Sharron Angle is by no means done with politics. So she told a crowd of 70 conservative grassroots activists during a surprise visit to a monthly Republican town hall meeting Wednesday evening in Las Vegas.
“I have a lot of options,” said Angle. “I am looking at these options. I can’t stop.”
When the crowd welcomed her with a standing ovation and loud cheers, Angle’s eyes filled with tears. She expressed her gratitude to the small group in a voice filled with emotion.
“Thank you so much,” said Angle quietly. “That means so much to me.”
Angle talked very little about the election, instead focusing on the legislative sessions coming up both in D.C. and Carson City. She reiterated that repeal of health care reform bill and extension of tax cuts should be top priorities.
She also specifically addressed redistricting in Nevada and talked about strategies for avoiding excessive gerrymandering.
“We need to have square districts,” said Angle, referring to (and disapproving of) the strategic spoking of districts into urban areas which tends to benefit Democrats and prevent rural, conservative state legislators from being elected.
When asked if she may consider running for Rep. Dean Heller’s NV-2 seat should the congressman opt to challenge John Ensign — either in the primaries or in the case of an Ensign indictment and/or resignation — Angle would neither confirm nor deny.
Whatever her next run at elected office may be, Angle made it clear during conversations with attendees and event organizers later in the evening that she will continue to work to help Republicans around the state in the months to come. She offered advice on citizen lobbying, grassroots organizing and party precinct leadership, saying she would gladly provide training and help as needed.
Angle’s loss to Harry Reid was her third electoral loss in five years. She previously ran for the state Senate as well as the U.S. House, a race in which she lost her primary bid against Dean Heller by just 421 votes.
The hotly contested Senate race likely earned Angle some new supporters. It may also have harmed her ability to be elected in a statewide race. The “extreme” label pinned on her by the Harry Reid campaign is a modifier many independents and even some Republicans echoed, some of them in endorsements of the majority leader over Angle.
An Associated Press analysis of exit poll results from the election revealed Angle’s base was bolstered primarily by white men, seniors, and rural voters. This might work just fine for her in the mostly rural NV-but could pose a problem if she chose to make a run at Ensign’s senate seat.
Former ACORN supervisor Amy Busefink has opted to plead guilty to a pair of gross misdemeanors rather than face 13 felony counts for her role in paying people to register voters. Busefink will be sentenced on January 10. Prosecutors said Monday they will not seek a prison term, but the judge may order one if he sees fit.
Busefink, a Las Vegas field operative who ran an illegal voter registration program in 2008, paid a $5 bonus to canvassers who registered 21 or more voters in a day. In addition, ACORN terminated people who failed to make a quota.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Conrad Hafen said Busefink will probably have to pay a fine and do 100 hours of community service.
ACORN still faces a November 29 trial on 13 counts of compensation for registration of voters, the same charges Busefink and another employee faced. While ACORN no longer exists and is in bankruptcy, the organization faces fines up to $65,000.
Something went wrong with the methodology in a series of Mason-Dixon polls commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal/8 News Now in the two biggest Nevada races, as acknowledged this week by RJ publisher Sherm Frederick.
“We pay for the poll, and we expect accuracy,” Frederick told Patrick Coolican at the Las Vegas Sun. “We obviously didn’t get the kind of accuracy we expected, and we’re going to have to ask some questions about where the breakdown occurred.”
The last Mason-Dixon senate poll, published October 29, showed Sharron Angle beating Harry Reid by five points (49-44). On election day, Reid won by five points (50-45).
The last NV-3 poll, published October 31, showed Joe Heck beating Dina Titus by ten points (53-43). On election day, Heck won by less than a single point (48-47).
The story going into election was that Republicans were poised to easily win both races. The after-story was that Reid beat Angle by nearly six points, and Heck just barely defeated Titus.
Pre-election polls conducted by CNN, FOX and Rasmussen were wrong as well. Each showed similar results to the Mason-Dixon survey.
The Sun story said one reason for the skewed numbers may be that pollsters rely on random dialing to land lines and do not account for voters who only have cell phones. A recent Pew Research Center report revealed that 25 percent of Americans can be reached only by cell phone. These people tend to be younger, a demographic that leans heavily Democratic.
In addition, polls tend to under-survey Hispanics, who are reluctant to participate in polls and also tend to vote Democratic.
