While Harry Reid and Sharron Angle have been going toe to toe (they are tied in the polls) there is a “Tea Party of Nevada” candidate, Scott Ashjian, who wants his 15 minutes of fame. The problem for Angle is that Ashjian’s 15 minutes of fame could cost her the race.
There was no “Tea Party of Nevada” until Ashjian created it and the media relished the novelty. He has never been to a Tea Party event and has not been endorsed by any Tea Party out there so the left loves that he could help give Reid six more years in the U.S. Senate by people mistakenly voting for the “Tea Party” candidate. Speculation has it that Reid is behind Ashjian’s candidacy, but that has not been proven. All Ashjian can do in this race is save Harry Reid. Certainly nobody with any real Tea Party affiliation would ever want that to happen.
Now there are the audio tapes.
The Chairman of the “Tea Party of Nevada,” Syd James (it is basically a party of two), arranged a meeting with the Angle camp under the premise that Ashjian would drop out and endorse Angle (Ashjian’s name would still be on the ballot). Ashjian has claimed that it was Angle who arranged the meeting, but James assures me that it he arranged it and he’s sorry he did.
Ashjian wore a wire into the meeting and covertly taped the conversation with Angle. James said he had no idea that the meeting was taped and would’ve never done it had he known Ashjian was going to tape it. If you listen to the tapes, understand their surreptitious nature and understand the context was that Angle thought Ashjian had come bearing gifts of an endorsement. If Angle made a mistake it was trusting Ashjian, but since James arranged the meeting, the Angle camp was trusting James, who is a highly respected doctor in Las Vegas.
As a result, James feels used by Ashjian and has told me he will resign from his position with the “Tea Party of Nevada” and endorse Angle. When’s the last time you heard of the head of one political party (if you want to call the “Tea Party of Nevada” a party) resigning to endorse another party’s candidate less than a month before the election?
If anything, these covert tapes show off Angle’s conservative “chops” and that everything she has said on the campaign trail is exactly what she believes behind closed doors. You don’t find that often in politics. She believes the Republican establishment has lost its way on fiscal and Constitutional issues and that a new breed of politicians will set things straight in D.C. Thank you, Scott Ashjian, for wearing that wire and confirming that we can trust Sharron Angle.
This we also know, somewhere Harry Reid is smiling because he knows that every second that we are discussing personal issues in this race, he does not have to talk about his failures in Nevada. We have the worst unemployment in the nation and Reid says that it is a Senator’s job to help create jobs. Isn’t that reason enough for Reid to lose his job?
Also, back on the audio tapes, imagine some of the private things Reid said in meetings when he was trying to get Obamacare passed. Wouldn’t you love to hear the conversations that led to the “Louisiana Purchase” and the “Cornhusker Kickback?” The stuff we know publicly is bad enough.