Onward!

THE ADS COMETH

I am getting more frequent notifications of ad buys, so it would seem the election is nigh as September dawns.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has signaled its intention to try to defeat Rep. Dina Titus with a buy here – at least $172,000 added so far and more to come. How much more will determine how serious the NRCC is to elect state Sen. Carrie Buck. The current landscape, via AdImpact:

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First, we had the privilege of seeing the premiere of my friend Robin Greenspun’s film “Una Leyenda,” which is about Otto Merida, the Latin Chamber pioneer, and it was just superb. Merida’s life story is very compelling and his building the Latin Chamber into a force, now amplified by his successor, Peter Guzman, is a consummate Vegas tale. Robin does a marvelous job telling this story, brilliantly framing it with a dominoes game between Merida and Guzman, bookending the narrative and interviews with many prominent Nevadans. If you get a chance to see it – there will be other showings – it’s definitely worth your time.

Second, like many, I was stunned and saddened by the unexpected passing of Jackie Glass, whom I had known for many years. We had just run into Glass and her husband, District Attorney Steve Wolfson, a couple of weeks ago. Glass started in journalism, became a lawyer, famous as a judge because of O.J. Simpson and then had yet another career as a very well-respected arbitrator. She had always been kind and supportive, and I still fondly remember a lunch at Paymon’s many years ago when one of their daughters was thinking of going into journalism. My condolences to the entire family.

Onward!

ALWAYS A VEGAS ANGLE

I linked to this NOTUS story, subsequently picked up by The Times and others, last week. The lede: “For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.”

And where is the developer, Kingsbarn Realty Capital, based? Las Vegas!

I did a little digging and Kingsbarn has given some local money here – to Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley and Clark County Commission Chairman Michael Naft. It also is represented by longtime player, The Ferraro Group, which put out a “this is just a sliver of land” release quoting Lanny Davis, the ex-Clinton aide.

Oh yes: We Matter.

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Today, I’m turning to Nevada’s four congressional districts — including one race for a rare open seat that could be interesting, definitely, maybe.

The full Ralston Ratings — including my ratings and analysis of all four Nevada House races — are below for paid subscribers. It’s less than 70 cents a day.

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If he wins re-election in this environment, Joe Lombardo should be a guy the party, in theory, should be doubling down on. Here’s a guy who doesn’t strike me as as a cultural conservative in the old traditional model…kind of a law and order guy, but he’s not a he’s not overly Trumpy. He’s just sort of a realistic person. I don’t know how else to put it.

So far, I don’t disagree with this characterization of Lombardo — at least as far as his description of who the gov is..

More from CT and CC:

CC: Very pragmatic Republican

CT: Very pragmatic conservative

CC: Yes, kind of a throwback in that way, right?

CT: He’s got to work with a Democratic legislature, so he’s got a very sort of bipartisan track record.

Let me interrupt here to say: Bipartisan track record? Not exactly. He was at loggerheads with the Dems in both of his sessions, and he has set a record for vetoes. This was not all Lombardo’s fault, of course. But bipartisan record? No.

Go on Chuck:

Look, if you told me he loses re-election, it wouldn’t surprise me in this environment. It’s going to be very hard to win as a Republican, you know. Especially, I mean, you want to talk about an economy that has been harmed by the war with Canada. The Las Vegas economy has been harmed greatly by this by this war with Canada…there’s a part of me that wonders are we underestimating the like we’re all looking at this at the contours you know we always underestimate waves right they’re always when they happen they’re always bigger than you expect he can’t…but if he survives in this environment, I think Lombardo…should be where the party is looking for its next generation of leaders.

MY TWO CENTS:

I think Chuck is correct that if the GOP returns to any sense of normalcy in the post-Trump era — a very large IF — that Lombardo may provide a template to build on. But Lombardo for president? No offense to the governor, but come on!

It’s not only that he doesn’t have the rhetorical skills or national bona fides but he would have no interest. Folks, I chuckle regularly when I hear that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s folks think Lombardo may run against her in 2028 should he win re-election. Or maybe against her colleague, Jacky Rosen, in 2030! Lombardo is about as likely to do either as is Brian Sandoval, the former governor.

Lombardo decided to run for governor as his second term as sheriff was ending and some smart GOP operatives approached him, figuring he looked gubernatorial and would hold his own in Democratic Clark County. They were right — barely — and Lombardo turned out to love the job.

But governor is as far as he goes, not because he couldn’t win a Senate race (maybe he could) but because I have never seen any evidence of Potomac Fever. And president? Donald Trump is more likely to agree to an interview with me than Joe Lombardo is to run for president.

The full CT/CC discussion is below; the Lombardo part is at the 17-minute mark.

