Despite his seemingly unquenchable energy and optimism, this campaign season has at times been a bit frustrating for Republican congressional candidate Joe Heck. What with all the hullabaloo about some lady from the rurals named Sharron Angle and a small-town politician named Harry Reid, the man who aims to win a hotly contested House seat for the GOP by defeating freshman Dina Titus can hardly get a word in edgewise.
Heck can be comforted by the fact that he will get plenty of press as November approaches, in part because of the strange fact that Nevada’s Third District is the nation’s most populous Congressional seat. It has one million residents, or one-third of Nevada’s total population, and includes the city of Henderson, the suburbs of Las Vegas, parts of North Las Vegas, and a good portion of unincorporated Clark County. The Democrats currently have a voter-registration edge of about 25,000 in NV-3, down from two years ago when they were up by more than 39,000. But it’s the more than 63,000 nonpartisan voters who hold the key to the crucial swing district, which has 402,183 registered voters as of the end of June.
The Titus campaign knows it needs to appeal to those unaffiliated voters and has been doing its best to link Heck with Angle, saying they share a dangerous and extreme agenda. Heck has not shied away from Angle and, in fact, has appeared at several events with her, most recently at last weekend’s RightOnline convention of conservative bloggers and activists in Las Vegas. Heck, who spoke before Angle, called for the party to “oust Dina Titus, fire Nancy Pelosi and retire Harry Reid, and send a message to Washington that November is coming.”
Here is Heck’s fiery nine-minute RightOnline speech. Or, if you prefer, read the full transcript here. Heck’s new ad (below) is “Operation New Direction,” a slogan he rolled out last week at RightOnline. It includes a mix of anti-Titus/anti-establishment and pro-Heck blurbs.
This weekend, Heck also plans to join Angle during a Clark County Republican Party sponsored “Conservative Country Concert” event at the Henderson amphitheater which seats 4,000 and is expected to sell out.