthusiastic regard among a select set of educated southern Nevadans who worry about urban woes and believe that building community brings change. He has made a few "rising Democratic star" lists; his logo looks a lot like the round emblem that adorned Obama's campaign. He introduces himself to voters as a thoughtful and calm consensus-builder with an inspiring and pragmatic vision to fix Nevada.

But: "Rory Reid?" asks a young woman at work in a Wells Fargo bank branch here. "Is he somebody performing at one of the casinos?" When told he is the son of her senator, she frowns, and says, "Ohh."

Different eras

Rory Reid needs to gain name recognition and lose it at the same time. To underscore that he has an identity separate from the old man, the campaign bumper stickers feature RORY in very big letters and Reid in very small letters.

He also knows he needs to get credit for cleaning up the crooked ways of the County Commission, with a $7 billion annual budget nearly as big as the entire state's, and for learning executive leadership and pothole-fixing in its municipal trenches over the past six years.

His father grew up swimming in a whorehouse pool with parents who drank too much; hitchhiked about 40 miles to a decent high school; became a Mormon; and, with his wife, Landra, raised four boys and one girl, all of whom became lawyers. The son was born in Washington while his father worked as a Capitol Hill cop and went to law school at night. He was 3 when his father won his first political race.

Where his father reads hardship out of Nevada's stark landscape, Rory gets to see only the beauty.

They have lived in different eras. Rory Reid doesn't follow the political advice of one of the wiliest strategists around. In last year's presidential race, while his father publicly stayed neutral and privately blessed Obama, Rory signed on to chair Hillary Rodham Clinton's winning campaign in the state.

When Rory announced that he was going to run for the Clark County Commission, Harry told him: Don't do it, that place is a boneyard full of ambitious pols who learned that you can't successfully run for higher office from there. You'll go to these long meetings every other week and people will always be yelling at you for something. Rory did it anyway, and from there is trying to succeed the one-term, scandal-singed Gov. Gibbons.

This move "in the minds of some people is very strange," says Nevada political columnist Jon Ralston, "that his dad is at the apex of the pinnacle of his power in a small state, and that Rory would jeopardize that in any way." It's "reverse symbiosis," he adds. They hurt each other.

In private, the father and son have a loving and close relationship that can withstand the political pummeling, say longtime friends and aides. In this story line, just like any other family, the Reids of Nevada had certain topics they avoided at holiday dinnertimes this season.

In public, the father and son keep a distance that is yawning wider by the day.

"My father is a fighter," Rory Reid said in an interview, "and I believe he will win this race. And I believe I am going to win, too."

In the past, when asked how his son's quest is affecting his own, Harry Reid has said, "I love my son very much, but he's his own man. Oftentimes, he listens to my advice, and sometimes he doesn't."

After the senator was asked to comment for this article, his campaign released a statement: "Sen. Reid is focused on creating jobs and strengthening Nevada's economy. As for the election, Sen. Reid is focused on his own campaign and making sure Nevadans know how he fights for them every day as the Senate Majority leader."