GOP headaches now include Sharron Angle: Jon Ralston

One day during the 2015 session of the Nevada Legislature, Sharron Angle was visiting the building when a Hispanic man working for the Republican National Committee approached her.

After he introduced himself, Angle immediately asked him a question: “Are you legal?”

The man was stunned. “I was obviously shocked since I had never been asked that in my entire life - I was born in Miami,” the operative, who requested anonymity, told me. “Here I am, a Republican operative in Nevada, and she thinks the RNC hired someone illegal … Flabbergasted, I responded, ‘Yes, and I'm a veteran.’ Not to be outdone, she responds with, ‘Is that (being a vet) how you got your status?’”

And now the question must be asked anew: Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate?

The reflex is mockery. After all, this is the woman who once used an anti-illegal immigration ad featuring menacing Hispanic thugs, who once called Harry Reid “the best friend an illegal alien ever had” and who once told a schoolroom full of Latinos,“Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

What's more, Angle is competing in a Republican primary against a respected congressman, Joe Heck, for the right to face a former attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, who would be the first Latina ever elected to the Club of 100. (I understand Cortez Masto has offered to do a fundraiser at her home for Angle.)

For Democrats, this is like a waiting six years for that sequel you never thought was going to happen to the movie you loved so much. And then, without warning, it is released, and you can’t believe your luck.

Angle didn’t just lose to Reid in 2010, the year that every smart Republican in the country thought he could not survive. Angle’s defeat was accompanied by some of the more startling moments in political history, bringing national derision and amazement.

Her admonition about having to use “Second Amendment remedies” if “this Congress keeps going the way it is.”

Her unique view of the media: “"We needed to have the press be our friend ... We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported."

And her brand of conservatism: “They [Republicans] say, 'You're too conservative.' Was Thomas Jefferson too conservative? I'm tired of some people calling me wacky."

Get ready to be really exhausted then, Ms. Angle.

There are so many more: Her claiming Sharia Law existed in a town in Texas (Frankford), a place that doesn’t exist. Her telling women who were raped and had become pregnant not to abort the baby and make “what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.”

Her belief that “separation of church and state is unconstitutional.”

And, of course, her scurrying away from reporters in parking lots, although never from me. I had one of my most memorable interviews of my career with her on June 29, 2010.

I still recall Angle walking off the set in Reno that evening, then turning around and asking me, rhetorically, “Harry Reid will probably use some of that in ads, huh?” She was not wrong.

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Back then, Angle was a legislative backbencher, known mostly for being a “no” on almost anything. The joke in the 42-member Assembly when she was the lone nay vote was to call it "41 to Angle."

After Reid’s campaign meddled in the GOP primary to help elevate Angle, his campaign destroyed her in the general and he won by nearly 6 percentage points and 41,000 votes.

Now she is back, after promising to scour the country for voter fraud, implying she lost to Reid because the election was rigged. Next up: She helps O.J. find Nicole's real killer.

Many Republicans think Angle was the only GOP candidate with a pulse who could have lost to Reid. (This isn’t entirely fair because Reid’s brilliant and ruthless 2010 campaign might have beaten anyone.)

Heck, whom Democrats love to label a Tea Partier but who gets solid but not far-right ratings from conservative groups, has been preparing for an Angle challenge. His folks are irritated they might have to spend more money than they wanted to defeat her. But the Angle of ’16 is not the Angle of ’10 who raised $30 million (yes, you read that right) and had the support of Tea Party groups from sea to shining sea.

I would not be surprised to see the Democrats – aka The Party of Reid – use the 2010 playbook to meddle in that GOP primary (hello, super PAC) to make Heck sweat more than he wants to, spend a little cash and maybe tack to the right.

Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate?

The reflex is mockery. After all, no one in a high-profile race running an anti-Establishment campaign and using illegal immigration as a rhetorical weapon, claiming the media should only ask friendly questions and regularly making outrageous, outlandish statements, could ever win a Republican primary.

Right?

Jon Ralston has covered Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century. He blogs at RalstonReports.com, hosts the statewide daily PBS show Ralston Live and writes for the Reno Gazette-Journal, where this column first appeared.

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