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Opinion: Harry Reid’s other political problem: his son

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has enough problems in Washington.

Critics are flailing him over negotiations with the House on a healthcare overhaul.

Most Republicans are calling for his resignation (one exception: Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn today came to his defense). The issue: Reid’s 2008 remark to two book authors that Barack Obama could win the presidency because he was a ‘light-skinned’ African-American without ‘a Negro dialect.’

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And voters in Nevada, who will decide the 70-year-old Reid’s political future in November, are increasingly unhappy with their senator’s performance. The latest poll by the Las Vegas Review Journal showed him with a 33% approval rating -- his lowest ever.

Now comes word that Reid’s son Rory, 47, chairman of the Clark County Commission, is running for governor. And, reports the Washington Post, both campaigns are studiously avoiding each other. The younger Reid has bumper stickers featuring RORY in very big letters and Reid in very small letters. As for his father, the last thing he needs is for voters already upset at incumbents to think the Reids are launching a dynasty.

Nevada political columnist Jon Ralston called it ‘very strange’ that Rory Reid would launch his bid for statewide office when ‘his dad is at the apex of the pinnacle of his power in a small state,’ possibly jeopardizing that. It is, he told the Post, ‘reverse symbiosis.’

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Associated Press

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