The Review-Journal publisher denied any intentional bias his newspaper’s polls and told the Sun he was open to the possibility that cell-only and other demographic problems had rendered a flawed result. He also noted that Nevada may not be a reliably Red state any longer:
“Maybe Nevada is changing,” Frederick said. Indeed, once a reliably Republican state, Nevada is home to 60,000 more Democrats than Republicans, and its school population has more minorities every year.
Frederick denied bias in the polls. “Contrary to the opinion of our enemies, we don’t try to juice these polls,” he said.
Still, some pollsters got it right.
Republican pollster Glen Bolger, commissioned to conduct a survey for the Nevada Retail Association in September, showed Reid leading by five points.
The Reid campaign this week also released data from its internal polling showing Reid winning by five percent for most of the general election season.
State Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, a Republican icon who has served as GOP leader in the Nevada Senate since 1983, today lost his leadership seat to longtime Senator Mike McGinness, R-Fallon.
Raggio, a moderate who publicly endorsed Harry Reid over Sharron Angle in the U.S. Senate race, had been widely criticized for that choice.
Going into this morning’s caucus meeting, GOP circles were buzzing with talk that McGinness was gathering votes from the more conservative senators. McGinness reportedly had the nod from newly elected Republican senators Elizabeth Halseth and Michael Roberson, both of whom are far more conservative than the senators they replaced.
Before the election, McGinness told Las Vegas Sun bureau chief Cy Ryan he was “disappointed” with Raggio’s endorsement of Reid.
This is not the first time Raggio has been at odds with the more conservative and libertarian factions of the party. In 2003, he joined Republican governor Kenny Guinn in support of a tax increase. Then, in 2009, Raggio and four other senators joined Democrats to override Governor Jim Gibbons’ veto of a state budget that included tax increases.
Raggio, first elected to the state senate in 1972, is the state’s longest-serving state senator.
Republicans gained one seat in Tuesday’s election, but Democrats still control the state’s upper house 11 to 10.
Some quick thoughts with stories to follow on a couple-few of these items:
Harry Reid won by 41,000 votes due to wins in the big three counties (Clark, Washoe and Mineral). He also did better than expected in a number of rural counties.
Only two percent went to ”None of These Candidates” in the senate race. Surprising.
Less than one percent went to “Tea Party of Nevada” candidate Scott Ashjian. Voters wised up.
Some of CNN’s exit poll data is interesting (nearly 4,000 interviews were conducted). The gender gap favored Reid, and he won Hispanics (who were 15 percent of the vote) 68-30. Reid also won women by eleven points.
Angle won seniors 53-44. She also did well with college graduates. According to this sample, though, she only won independents by four percent. Recent polls had shown her winning nonpartisan voters by 15-17 percent.
As mentioned yesterday, the public polling in the Senate race was terrible. We can chalk it up mostly to poor methodology including silly samples.
The pollster for the Las Vegas Review-Journal,Mason-Dixon, finds itself under fire, having missed the Senate and House results by about nine points. The pollster said Angle was up by four, but she lost by five. Mason-Dixon also showed Heck up by 10, but he won by less than one percent. In 2008, Mason-Dixon was also way wrong on the spread on Obama’s victory.
Kudos to Republican pollster Glen Bolger. His survey was widely derided, but it was correct.
Ditto to Reid’s own pollster, Mark Mellman, who (we now know) showed his man up by 4 or 5 points.
Is Sharron Angle done with politics? Probably not. Look for her to go after Dean Heller’s seat should the congressman decide to challenge John Ensign (unless Ensign is indicted in which case he may finally resign). Angle also might seek Ensign’s seat. Whoever wins the primary will probably face Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) who has given signals she wants to win the seat for the Democrats.
Many Sharron Angle supporters were reportedly shocked and dismayed when the race was called for Reid last night. The surprise was most likely caused by one of two faulty assumptions.
Many Republicans believed Tea Party enthusiasm and anti-Reid anger would kick enough sand in the gears of the Nevada Democratic turnout machine to slow it down and enable the Energizer Bunny of Silver State politics to outrun her competitor.
And many Republicans believed the polls.
Both were clearly incorrect. As as a result, both the party faithful and the pollsters have some self-examination to do over the next few months.
Sharron Angle is not going to be the next senator from Nevada.
