Examiner Editorial
November 5, 2010
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looked like toast a few days before the Nov. 2 election, trailing his Republican challenger Sharron Angle by three or more points in the campaign's concluding polls, according to RealClearPolitics. But when ballots were counted, Reid had somehow converted that deficit to a nearly six-point margin of victory. Most observers attributed the phenomenal success of Reid's last-ditch comeback to the Nevada Democratic Party's highly polished get-out-the-vote "ground game." But an internal e-mail from a Reid campaign operative to a Harrah's executive strongly suggests the Reid ground game depended at least in part on breaking the law.
As former Federal Election Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky explained Friday in The Examiner, federal law makes it illegal for officials with a Senate campaign to coordinate with corporate or union officials: "Both the Reid campaign and Harrah's may have violated federal campaign finance law that prohibits in-kind corporate and union contributions to, and coordination with, political campaigns. Corporations and unions may spend money to run ads in support of or opposing a candidate, but they are not allowed to make direct or in-kind contributions to federal candidates. Federal criminal law also prohibits intimidation and coercion of a person exercising his or her right to vote (or not to vote)."
According to the e-mail, which was first made public by National Review Online's Elizabeth Crum, the Reid staffer pleaded with Marybel Batjer, Harrah's vice president for government relations, to do everything possible to get the firm's thousands of employees and their families in Nevada's largest county to the polls to vote for the Senate majority leader, including putting a "headlock" on recalcitrant supervisors "to get them to follow through." In response, Batjer instructed her fellow Harrah's executives that they were to "do whatever we need to do to get the supervisors to know that there is NOTHING more important than to get employees out to vote. Waking up to a defeat of Harry Reid Nov 3rd will be devastating for our industry's future."
It is clear that the pro-Reid effort by Harrah's executive met with some level of resistance within the company, as one of the e-mails obtained by Crum referred to problems encountered by the Reid backers with midlevel supervisors in the company's culinary department. "They simply are not cooperating and listening with upper management" in the companywide get-out-the-Reid vote campaign, a Harrah's executive complained in one of the e-mails. Because intimidation and coercion were apparently involved, this matter requires the attention of the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section. Attorney General Eric Holder can be sure that the House Judiciary Committee will be closely watching his actions on this matter.
