With Harry Reid posting a remarkable ability to lose to just about any name the Nevada GOP can put forward (no matter how far down they are on the NRSC's recruiting list), I guess it shouldn't be considered a surprise that someone like ex-Rep. Jon Porter is reconsidering his decision not to run for Senate:
The buzz is growing that former Republican Rep. Jon Porter is reconsidering an earlier decision to stay out of the Senate race against Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010.
Chuck Muth, a longtime Republican operative in the state, said the word in Nevada GOP circles is that "Jon Porter is seriously talking about wanting to get into this race, after all."
Porter ruled out a challenge to Reid in June, but the lure of recent poll numbers showing Reid trailing several relatively unknown GOP challengerss are apparently proving hard to resist.
"He absolutely is talking to the folks at the senatorial committee and some money people," to see if there is an appetite for his candidacy, said Muth, who is heading up an anti-Reid political action committee, Dump Reid PAC, to raise money for his opponent.
The fact that Porter lost in 2008 and that he decided to stick around in DC to work as a lobbyist rather than return home to Nevada might be considered liabilities, but I'm not sure if any of that really matters right now given the pretty severe level of voter dissatisfaction against Reid in every poll we've seen of this race in the last little while. If Porter runs, he'll at least be as formidable as the other candidates in the field (who are all pasting Reid), but I doubt that people like Amodei, Lowden, and Tarkanian will abandon the race in deference to Porter. However, perhaps there's a chance that Porter will help further divide the "moderate" vote and let a growther like Sharron Angle slip through the GOP primary, but I haven't seen much evidence that Angle is running a real campaign so far.
