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Nevada Tea Party candidate Jon Ashjian files for Reid’s Senate seat
By: David Phillips
Las Vegas Democrat Examiner
Yesterday in Carson City the Nevada Tea Party’s candidate Jon Scott Ashjian filed for the November ballot, and will contest the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
The Nevada Tea Party has created some controversy as other Tea Party organizations accuse the Nevada Tea Party candidate of being a stalking-horse for Senator Reid in order to siphon votes from the Republican candidate that will be on the ballot.
Ashjian appeared on Jon Ralston’s show Face to Face yesterday and Ralston asked him if he was a plant for Senator Reid and he said “no“, he’s never even met the man.
And in a short interview with Jon Ashjian that appears in the Nevada News Bureau in a blog by Elizabeth Crum, she writes; “To my Readers who are convinced that Ashjian is a Reid plant designed to pull votes from the GOP candidate: I am not convinced that this is so.”
In a recent poll done for the Review-Journal, a conservative paper in Las Vegas that is openly hostile to Senator Reid, the poll shows that both front runners from the Republican Party, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian have a double digit lead over Senator Reid.
- Lowden 52%
- Reid 39%
- Tarkanian 51%
- Reid 40%
But when the poll includes a third contestant from the Nevada Tea Party, a dramatic change appears.
- Harry Reid 36%
- Republican 32%
- Tea Party 18%
So it’s understandable why Tea Party members here in Nevada not associated with the Nevada Tea Party might want to see a conspiracy, real or not.
Another point or conspiracy to consider, is that the GOP has planted operatives here who are trying to discredit the Nevada Tea Party, because they know that a vote for a Tea Party candidate, is a vote lost by the Republican candidate. So the Republican Party has a vested interest in declaring that this group is a fraud and a front for Senator Reid.
Sarah Palin recently told the Tea Party faithful that they are not strong enough to field their own candidates and that they need to pick a party, either the “R” or the “D”, and she told that that she would prefer that they pick the “R”, of course.
The Republican Party leaders have been trying to figure out ways to sway the Tea Party followers into the GOP, and discrediting candidates backed by various Tea Parties across the country will most certainly be part of their political strategies
