According to the Nevada News Bureau:
Two reliable sources have confirmed that Congressman Dean Heller said this week he is definitely committed to running in the U.S. Senate race. Heller’s office would not confirm the news this morning when contacted.
Heller’s decision comes as no surprise on the tail of Senator John Ensign’s announcement Monday not to seek a third term. Heller had already signaled his ambitions when his office leaked an internal poll last month showing he was the strongest candidate in a GOP field (that included Ensign) by a 15-point margin.
Jon Ralston also confirms:
Heller is in and has been since he got poll back. They have not set official announce date. But sooner because of Ensign exit.
Sharron Angle, you know you want to.
Color me shocked. (snark)
I guess Heller just couldn’t resist it. He wants to be Senator… But will the teabaggers let him have it? Contrary to what Elizabeth Crum suggests in her NNB piece, Heller won’t have a cakewalk. Either he will get some “tea party” wrath and/or Nevada Dems will think twice about (and get an earful from the DSCC on) who to nominate on our end.
I think Heller crushes her like a bug if she runs in the Senate primary.
Woudln’t it be better for Dems if she ran for Heller’s open seat? Post-Redistricting that might be a winnable race if Angle takes the nomination. Angle vs Krolicki doesn’t sound like the blowout that Heller-Angle would be.
(may be – the strongest) candidate Republicans have there: well-known, conservative, but not crazy, and so on..
and makes Berkley think long and hard about it.
2012 projections ? It would be just a guess right now.
If Berkley’s waiting was more about just not wanting to jump in too early, given that the election is almost 20 months away, that is fine. But, if she is just waiting to see who else is going to jump in, and then decide, that is different. That is a fairly weak image to portray to voters. Nevada is a competitive state, and running for a US Senate seat in a presidential year should help the Democrat. So, if you really want to be a US Senator, show some moxie and go in, no matter who is running on the other side. Harry Reid, for example, was seen as a dead man walking, many thought he’d retire rather than run again in the 2010 election. But, he ignored the polls and of course made a huge effort. His margin of victory surprised most of us political junkies. The media hype was all wrong, just as the Nevadans on this site all seem to say that the media hype over Heller is overblown.
I don’t know a lot about Berkley, because I don’t live in Nevada, but, I am always more impressed with those that jump in because they are willing to put it all on the line. That kind of energy and resolve is contagious. The other kind of energy, where a politician just angles for the safest bet, puts out a very different vibe, not a winning vibe.
In the end, of course, Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the US, so I imagine someone running from the outside might be more interesting to the voters than a sitting member of Congress who unfortunately can be viewed as not having done much for the economy, (fair or not ) That seems to be why a bunch of outsiders were elected last year, for example, Rick Scott in Florida, in spite of his huge baggage, still got elected. Voters want solutions to our problems.
The problem is, even if Obama is winning solidly, Heller is not the type that would not be able to get crossover votes. Now, rather or not he can maintain that ability through a potential primary is a big question.
but this should be a Democratic pickup, unless there is a clusterfuck primary. Only Romney has any draw here at the top of the ticket, and Obama should be spending a lot of energy locking up Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and contesting Arizona.
I’d like to be able to pay money to see Newt addressing a campaign crowd in Carson City. He’d look like somebody from another planet.