The Toxicity of Harry Reid

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“Rory’s Education Plan.” “Rory2010.com.” “Paid for by Rory 2010.”

If you didn’t know better, you might think the Nevada gubernatorial candidate named Rory was a Brazilian soccer player, one of those guys with just one name on the back of his jersey. (Hey, it’s World Cup season!) Well, not quite. “Rory 2010,” if you don’t already know, is the campaign for Democrat Rory Reid, the son of Nevada’s most recognizable—and, for many, most loathed—politician: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Today, Reid officially launched his run for the Silver State’s governor’s office with an ad that’s notable for, well, completely omitting his last name. The ad—which features a cast of cute little kids talking education reform, a major issue of Reid’s, ahem, Rory’s—just goes to show how toxic the Reid name has become amongst large swaths of Nevada voters. In a recent Rasmussen poll gauging the elder Reid’s standing in his US Senate race, fringe conservative Sharron Angle leads Harry Reid by 7 percentage points. Even on Rory Reid’s website, his ties to his father are completely scrubbed; Rory’s bio page, for instance, reads like this:

As Chairman of the Clark County Commission Rory has managed a budget bigger than the state’s general fund for seven years, balanced it every year, and never raised taxes.

Rory, 47, grew up in Nevada attending public schools, as do his three great kids. He attended Brigham Young University, graduating with a dual degree in international relations and Spanish, and continued his studies there through law school. He and his wife, Cindy, have been married for 22 years.

Here’s Rory’s ad:

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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