Metro

‘Reid it & weep’ for Schumer

ANOTHER TERM: Sen. Chuck Schumer exults last night after easily winning his third term. Despite the victory, Schumer lost a shot at becoming Senate majority leader after Harry Reid won in Nevada. (Reuters)

Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid hung on to win Nevada’s grueling Senate race yesterday, dashing any hope that Sen. Charles Schumer may have had of taking over the powerful Senate post.

The senior New York senator — who cruised to a third term and declared his own decisive victory shortly after the polls closed — had been well positioned to become majority leader if Reid had lost and Democrats kept control of the Senate.

In one of the nation’s most closely watched contests, Reid beat back a Tea Party challenge — and kept Schumer in place.

It wasn’t easy.

At midyear, Reid appeared headed for defeat as Nevada suffered the nation’s worst unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates.

He told voters no one could match his clout on Capitol Hill and warned that oddball opponent Sharron Angle would usher in an era in which Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block.

Yet Reid seemed headed toward the fate of his majority-leader predecessor, Sen. Tom Daschle — who lost the top spot in 2004 — as a succession of polls showed Reid and Angle in a dead heat.

The race pitted the dour, unpopular Reid against the gaffe-prone 61-year-old grandmother whose unconventional ideas included using a drug-rehabilitation program for inmates devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

A flood of outside money from the Tea Party Express and other groups helped her shoot to the forefront.

“I am the Tea Party,” she declared.

President Obama visited three times to campaign for Reid — and also made his pitch yesterday in a radio interview on KVEG in Las Vegas.

“I know things are still tough out there,” the president said.

Earlier, the senator’s son, Democrat Rory Reid, lost a bid to become the state’s governor, defeated by Republican Brian Sandoval, who will become the first Hispanic governor in Nevada’s history.

The elder Reid held on to secure his fifth term in the Senate.

“This is a very difficult time,” Reid told voters a day earlier. “People are afraid for their jobs. Nevada for 20 years was on top of the economic food chain. When Wall Street collapsed, we fell further than any state.”

The race was largely seen as a referendum on Obama’s policies. But Reid’s get-out-the-vote strategy focused strongly on the Hispanic community, a key swing demographic.

Early polling suggested Hispanics were bitter about the economy and immigration issues and would stay away from the polls.