The country’s most symbolic and closely watched contest was called for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid early Wednesday evening, a win he pulled off despite extremely high negatives and the dismal state of the state economy.
With roughly 60 percent of the precincts reporting, Reid led by a margin of 50 to 45 percent. That margin narrowed briefly, then widened again. Fox News called the election for Reid; other national outlets soon followed; the victory speech came at just before 11 p.m.
This wasn’t Reid’s first rodeo, but as electoral battles go, he said, “I have to admit, this has been one of the toughest.”
Nearly every pre-election poll showed Angle with a small lead. Some said she was surging. They were wrong.
Some questioned the survey samples and poll results. They were right.
In the end, Angle was beaten by her own negatives — somewhat self-created but also driven up by a relentless and ruthless Reid campaign — along with a notable lack of support from numerous prominent Republicans, and the state Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote machine.
The Tea Party vs. Democratic Establishment face-off was intense. In the end, Reid defeated the grassroots-funded grandmother from Reno and re-proved that messaging matters.
The Reid campaign set out to define Angle as an extremist in the six post-primary weeks during which she was scrambling to raise money and hire a staff. It largely succeeded, and at times Angle helped them along with past and present impolitic statements that were featured in campaign ads. Undoubtedly, Angle wishes she could take back a pre-primary interview or five.
It is never easy or entirely graceful when a candidate who is comfortable well to the right on the political spectrum has to slide to the center for the general election. Angle was less artful at it than many, in part because she often said exactly what was on her mind first and answered questions later.
Or not.
Angle’s avoidance of the media made said media rather unhappy, but it may also have disappointed some voters who were looking to her to step up, step out, and speak plainly, no matter which reporter’s microphone was in front of her.
None of this absolves Team Reid from running a scorched-earth campaign that sometimes painted Angle as so far to the right she had fallen off the planet.
Angle won the only debate, but apparently it did not make enough of a difference.
Joe Heck is up by just 2,000 votes now in NV-3 with 55 percent of precincts reporting. So much for that 10 point lead shown by a recent poll. Heck arrived at the GOP victory event a short time ago and was reportedly waiting for more results with his family in a private room. He may be waiting a long time, and Battle ‘10 is hearing they are breaking down the room so perhaps Heck will watch the rest of the results from home.
Sharron Angle has not appeared at the GOP victory event, nor has it yet been reported that she has made a concession phone call to the Harry Reid campaign.
Joe Heck is up over Dina Titus by about 1,300 votes. There was speculation that we might have a recount in the Nevada Senate race, but if there is going to be a recount, it looks like it is going to be in NV-3.
Angle is down by about 28,000 votes with 35 percent of precincts reporting.
Battle ‘10 agrees it does not look good for Angle but is not ready to call it over just yet.
The gubernatorial race has not been called officially, but Battle ’10 is calling it over. Another Republican elected to the Nevada governor’s office. Commissioner Rory Reid picked a bad year to run.
Harry Reid is up in both Clark County (54-42) and Washoe (50-45) with a statewide lead of about 35,000 votes right now. Rural counties pending. Angle needs a big turnout from the rurals, or Reid is going to win.
In NV, Joe Heck and Dina Titus are within 400 votes of one another in Clark County.
Brian Sandoval is up over Rory Reid by 2 percent in Clark County. Call that race done.
Polls closed at 7 p.m. PT but long lines in Elko (and Washoe County) are reportedly holding things up (because if you were in line by 7:00, you got to vote, and tallies are not released until all polls close):
There may be a delay in reporting early returns in all statewide Nevada races due to a power outage at a Clark County polling location, said the secretary of state a few minutes ago.
All voters in line at that site as of 7 PM will be allowed to cast their votes, said a secretary of state press release.
No results of any statewide races can be reported in any county until all polls across the state are closed.
There is no estimate at this time of how long any delay might be.
Update (10:00 ET): Power problem fixed. But the secretary of state now says there are long lines up in Elko (northern Nevada) that could cause delays.
Last week, Nevada GOP victory committee attorney David O’Mara sent a complaint letter to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office, alleging that there were several instances of voter fraud in Clark and Washoe Counties. The Secretary of State’s office looked into the complaints, and concluded that there was “no evidence of voting machine tampering or voter fraud,” although admitting “the presence of occasional human error in the election process.”
