Keep The Home Fires Burning

The old cliché "keep the home fires burning" probably originated in the need to tend home cooking fires so they would last all day. It has come to mean other things through the years, mostly about the need to take care of some things at home to keep a marriage or a relationship sound. But the home fire shouldn't be an effigy of yourself being set alight. Yet that's just about what Harry Reid has managed in his short tenure as Senate Majority Leader.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's appeal among Nevadans has plunged dramatically in a new Review-Journal poll, which finds him viewed unfavorably by most likely voters in his home state.

Reid is still slightly more well-liked than Gov. Jim Gibbons. Both the Democratic senator and the Republican governor are less favorably viewed than President Bush.

"Fortunately for Reid, he doesn't have to run for re-election for a while," said Brad Coker, managing partner of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based firm that conducted the poll. If they decide to run again, Reid's name won't be on the ballot until 2010, nor will Gibbons'.

The poll asked 625 likely voters from around the state whether they recognized a politician's name, and if so, if they had a favorable, unfavorable or neutral opinion of that person. The survey carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Reid's favorable rating was 32 percent, compared with 51 percent unfavorable and 15 percent neutral. Gibbons was viewed favorably by 30 percent, Bush by 34 percent.

The Review-Journal last asked Nevadans their opinion of Reid in early May. At that time, he was seen favorably by 46 percent and unfavorably by 42 percent.

It is a very good thing for Reid he is not running, isn't it? Those are brutal poll numbers for a politician.