Obama to Nevada for Harry Reid in July

1. President Obama will head back to Nevada to campaign for Harry Reid (Nev.) early next month, a sign that the Senate majority leader believes more good than harm will come out of a visit from the chief executive in one of the most evenly divided states along partisan lines in the country.

Obama’s visit — first reported by Fix friend Jon Ralston — is the second time this year that the president will travel to Nevada to support Reid. In February, Obama held a town hall in Henderson in which he effusively praised Reid.

And, last summer the president guest-starred at a fundraiser benefiting the majority leader at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

On cue, the Republican National Committee bashed Reid for the scheduled Obama trip. “President Obama’s trips to Nevada have only reminded Nevadans of Harry Reid’s failed economic policies and motivated more than 28,000 Democrats to vote against Reid in his primary,” spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.

(Democrats argue that Republicans have plenty of their own problems to deal with — starting with the fact that former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who will be in Washington today, is a candidate outside of the political mainstream.)

Although Obama carried the Silver State by 12 points in 2008, his numbers have fallen since then. In an April Mason-Dixon poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review Journal, 41 percent of Nevadans regarded Obama in a favorable light, while 46 percent viewed the president unfavorably.

A February Mason-Dixon poll showed that while Obama’s approach to fixing the economy wasn’t popular with Nevadans, three-quarters of those tested said the president’s visit for Reid would make no difference in how they would vote in the fall.

By all accounts, Reid and Obama have a close relationship — don’t forget, Reid secretly encouraged Obama to run for president against then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — and the majority leader assumes, probably rightly, that whether or not Obama actively supports his candidacy, Republicans will tie the two together.

That calculation is far less simple for Democrats such as Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who hosted Obama at a trio of events in mid-February; Missouri Secretary of State — and Senate candidate — Robin Carnahan, who was absent when Obama visited the state in March; or even Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), who touted the president’s endorsement during her primary fight against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.

In each of those situations, Obama could/will attract massive sums of money with relatively little effort by the campaign. At the same time, the president carries middling approval ratings, and the candidates may not want to link themselves with those numbers in the minds of voters.

2. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster will endorse state Rep. Nikki Haley’s gubernatorial candidacy Tuesday, one week after he placed a distant third behind her and Rep. Gresham Barrett.

McMaster came to the decision “after a lot of thought and deliberation about the candidate best suited to lead the Republican Party into the November general election” and lead the state thereafter, said his communications director, Rob Godfrey. Both McMaster and Haley are scheduled to be at Tuesday’s event at 10 a.m. at McMaster’s campaign headquarters.

The endorsement means that the four rivals in the campaign are now split into two factions: McMaster is backing Haley, while Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R), the fourth-place candidate, has lined up behind Barrett.

The endorsement game may not matter all that much given that the June 22 runoff comes just two weeks after Haley trounced Barrett 49 percent to 22 percent.

The Republican Governors Association has all but endorsed Haley, and her campaign released polling last week that showed her with a massive lead over Barrett.

The winner will face state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (D) in the November general election.

3. Vice President Biden will campaign this month for Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’s Senate campaign, a boost for the Democratic nominee, who has faced repeated questions about how strongly the White House — and Obama in particular — is supporting him.

Giannoulias’s campaign announced Monday that Biden will come to town June 21 for a fundraiser. The candidate will also receive visits by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe this month.

It’s more welcome news for the Illinois Democrat, who had been beset early in his campaign by his family bank’s problems and the early stages of the Rob Blagojevich trial, but has benefited of late from Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) repeated misstatements about his military service.

Kirk continues to battle against charges of resume inflation that surfaced over Memorial Day weekend. In an e-mail to supporters Monday, he pitted himself against the media and said Giannoulias is going too far. “The negative campaign being waged against my 21 years of service in the United States Navy Reserve turned from dirty to ridiculous,” Kirk wrote.

Democrats, who had grown pessimistic about their chances in Illinois before the Kirk revelations, have a newfound hope in the race — believing that the Republican congressman’s handling of the resume issue gives them a ready response to attacks on Giannoulias’ family bank.

4. Former Harvard Pilgrim Health Care CEO Charlie Baker (R) launched his first television ad of the general election today, featuring Baker talking straight to the camera with a basketball court in the background.

“Today, Beacon Hill is broken,” Baker says in the ad. “With too many people out of work, they continue to spend what they want, tax what they can. We can change the status quo, and I have a plan to do it and the will to make it happen.”

The commercial was produced by Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens.

Baker is facing Gov. Deval Patrick (D) and state Treasurer Tim Cahill (I) in a three-way race for the governor’s mansion. The ad comes as Patrick has moved up in the polls and Cahill has moved down — following an onslaught of TV ads by the Republican Governors Association hitting him and trying to tie him to Patrick.

The ad, which also features a shot of Baker playing hoops with his son, Charlie Jr., is an effort to introduce Baker to voters as a problem solver who hasn’t been part of the Beacon Hill status quo. Despite winning the GOP nod resoundingly at the state GOP convention in April, Baker has yet to make inroads with many of the state’s voters. In a May Suffolk University poll, only 37 percent of voters knew enough about Baker to have an opinion of him.

5. Oregon Democratic Rep. David Wu is among the more unlikely GOP targets, but a new internal poll for his opponent’s campaign suggests he might be in a real face-off this fall.

Wu takes 46 percent to 40 percent for sports business consultant Rob Cornilles in the Moore Information survey, which was obtained by the Fix.

The narrowness of the race somes in spite of Wu’s large edge in name identification. More than four in five voters know Wu and can rate his favorability (50 percent favorable, 35 percent unfavorable), while less than one in five knows Cornilles well enough to even rate him.

Cornilles has impressed the national GOP with his personal style, but his fundraising isn’t particularly strong; he had less than $200,000 on hand at the end of April. Wu, meanwhile, is dealing with marital troubles — he separated from his wife in December — and is seen as a lower-tier GOP target.

Wu’s saving grace may well be the Democratic underpinnings of his suburban Portland district, where President Obama won 61 percent in 2008.

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