Republican Mark Amodei just won the special election for Nevada’s Second Congressional District in a landslide — but he could already be facing a potential primary challenge from a familiar name: Sharron Angle.
The local NBC affiliate in Reno reports that Angle spokesman Jerry Stacy is not closing the door on the prospect.
“I’m guessing that (Sharron) Angle’s options are open, and I expect that she and others will be paying close attention to Amodei’s performance,” said Stacy. “What is important now is that Amodei pays close attention to his constituents in this district and give them the representation that they want if he expects to keep this job.”
Of course, given Angle’s history of blowing a top-tier Senate election that the GOPÂ could have won with another candidate, it’s not a big mystery as to whether or not Amodei would get all of the party’s actual backing in a primary.
Angle lost the 2010 Senate race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite the national Republican wave — due to such controversies as her comments about “Second Amendment remedies” to Democratic policies, her statements in favor of phasing out Social Security and Medicare, and her refusal to take questions from the media outside of conservative talk radio and TV programs. (Indeed, during one appearance on conservative media, she said that her strategy was to ask viewers for money.)
Before that, though, Angle previously ran for the House seat in 2006, very narrowly losing the Republican primary to Dean Heller in an open-seat race. When the same House seat opened up this year with Heller’s appointment to the Senate, she then declared her candidacy. However, the state Republican Party sued the Democratic Secretary of State for the right to pick their candidate through an internal party process, rather than have the election done as a wide-open contest featuring multiple Republicans and Democrats, a case they ultimately won based on interpretations of the existing state law. Finally, Angle dropped out of the race.