Yesterday, O’Mara sent a letter in response to that report. “We remain concerned … that, for the most part, your investigation did not answer or resolve out questions,” he wrote. Here are four issues O’Mara remains concerned about:
1. Double voting. The SOS report conceded that one voter had voted twice: once, under a different voter’s name and once under his own, thanks to previous voter’s information still being present on a poll computer. When the man came to poll workers and said his ballot looked wrong (because the first voter had lived in a different locality than the second voter), the poll workers allowed him to vote again. The SOS report said that this man should not been allowed to vote again, but it was clear that no poll worker had intentionally committed voter fraud. O’Mara faults them for not announcing any efforts to prevent this, such as sending out a memo to poll workers about how to avoid this in the future.
2. Different number of ballots cast than voters signed-in. O’Mara found several instances of a different number of ballots being cast than the voters signed in at polling locations. In one instance, the poll workers were unable to explain why 148 voters were signed in, but only 147 had voted, although they speculated that the person might have signed-in and then opted not to vote after all. The report also stated that not all of O’Mara’s discrepancy examples had been investigated, since the SOS office was trying to get the report out before Election Day. O’Mara said that the SOS report confirms the findings of discrepancy, but does nothing to prevent more such errors, including on Election Day. Saying that double voting “strike[s] at the heart of our democracy,” O’Mara stressed that there should be more safeguards to ensure no such discrepancies occurred. “This happens because of what we call a ‘fleeing voter,’” says Secretary of State Ross Miller. “This is when someone signs in but then does not cast a ballot either because they were called away or did not want to wait. It happens every election.
3. Poll hours during early voting period. “The polls are not closed during the early voting period. They are considered open for the entire 14 day early voting period,” said the SOS report, before discussing the process in which votes were counted after the polls closed. O’Mara pointed out that Nevada law mandates certain hours that polls may be open during early voting and that Clark County is violating these laws by allowing local election boards to choose to open polling sites earlier or keep them open later than designated times. He also said that he hoped that all mandatory polling hours would be strictly enforced on Election Day.
4. Access to early voting logs requires a public records request. O’Mara says that while the early voting logs are public records, the time delay that a public records request presents is not acceptable and there ought to be an easier way to access them.
“We have not had a chance to review the concerns, as we just received them yesterday,” says Miller. “We will review them as soon as possible and as our resources allow.”
About 100,000 people had voted in Clark County as of 3:00 PT this afternoon, county officials reported. The turnout so far has been lower than expected. If this holds true, Reid’s presumed lead over Angle from early voting could hold.
Exit polling is showing Angle and Reid about even, but exit polling has been known to be unreliable (remember Kerry?)
Cleta Mitchell, Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle’s legal counsel, sent a letter to the Department of Justice today, requesting an investigation into whether the coordination between Democrat senate candidate Harry Reid’s campaign’s and Harrah’s revealed voter intimidation in violation of federal law.
Referring to an article by Battle ‘10’s Elizabeth Crum about the e-mails between Reid’s campaign and Harrah’s, Mitchell wrote in the letter that “The posting details and documents an orchestrated effort by Harrah’s … to intimidate and coerce Harrah’s employees to vote for Harry Reid for the United States Senate, to track whether or not employees had or had not voted and to pressure supervisors to ensure that the employees reporting to those supervisors were voting.”
“And these overt activities were specifically demanded by one or more persons who work for Sen. Reid,” she added. “The evidence shows that Harrah’s management has continually communicated to employees their concern with electing Harry Reid and not just to ensure that the employees voted for the candidates of their choice.”
Mitchell also noted that she had filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission last week about union intimidation of voters. That complaint noted that union employees had hung about polling locations while their members were inside voting, and had sometimes monitored inside the polling sites, actions which could potentially make union members feel intimidated.
“This constitutes nothing less than a concerted scheme to violate the rights of Harrah’s employees which clearly interferes with these employees’ rights to cast a secret ballot for the candidates of their choice, without fear of reprisals, recriminations, job loss, or other adverse employment actions. This illegal, improper and heavy-handed intervention into the fundamental voting rights of Harrah’s employees should be immediately investigated by the Department of Justice,” concluded Mitchell.
UPDATE: The Department of Justice declined to comment on the matte. And David O’Mara, legal counsel for the Nevada GOP Victory Committee, has sent a letter to Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller requesting an investigation of the situation.
