Bad news for Reid: Tea Party candidate fades in Nevada

The entry of Scott Ashjian as the “Tea Party” candidate in Nevada’s Senate race had conservatives worried about a possible split vote and a Harry Reid win in November.  Some believe that Reid and his Democratic allies would have helped promote Ashjian, who initially got some support for his stated link to the activists.  If Reid hoped to maintain that, though, the latest polling news from the Las Vegas Review-Journal should have him crashing back to Earth:

Sue Lowden has established herself as the far-ahead GOP front-runner in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race and the Republican most likely to beat Sen. Harry Reid, even with a Tea Party candidate on the Nov. 2 general election ballot, according to a new poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Six weeks before early primary voting starts, Lowden’s closest GOP rival, Danny Tarkanian, has failed to catch fire with Republican voters in the past few months, the survey found. Meantime, Sharron Angle lost some conservative support, putting her out of the running along with two other long-shot contenders, investment banker John Chachas and Las Vegas Assemblyman Chad Christensen. …

In a general election matchup with three named candidates — including Scott Ashjian, who has filed under the Tea Party of Nevada banner — the new April poll showed:

■ Lowden would win with 46 percent of the vote compared with 38 percent for Reid, 5 percent for Ashjian and 11 percent undecided.

■ Tarkanian and Reid would end in a dead heat with 39 percent of the vote each, while Ashjian would pick up 11 percent of the vote and with another 11 percent undecided.

So much for the third-party ploy. Ashjian got a lot of bad press over the last couple of weeks after allegations of check-kiting surfaced. The state dropped the charges and vacated an arrest warrant, but only after Ashjian ponied up almost $6,000 in restitution. The Tea Party groups in the state have been especially active in labeling Ashjian’s candidacy yet another fraud, which has raised his visibility but almost eliminated his support.

Reid’s not getting any more popular, either.  Despite his rosy prediction that passing ObamaCare would bolster his support in Nevada, he has reached a new low in disapproval at 56%.  The only glimmer of hope yet for Reid is that his strongest Republican challenger at this stage in the race, Sue Lowden, can’t get to 50% yet.  In order to beat her, though, he’d have to win over all of the undecideds and most of the supporters of Ashjian’s Tea Party coalition, and do it with 56% disapproving of his performance.

Well, that’s not the only glimmer of hope.  Reid reportedly has a $25 million war chest for this election, and won’t face any challenge in the primary.  He can do a lot of damage with that kind of cash, but what he really needs is to change the opinion of Nevadans about him — and so far, they’re only changing in the wrong direction for his chance to go back for another term.  (via Dave Weigel)

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