Obama's Vegas chips: Harry Reid, all in: The Swamp
The Swamp
Chicago Tribune

'All they want to do, is have some fun,' and raise a couple of million dollars.

Posted May 26, 2009 8:30 PM
Obama and Reid in Vegas.jpg

President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at Las Vegas International Airport earlier this evening. Photo by Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images.)

The Swamp

by Mark Silva

With just 35-percent support back home in Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might have a reelection problem.

If he only had an opponent.

Reid in Vegas.jpg

Hoping to keep the opposition at bay and avert the home-state implosion that ended former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's reign, Reid hopes to raise $25 million for his reelection

And tonight, in the Colloseum at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, with a little help from singers Sheryl Crow and Bette Midler and President Barack Obama, making his first fundraising appearance as president for an individual senator, Reid hopes to raise a couple million.

This is after Obama's famous dissing of Vegas, insisting at a "town hall'' styled appearance in Indiana in February that all those companies collecting federal bailouts should reconsider their Vegas junket plans: "You can't take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime," the president said then.

Sheryl Crow in Washington.jpg

The mayor of Vegas cried foul, complaining that the president was killing tourism. And the governor, Republican Jim Gibbons, suggested he'd have nothing to do with the Democratic president during this Vegas appearance -- indeed the White House today found itself explaining why the governor wasn't receiving the president at the airport in Vegas.

(Wonder if he's ever paid close attention to what Sheryl Crow once sang about Leaving Las Vegas: "These days it seems, nowhere is far enough away.'')

"I haven't seen many politicians meet anybody anywhere and not find it a convenient opportunity to press whatever case it is they're trying to make,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today. "I would suggest that if the government has a specific point that he'd like to make to the president of the United States, he's landing in a few hours in Las Vegas, and apparently has been invited to make that case.''

Mayor Oscar Goodman was making the case in the hometown press, as mayors will do: ""He's the most important person in the world, and people listen to what he has to say,'' Goodman said of Obama. "When the president indicates that there is something inappropriate and unseemly about businesses coming to Las Vegas, that doesn't do us any good, and I think that's going to be straightened out (today)."

Obama stays in Vegas tonight, reportedly at Caesar's Palace.

Yet, it wasn't so much Vegas' reputation (there's a great phrase) that was at stake during tonight's stop as it was Reid's future. Obama won the state's five electoral votes in November. Reid hopes to hold on to the state's popular vote next year.

(Harry Reid's power to the leader, at the Las Vegas airport, photo by Charles Dharapak / AP. Singer Sheryl Crow at the Midwestern Ball at the Convention Center in Washington, photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP)

Reid has examined Daschle's career-ending defeat in South Dakota. "What I learned from him is you have to prepare for the worst," Reid said of Daschle, in an interview with The New York Times ."I've done that. I'm not sure Tom did that."

A Nevada poll run by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research last week found that just 35 percent of those surveyed said they definitely would vote for Reid. Who has no opponent yet.

"As soon as he took over for Daschle and became the national party Senate spokesman, he stopped being Harry Reid the senator from Nevada, and he turned into Harry Reid the voice of the Senate," Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon's managing director, told the Times' Adam Nagourney. "His whole profile changed; his numbers changed. This is exactly what happened with Tom Daschle."

After his overnight stay in Vegas, Obama plans to impart some words at Nellis Air Force Base about the economic stimulus act that Reid's own Congress has enacted -- undoubtedly with some detail about the benefits that Nevada stands to reap from the $787-billion act - and then head to Los Angeles.

The president plans to raise money for the Democratic National Comittee on Wednesday evening -- at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

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Comments

Reid is the best friend a minority party Republican could ask for.


If I was a Republican I wouldn't want Reid to go away, in fact I'd donate to his reelection campaign.



Did President Obama go to Vegas on the "taxpayers dime", I thought in the campaign he said that was a no-no?


The mayor of Vegas cried foul, complaining that the president was killing tourism. ~ M.S.

Along with the banks, automotive industry, and oil and gas. Mustapha Mond is an extremely busy individual. I would 'call it madness' but you 'call it love'.


But what about that beautiful white Telecaster that Ms. Crow is holding? I need a white Telecaster. Looks like she is fingering a Dm chord at the 5th position. Gotta have the minor chords to do the sad songs.


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