LAS VEGAS — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid may owe the final six years of his career to Nevada Latinos, who boosted him to victory in the 2010 midterm elections. And in his last act in elected office, Reid is trying to elect the man who was once his voice in the Latino community.
State Sen. Ruben Kihuen, a longtime Reid protege, first volunteered for the senator in 1998 to get extra credit for a high school government class. Within a decade, Reid gave Kihuen his blessing to challenge an incumbent Democratic state legislator, after climbing the ladder through Reid’s office as a regional representative.
As Reid calls time on his political career, he has chosen and shepherded a slate of Democratic candidates like Kihuen to replace him at the upper levels of government in Nevada, leaving longtime allies in positions of power. Strikingly, none of them resemble Reid — they are Latino, African-American, female, young. Those close to Reid say it’s a calculated move by a tactician who recognized years ago that the Democratic Party in his state (and elsewhere) needed to be younger and more diverse to succeed.
“He doesn’t just say diversity is important, he actually goes out and recruits, molds, shapes, trains and advocates on behalf of them,” said state Sen. Aaron Ford, a 44-year-old African-American attorney who would become the state Senate president if Democrats retake the chamber this fall. “There’s a rainbow of people who have been influenced by him.”
But Reid’s hand-picked bench — Catherine Cortez Masto for Senate, Kihuen and Jacky Rosen for the House, Ford and others for the state Legislature (and possibly future statewide office) — face an uncertain year. The electorate is disgruntled, and the top of the ticket has not been the strength it was in 2008 and 2012, as Donald Trump has held close to Hillary Clinton. Cortez Masto, the would-be heir to the keys of Reid’s Democratic machine, hasn’t broken past GOP Rep. Joe Heck in a single public Senate poll.
It’s not just 2016 but 2018 that lies on the line. Republicans are already looking to the Senate and gubernatorial races in two years, when Reid-less Democrats will be tested again. GOP operatives believe that victories this year will prevent Democrats from putting up credible candidates, given the party’s 2014 wipeout, when rising Democratic leaders like former Rep. Steven Horsford and former Secretary of State Ross Miller lost elections.
Building a diverse Democratic bench in Nevada has been a long-term project for Reid, and he has ceased to see any novelty in it. “They’re just representing Nevada,” Reid said in an interview. “That’s what Nevada is.”
"It’s the testament to the kind of politician he is,” said Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the powerful Culinary Union, a longtime partner of Reid’s. “He’s a forward thinker. He sees where the state is moving, and where population patterns are headed and he knows we need strong Latino leaders, and it’s why he’s done a lot to empower everyone from Ruben for Congress and Astrid [Silva] to be the leading activist on immigration reform."
Reid has been supporting Kihuen’s rise for nearly two decades, starting with his volunteer shift in 1998, when Kihuen was getting a “C” in his high school government class.
“Yeah, the pressure. It was a big deal for me to just be in the same room as a U.S. senator,” said Kihuen, a 36-year-old Mexican immigrant who’s running for Congress in the Las Vegas-based 4th District. “I was translating for him in the Latino community, like at town hall meetings. That’s really where the mentorship began.”
By 2006, Reid pushed Kihuen into a successful primary run against an incumbent Democratic state legislator, starting his rise as an elected official.
Reid also backed Cortez Masto from the beginning, in her run for state attorney general that year. Since then, Reid suggested he put the screws on Cortez Masto to run for other offices, like lieutenant governor and governor. Only this election cycle, when Reid decided to retire, were his entreaties finally accepted.
“She said, ‘no,’ I want to go to Washington,” Reid said. “So that’s good, you don’t have many people who can withstand the pressure of people like me to do what she wants to do. So I knew, when I decided I couldn’t run again, I knew who I would call.”
Several of Reid's disciples noted his devotion to them even in defeat. Horsford, who suffered a surprising defeat in 2014, said he got a call from Reid in the hours after his loss. "He said, 'I’m proud of you. You worked your butt off, brush it off and get back in," Horsford said, adding that Reid went on to describe an early loss in his own campaign and "it doesn't define you, it matters what you do in response."
Horsford ultimately chose not to run for Congress again in 2016, citing health problems — and opening the door for Kihuen. But when asked if he would run again someday, Horsford said, "Never say never."
Cortez Masto stands to inherit Reid’s party-leader status if she manages to overcome her Senate polling deficit. Reid’s supporters are careful in the way they characterize his top-down approach to leadership, euphemizing the implication that he’s solely in control. Ford called Reid “almost omnipresent,” while Jim Manley, Reid’s former Senate spokesman, said, “The party is Reid and Reid is the party.” Jon Ralston, a Nevada political journalist, calls him “Meddler-in-Chief.”
Running the “Reid machine” — an organizing force that delivered consequential, sometimes unexpected, victories — is no small opportunity. But Reid doesn’t expect Cortez Masto to run it the same way that he did, in the same way he didn’t replicate his own political mentor, former Nevada Gov. Michael O’Callaghan, who was also his high school teacher and boxing coach.
“I couldn’t be him. He was a foul-mouthed man and people loved him, most popular politician in the state of Nevada,” Reid said, pointing to a picture of O’Callaghan in his office. “I couldn’t be him, and she can’t be me. She has to be who she is. And she’ll be very successful.”
And if Cortez Masto were to lose? At the suggestion, Cancela blew out her cheeks and sighed. “I don’t like to think about that,” she said.
“Let’s say Masto loses, who leads the Nevada Democratic Party? All kinds of people will feel like they have a claim to it,” said Jeremy Hughes, a Republican consultant in Nevada.
Reid’s status as party leader hasn’t been challenged, but some of his efforts to build the Democratic bench his way have run into roadblocks. In 2011, Reid backed Kihuen’s first congressional bid, in the 1st District. But when recently defeated Rep. Dina Titus refused to bow out of a comeback bid, despite pressure to do so, Kihuen pulled out to avoid a “resource-draining” battle.
And Reid once again failed to clear the field for Kihuen in his Democratic primary this year, when two other strong candidates, philanthropist Susie Lee and Bernie Sanders-endorsed Lucy Flores, forced an expensive battle.
Nor did Rosen have a free ride in Nevada’s 3rd District, where another Democratic candidate, Muslim immigrant Jesse Sbaih, accused Reid of allegedly telling him “a Muslim cannot win this race.” (Reid’s office denied that he said that.)
Republicans gleefully suggest that that sort of thing will happen more often among Nevada Democrats post-Reid, as they’ve struggled with their own problematic primaries. “Democrats may be in for a whole new set of primaries in 2018 because there’s no Harry Reid to stop them,” Hughes said.
To stave off any kind of leadership vacuum that would come with a Masto loss, Reid is throwing every ounce of firepower behind Cortez Masto, even slamming her opponent from the floor of the Senate. The race has drawn nearly $40 million in outside spending, with Republicans activating a serious ground game for the first time.
Heck and Reid have history, too. Back in 2008, first-time candidate Shirley Breeden, backed by Reid, beat the then-state senator by one point.
“People think this is a personal thing between Joe Heck and I. I have nothing against Joe Heck,” Reid said. “What I’m against is somebody who endorses everything [Donald Trump] does.”
Heck, for his part, rejected that the race was at all personal for him, but it “probably for Harry” it is. “I’m looking at the opportunity that after 8 years of Barack Obama and 30 years of Harry Reid, Americans and Nevadans are ready for change, and we’re going to bring them that change on Nov. 8.”
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