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Fri Apr 22, 2011 9:52 AM EDT
With Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) resigning today, Nevada's Republican governor will appoint Congressman Dean Heller to serve the remainder of his term and then run next year as the incumbent, Las Vegas Sun reporter Jon Ralston told us last night. "It's a fait accompli," he said.
Mr. Ensign decided he'd rather not sit through ethics hearings on his affair with one staffer who was married to another, or on Mr. Ensign's parents giving $96,000 to their family. Rather than serve out his term, as he'd earlier announced he would do, Mr. Ensign can hand off the seat now for Mr. Heller, who was running for it anyway.
That leaves Mr. Heller's seat to be filled by special election. How that happens isn't clear under Nevada election law, Mr. Ralston told us, but one possibility is a quick, no-primary, all-comers election for the congressional seat. In that case, keep your eye on Sharron Angle, who was already ready to go. "[I]n a free-for-all, she still does have a base of people who would die for Sharron Angle," he tells us.
The other possibility, he explained, is that the law calls for the parties to pick candidates for the special election. In that case, Ms. Angle would be at a real disadvantage. The "Second Amendment remedies" candidate won the Senate primary last year in a Tea Party upset and faced off against Senator Harry Reid. Nevada's Republican establishment tried reinventing her as a mainstream pol, but in the end, she booted the party's chance of capturing Mr. Reid's seat. If Nevada GOP leaders get to choose who runs now, they'll likely look somewhere else. "That's not even a contest," a Republican insider tells the Hill. "They won't pick Angle."
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