Looks like Tea Party activists didn’t learn from NY-23
http://politicalwire.com/archi…
Political Wire says that they’ve registered as an official party for this November and will have a candidate. Further down in the comments thread of the Political Wire story, a comment says that Jon Ralston is reporting that their candidate will be Jon Ashjian. Apparently he is the president of a few companies in Las Vegas.
Does anything think a Tea Party candidate will gain traction in an election in Nevada? For some reason Nevada doesn’t strike me as Tea Party-land, but I could be wrong.
I think even if this guys only musters 1-2% of the vote it could be a huge difference. I’m giving Reid a 55-45 shot at being re-elected with a Tea Party candidate on this ballot.
What say you?
I still think Reid is an underdog, but this certainly helps.
It’s not like Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian are RINOs. Or establishment-types. They’re basically conservative outsiders; perhaps not wildly populist or libertarian, but they’re not Mark Kirk or Mike Castle either. When I played around with some NV-Sen #’s earlier in the week, I came up with Reid likely garnering 44% of the vote. Meaning the Tea Party candidate here would need to garner 12% to give Reid a plurality victory…seems a bit unlikely to me.
but I doubt it will be enough to save him. The foreclosure and unemployment rates in NV are just terrible.
This is my “upset special” if you can call the majority leader winning re-election an upset. 3 reasons:
– Money. Reid has a huge advantage and will be able to raise as much as he needs.
– C grade opponents. Lowden and Tarkanion are not top tier opponents IMO. Right now they are just Generic Republicans, wait until Ried has a chance to use his huge warchest to highlite their warts.
– Unions. Las Vegas is one of the most Unionized cities in America. In what could be a low turnout election having the union machine behind you can make a big differnce.
I wonder how much Reid is paying him to run?
Reid will have trouble getting over 45% so the Tea Party candidate would have to get at least 10% of the vote to make a difference. I just don’t see that happening.
That pretty well fits my definition of “establishment”.