Executives at the casino giant Harrah’s pushed company employees to vote early in an all-out effort to help the Harry Reid campaign, according to internal emails obtained by Battle ‘10.
The stepped-up effort began Wednesday when a Reid staffer sent an email pleading for help to Harrah’s top lobbyist, Jan Jones. Soon after, Marybel Batjer, Harrah’s vice president of public policy and communications, distributed that plea via email to executives throughout the company.
The Reid campaign staffer, whose name was removed in the email Batjer sent to Harrah’s executives, said “ANYTHING” would be done to help with the company’s get out the vote effort. The staffer cited the fact that 1,100 MGM employees had already voted and indicated dissatisfaction with the turnout from Harrah’s.
The staffer told Jones, senior vice president of communications and government relations, that the Reid campaign had “connected with Culinary” and that the problem was with mid-level supervisors. “They simply are not cooperating with and listening to upper management,” wrote the staffer.
The Reid staffer then indicated that the culinary union had money available for more busses to take Harrah’s employees to the polls. The Reid staffer suggests that Harrah’s execs “put a headlock on your supervisors to get them to follow through.”
The staffer also offered Senator Reid’s personal involvement, writing, “PLEASE… PLEASE tell me how I can help. Would it help to have the Senator call Gary and help give you the backing you need?”
In her email to management, Harrah’s Batjer requested of her colleagues to “PLEASE do whatever we need” to communicate to company supervisors that there is “NOTHING more important than to get employees out to vote.”
She even issued an express endorsement. “Waking up to the defeat of Harry Reid Nov. 3 will be devastating for our industry’s future,” Batjer wrote.
On Friday, Western Regional President Tom Jenkin sent out a follow-up email showing a total vote count for Harrah’s properties along with the percentages of employees who had voted at each property. Attached to the email was a spreadsheet showing employee names and at which property they worked. Supervisors were asked to fill in codes explaining why their employees had not yet voted.
The Harrah’s employee who forwarded the emails asked not to be identified due to fear of reprisal. The employee said the pressure from upper management was “disturbing.”
“We were asked to talk to people individually to find out why they had not yet voted and to fill in these spreadsheets explaining why,” the employee said. “I did not feel comfortable doing that.”
“It put me in a very awkward position,” the employee added, saying the level of coordination between Harrah’s upper management, the culinary union, and the Reid campaign was “disgusting.”
Calls to Harrah’s management were not immediately returned. Jan Jones’ assistant said at 10:25 EST that she would attempt to track down an executive who could comment.
A spokesman with the Federal Election Commission declined to comment on the case, but encourages anyone who feels that an election-law violation has occurred to file a complaint with the commission.
Story to follow, but here a few more photos of Sharron Angle talking with voters in Reno today. This one was taken with some seniors playing a high stakes game of penny poker:
This was taken at a local restaurant. The lady to the left is an ex-teacher who told Angle to “keep rattling their cages” and said also thinks the Department of Education should be abolished:
Here Angle talks with seven voters of mixed political persuasions who asked her questions about her positions on education and the economy:
According to the Wall Street Journal, over 30 aides to Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, are in Nevada working to save Harry Reid’s re-election bid.
The sending of Baucus aides to the Silver State might be the cause of some chagrin to Democrats back home in Montana. Aaron Flint of Montana’s Northern News Network phrases it this way: “As local legislative Democrats appear to be on the verge of losing both houses of the state legislature, two of the state’s top Democratic hitters are sending their cash and their ground troops elsewhere.”
Indeed, the Montana statehouse is divided evenly 50-50, and as the state’s Democrat attorney general (and likely 2012 gubernatorial contender) notes, “We have legislative races that come down to five or six votes. So, you could actually be that vote that makes a difference.”
To put it in perspective, the Montana Democratic Party has perhaps a dozen field operatives working in the state, a mere fraction of the the Baucus Force that’s been deployed to help Reid. No doubt Sen. Baucus’s help, if it had been forthcoming, would have been appreciated.
After doing a morning interview with Dennis Miller followed by a tele-townhall with McCain, Sharron Angle arrives and is warmly greeted at a senior center in Reno:
One of her third party opponents wants to discuss policy:
Angle is all smiles for everyone who waves and stops by (she can barely eat her lunch):
Battle ‘10 will be embedded with the Angle campaign for the next couple of hours; more to come. Follow our Tweets @NROBattle10
