Eleventh-hour polling in Nevada puts Archon Corp. financial wiz Sue Lowden in an exacta with Danny Tarkanian … for distant-runner-up status in tomorrow’s primary. (Mason-Dixon has her third, Daily Kos places her second.) If this data bears out, rarely will anyone have gone from Anointed One to also-ran in such spectacular fashion, almost entirely through self-inflicted wounds.
(Interesting historical footnote: In his previous incarnation as a Nevada Gaming Commissioner, Sen. Harry Reid [D-NV] gave his blessing to a Lowden-led casino takeover, despite suspicions that the deal was mobbed up.)
However, one must consider the possibility that Lowden was hexed from the moment when, in his Face to Face debut, Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson gave her his explicit endorsement. Nevada candidacies backed by the CEO have a high mortality rate, dating back to an Adelson-funded attempt to flip three Clark County Commission seats. Sheldon went 0-3, setting a pattern that would continue nigh unto 12 years. (With perfect hindsight, two of the commissioners Adelson was trying to unseat should have been voted out — but the depth and breadth of corruption on the commission wouldn’t be “outed” for six more years.)
Not knowing when to quit, Adelson foolishly wasted prudently invested 20 grand of corporate money this year on the foredoomed reelection campaign of Gov. Jim Gibbons. In future, candidates who see Big Shel drawing near bearing cash — or even just his verbal benediction — should run as far and fast in the opposite direction as their legs can carry them. He’s the Typhoid Mary of Nevada politics.
