No lies in latest GOP attack against Steven Horsford

It’s a long shot – though not totally inconceivable – that Republicans could win in the new 4th Congressional District.

The party registration favors Democrat Steven Horsford by 10.5 percentage points and nearly 30,000 actual active registered voters. Challenger Danny Tarkanian has struggled against unforced campaign malapropos and the terrible news of a $17 million court judgment over a real estate deal gone wrong in California.

But that doesn’t mean the Republicans have given up – in fact, the National Republican Congressional Committee has put Tarkanian on its “Young Guns” list of up-and-comers, and TV ads have hit Horsford hard on ethics.

Horsford, the current state Senate majority leader, plays by his own rules, and not in a good way, the Republican ads suggest.

The most recent – an Internet video that puts Horsford on the list of the “10 most corrupt Democrats of 2012” – is unique in this election cycle in that it’s based on actual facts.

For example, Horsford did park his SUV in the painted zone next to a handicapped space (while sporting “state senator” license plates, no less). He eventually apologized for that, after local media widely publicized the incident.

(I said at the time it would have been an excellent opportunity for Horsford to hold a news conference with disabled rights activists, handing them a personal check for the amount of the fine that he would have paid had he been ticketed, but that free political advice was ignored.)

And Horsford did accept a trip to the Bahamas at the behest of Poker Stars, an Internet gambling company that subsequently was indicted for, among other things, bank fraud. Horsford quietly repaid the costs of the trip after criticism of the company during the 2011 Legislature. (Two other lawmakers, Assemblymen William Horne and Kelvin Atkinson, took a trip all the way to London to observe Poker Stars operations, and afterward Horne introduced a bill that seemed tailor made for the company. It was subsequently watered down.)

And Horsford did devise an ill-considered fundraising program in which donors could earn lunches or dinners with himself and other state Senate leaders, depending on how much they gave. (The top level, $25,000, earned a donor dinner with Horsford and all the Democratic committee chairs in advance of the 2011 Legislature.)

“If our fundraising letter has been misconstrued, we deeply apologize,” Horsford said in 2010. But what if that fundraising letter was properly construed – as an ethically questionable pay-to-play scheme that should never have gone forward?

Building on those accounts tees Horsford up for a good whack from his Republican antagonizers: “Nevada deserves a candidate that [sic] plays by the same rules they do,” the narrator says. “Nevadans deserve better than Steven Horsford.”

Republicans need to remember, however, that the Nevadans who will decide what they deserve come November have signed up with the Democrats more than they have the Republicans. That and a get-out-the-vote operation will mean far more to the outcome of this race than will a parking space, a plane ticket and a fundraising letter. And Democrats note Horsford has been contrite about every offense, albeit only after they came to light.

Let’s not downplay things, however: Horsford should have known better, especially about the fundraising issue, which drips with the rich-get-insider-access accusations that Democrats are usually hurling at Republicans.

The web video reinforces an ancient law, proven every two, four or six years in America: The worst political wounds are almost always self-inflicted. And if Horsford wins his race – which it appears he will – it will be because voters forgave him, not because he was found without sin.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.