Crackdown on Reid mole: Gaffe-prevention for Lowden?

Anjeanette Damon

Sunday, May 16, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Since the beginning of the campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s campaign has sent a “tracker” to follow his potential Republican opponent Sue Lowden around with a video camera.

Pretty much every public speech she gives, anywhere in the state, is recorded by Reid’s campaign.

The effort yielded the “bartering” jewel that erupted into the grand chickens-for-checkups gaffe.

The Lowden campaign, of course, is aware of this tracker and her presence is often noted by Lowden’s campaign with a friendly, yet sarcastic, remark. Lowden will often point her out to the crowd and ask her supporters to tell Reid what they think of him.

But apparently, the campaign has grown tired of the scrutiny since the whole chicken debacle and has begun limiting the tracker’s access to Lowden.

At an ice cream social in a public park in Minden, the tracker was asked to stand on the sidewalk, away from Lowden. She was also denied entrance to a speech in Elko at a fire station.

Robert Uithoven, Lowden’s manager, said the campaign isn’t in the practice of inviting Reid campaign workers to private events.

He repeated the criticism that Reid has had only one town-hall meeting on health care and it required reservations. (Reid has held dozens of tele-town hall meetings on health care.)

“Now, he and his special-interest allies are running ridiculous ads about chickens when Harry Reid is the real chicken for refusing to face the very people who pay his salary in Washington,” Uithoven said.

Playing politics with initiatives?

Two major candidates have recently launched ballot initiatives on issues dear to the Republican base.

Are these legitimate efforts to change the law of the land or calculated political moves to earn free media exposure and posture as a champion of conservative causes?

Perhaps the answer is obvious.

Gov. Jim Gibbons last week filed paperwork to repeal a state law that makes private the collective bargaining negotiations between local governments and employee associations.

Republicans say greater transparency would restrain salary and benefit growth that have burdened government budgets.

Gibbons would have to gather 3,129 valid signatures a day to make the June 15 deadline to turn in the 97,002 signatures needed to qualify on the ballot.

Assemblyman Chad Christensen, R-Las Vegas, one of a dozen Republicans in the U.S. Senate primary, has said he will put together an initiative petition to create a Nevada immigration law that mimics the legislation just passed in Arizona. This is another example of a hot-button conservative issue that has taken over Republican primary politics the past two weeks.

Christensen was still developing language for the initiative late last week. He can’t collect signatures until that paperwork is filed.

Another complicating factor is the right to challenge the language within 15 days. Most organizers wait to begin gathering signatures until that period has expired, or they could be forced to redo the work should a court challenge succeed.

Signatures aren’t easy to come by. Most succeed only by hiring a professional signature-gathering operation.

Neither initiative, at this point, has much money.

“If we get enough money, we’ll hire professionals,” said former state Sen. Bob Beers, who is heading Gibbons’ initiative effort.

Asked how that’s coming, he said: “Slow.”

In the meantime, however, Gibbons and Christensen have earned media coverage of their efforts and can refer to both in their campaign materials. That can only help in the difficult primaries they face.

Anjeanette Damon is the Reno Gazette-Journal’s political reporter and writes the “Inside Nevada Politics” blog. Her column appears in the Sunday edition, and her blog is at rgj.com/inp.