Here is that section of the book, which includes his friend Dick Durbin’s reaction when Reid asked him to keep funding the program after he retired in 2016:

Veteran reporter George Knapp and I talked about Reid’s interest in UFOs recently.

I hope you’ll buy the book.

There are many previously unseen documents and emails in the book, and I have used this Substack to post many that space or narrative flow did not allow me to include in The Game Changer.

With Iran in the news, I wanted to post a few more documents and emails showing Reid’s history on Iran and Israel. You may recall that Reid eventually voted for President Obama’s Iran deal, much to the consternation of his anti-Obama, pro-Israel chief of staff, David Krone, and others, too. At one point, the senator asked his staff to find ways to distance himself from Obama on Iran.

But there’s more — and I have included some interesting documents below:

From 2009, Reid held a conference call with quite a few Jewish leaders, along with then-Rep. Shelley Berkley, to emphasize his long support of Israel. In the document below, which contains a list of participants and prepares Reid for possible questions, you can see he had recently met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was “impressed with his commitment to peace…”

Reid’s staff also included a recent letter from Reid to Obama raising concerns about Iran. The document is a rare inside look at how a staff prepares a senator for a critical meeting with context and talking points:

Reidiranjewishleaders

1.22MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

From 2013 comes a memo from a staffer about a resolution proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bob Menendez, telling Reid that GOP megadonor ”Sheldon Adelson asked you to look into (the proposal).” I write in the book about how Adelson and Reid had a surprisingly cordial relationship, which benefited Reid when he ran for re-elections and gave Adelson easy access, albeit sub rosa, to the Democratic leader. Here’s the memo:

In 2014, when the New York Times reported President Obama might bypass Congress to pass his Iran deal, Krone took the opportunity in a note to Reid to attack “typical Obama White House behavior…”

Then, in 2015, before the Iran deal passed in October and Reid supported it, Krone gave Reid a heads-up in April that a deal was pending and then gave him advice on how to handle a Bob Corker-Bob Menendez bill giving congressional oversight, again taking a gratuitous shot at The White House. (In case you have missed previous Substacks or not read the book, Krone despised Obama and it became a problem for Reid.)

Here are those two memos:

Hope you enjoyed this curtain-pullback on Reid and Iran over the years. Let me know if you want to see other documents — people, subject matters, whatever might be of interest.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

I write in my book about Harry Reid that he was interviewed by the legendary Mike Wallace for “60 Minutes” for a piece that never aired and was supposed to be focused on then-Sen. Paul Laxalt. The interview took place in the summer of 1984 at an unpropitious time for Reid, a few months before his re-election bid for the House.

The interview, which was recorded and transcribed by his staff, has many priceless moments as Wallace presses Reid about Nevada and organized crime. Below is a book excerpt and then the transcript of the entire interview.

Full transcript:

60minutes

11.4MB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse behind the scenes. Please order the book at the link above or on Amazon or anywhere else you prefer, and it is in some bookstores. Reviews have (so far) been quite nice. Sampling:

The Economist

The Washington Post

Salena Zito

Until next time…

His longtime state director, Mary Connelly, gave me a clue, though. She told me that she warned the senator to make sure every document was vetted, but he responded that was not necessary, that she should just put everything they had into the collection at the University of Nevada, Reno.

That’s when I started to rub my hands together in anticipation.

The archive did not disappoint, as this story illuminates. More than 1,000 boxes and 12 million digital files. Without help — and the staff at UNR was spectacular — I never would have found notes, memos and even Reid’s FBI files — he was investigated for many years. The documents helped me understand Reid better, flesh out how decisions were made, provide heretofore undisclosed details of his public life.

I hope you will reads The Game Changer. And if you long for more, to see some of the documents mentioned in the book and some that didn’t make it in, I will keep posting interesting archived stuff here. (Read previous posts to see what I already have made public.)

Here are some:

A brochure from Reid’s first congressional campaign.

A “Road to 2004” meeting agenda in 2001 (after Bush 43 had been elected) sent to then-Reid Chief of Staff Susan McCue to the senator and to be held at the offices of Greer Margolis, a prominent Dem political/comms firm.

One many emails from then-Reid Chief of Staff David Krone showing his disdain for President Obama and The White House — the senator was constantly having to listen to Krone lambaste a president Reid loved. (This one links to this Politico story.)

Hope you enjoyed this. Feel free to ping me if you have any docs you want to see, and I will try to dig them up from my files…

Harry Reid and Donald Trump had once been collegial, with Trump giving him money and at one event complaining about Steve Wynn (who later became his pal.)

But Reid eventually soured on Trump, along with many others, and tried to help Hillary Clinton in 2016, as this book excerpt shows:

That’s today’s tidbit. Whet your appetite for more?