Political insiders love a good "what if" game

Timing in politics is everything, and it’s sometimes interesting to wonder how the careers of key players would have progressed if the voters had gone a different way.

Look at the race of United States Senator in 1970: what if Bill Raggio had been successful in unseating Democrat Howard Cannon?  Raggio could be in his seventh term as a U.S. Senator right now – and given his track record in Carson City over the last four decades, he would likely have emerged as a powerful Washington insider with considerable seniority.

A Raggio victory in ’70 would have meant now opportunity for Chic Hecht to take on Cannon in 1982, or for Richard Bryan to unseat Hecht six years later.  There would have been no open seat for John Ensign to compete for in 2000.  Maybe Ensign would have run for Governor instead when Kenny Guinn left office in 2006? Surely he would not have hung around until 2012, when Raggio would have been up for re-election again.

What about Paul Laxalt, who came within just 48 votes of ousting Cannon in 1964?  If Laxalt had gone to the U.S. Senate that year, he would not have run for Governor in 1966 – which could have meant a third term for Democrat Grant Sawyer, who lost 52%-48%.  Of course, there would have been no Senate race for Raggio to enter, which could mean he wouldn’t have backed off the 1970 race for Governor, which cleared the field for Ed Fike, who lost to Democrat Mike O’Callaghan.  Might Raggio have won the gubernatorial primary, and beaten O’Callaghan in the general?

And what about Harry Reid, who was 31-year-old Assemblyman when he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1970?  Reid ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974 when Democrat Alan Bible retired, and lost to Laxalt (who did not seek re-election as Governor) by just 624 votes in the heavily Democratic Watergate year.

This is where the whole butterfly effect plays out.  Maybe if 25 Nevadans voted for Laxalt instead if Cannon a decade earlier, then Sawyer would have won a third term.  And since Sawyer was just 56-years-old when Bible retired, perhaps it would have been him – and not Reid – who ran for an open Senate seat.  Without Laxalt, arguably the strongest Republican candidate at the time, Democrats would likely have held the seat.

No open Senate seat in 1982 might have caused Congressman James Santini to seek re-election -- so no open House seat for Reid to run for that year. 

Of course, as long as The Inside Edge is playing such historical revisionist games, imagine this: the 35-yea­r-old Reid could have won the ’74 Senate race – he would have taken the open seat against anyone but Laxalt. 

That would mean Reid would never have had his stint as Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission – but he would have went to the Senate twelve years earlier than he did.  Would that have enabled the Nevadan to leapfrog ahead of George Mitchell, Tom Daschle or Wendell Ford for Senate leadership posts?  Or would Reid have joined the nine Democratic U.S. Senators who lost their bids for re-election in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide.