Singer: The other kind of big story going on in Washington is the coming resignation of Tom DeLay. It comes just days after his former deputy chief of staff - Tony Rudy, I believe his name is - pleaded guilty in relation to his connection to Jack Abramoff. Now John Ensign has not been directly implicated in the Abramoff scandal, but the Republican Party as a whole certainly has a taint from the whole affair. How much will you be talking about ethics and corruption in your campaign?

Carter: I'm not going to be talking about that much... at least I'm not going to be broaching it much. Depends on how much people ask me questions about it. To me, that is something that has occurred here with the Congress, but I think those are individuals. I think those are a few people out of the group of Congressmen who have gone up there, and I'm not going to emphasize that. I'm not going to say to somebody, for instance, that I think that Republicans are less moral than Democrats, because I don't really believe that. I think what you have to do, just like they did with Tom DeLay, is to point out what's happened and get those people out of the Congress and let the rest of them go on and do the business of the country. There are a lot of other issues in this race that I feel are important without getting into who did what to whom on these campaign contributions.

Singer: Coming at it a different way, whereas your father also, I'm sure - I wasn't alive then, to tell you the truth - when he ran in '76, it was kind of a similar period of unhappiness with government in Washington. Do you think you'll try to tap into that unhappiness, or will that not be a central part of your campaign?

Carter: There's a difference between whether it will be a central issue for the people and whether I will talk about it or not. I think that's a base issue. The way people think about their government and how disgusted they are with it always determines, to a large extent, whether challengers get elected or not. And in this particular case, I think that honesty and integrity in government is going to be an issue.

Whether I can pose that... I'm not interested in posing that myself because it's self-serving. Again, I don't want to get in a situation saying that Democrats - or me in that case - are more honest that Republicans are, because while all of us may be more honest that some Republicans are, that's not something I need to run on. That's something that other people outside make their own determination about what's real and what's not.

Singer: Nevada only narrowly gave its electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, yet John Ensign ranks among the 15 most conservative U.S. Senators, according to National Journal. Literally, no Senator voted more conservatively in 2005 than Ensign on social and foreign policy issues. Just how vulnerable is Senator Ensign?

Carter: That will be probably my main issue. When you look at the Congressional Quarterly report on how people conform to what the administration wanted them to do on their 40 or 50 votes per year, John Ensign, over a five year period by my rough calculations, was 96 percent for the administration. In 2004, he was 100 percent.

My basic thrust against him is that he is Washington's voice to Nevada and I am going to be Nevada's voice to Washington. The idea that he is not an independent person and that he basically goes up there to find out what the administration wants him to say then he comes back and tells us. I think that's going to be extremely telling on him.

As a matter of fact, he announced his campaign a couple of weeks ago, and the first basic point he made was that President Bush tells us we need to stay the course in Iraq and that we can't give up our courage at this particular time and we have to do what he says. And that's a prime example of what's going on.

Singer: Let's take one issue, for example. I know that Nevadans are not entirely happy with the Bush administration's policy toward Yucca Mountain. Do you think John Ensign is doing enough on the issue?

Carter: It's very interesting because there is an article in the paper today out here about a renewed Bush administration push towards getting Yucca Mountain open again and back on schedule. And the article refers to one of the Republicans that's on the Senate committee, it talks about some experts in the field that say it needs to be done, it talks about Senator Harry Reid, who thinks it's going to be dead in the water, and in the entire article, the missing thing is John Ensign's name. He ran last time in 2000 on the idea that he could be, as a Republican, tied into the Bush administration, and in fact he's not. My wife came up phrase that Ensign, on this particular issue, is "Ensignificant."

[Laughter]

Singer: Let's hit one more issue before we move on to some politics. Iraq. We lost nine or ten young men and women this last weekend, or in the last few days at least. There's a video now purported of insurgents taking down a helicopter pilot. What do you think America should be doing to improve the situation there or get out of there?

Carter: I want to preface my answer about what we do now with the idea that I have two major problems with the way we went into Iraq. One, obviously, I believe that the administration cherry-picked the particular facts that they wanted to justify the case for going into Iraq. And the other thing that really bothers me is that we decided to do it ourselves. We've become a nation, under this administration, that instead of cooperating with others when we can and only going alone when we must, we have turned into a nation that cooperates only when we must and goes everywhere else that we can by ourselves. So that gets us to where we are today.

My view is this: we have some obligation to the Iraqi people to leave them with a stable government. So I'm not an advocate of just get out now. However, the Iraqi government owes it to the Iraqi people and to us to make a good faith effort to join together so they can include the three different groups in the government itself so that there is some rapprochement among these groups so they can work together to provide a stable government themselves.

I think that we have to do, probably, a two-pronged approach. One is the stick. The stick is these guys have to get something done by X date - and I'm not going to push too much on a date, but certainly within a couple months - to come to terms with a government that will actually work to keep this country from spiraling down into a civil war. And the other aspect of it would be the carrot, which is economic aid, if they can come together.

I don't want to stay there while this government fiddles and the whole country burns. If they're not going to help us, then the obligation that I think we owe to the Iraqi people is abrogated.

Singer: Let's move over to politics, the campaign aspect. What lessons have you taken from your father's career, particularly from his electoral success in 1976 and his ultimate failure in 1980 to be reelected?

Carter: I don't know. I don't know if I've got any particular lessons out of that except... well I guess there are a couple lessons. One is if you've got somebody that's just a good candidate and is willing to work they can come out of nowhere. So if there are people out there who think I don't have a chance, then I know that is not the case. It's true at least in his case. So I think that that's one thing. People can win just because they're disgusted with what's going on in the government in general, and I think the Democrats as a whole this year will do very well. So that's one big thing.

But aside from that - and obviously that one person can certainly make a difference, which he has and he has continued to after he got out of office - but aside from that, what I mainly got out of politics was that it's sort of a tough business and you have to be aware of what you're getting into before you jump into it, which is one reason I waited this long and the only thing that's gotten me into it now is I think our country is going in the wrong direction.

Singer: As you said, it has taken you a while to run for electoral politics. You do have a long background, however, in business. How does that experience give you a different perspective coming into Washington?

Carter: I'll tell you one immediate thing. As you said, I'm a businessman. I deal with derivatives and commodities and financial futures and hedge funds. And I think like businessmen and like most people in the country, as long as the government is doing even half way what it's supposed to be doing, you just as soon somebody else do it.

In my particular case, I was moved into this race because essentially three things, just very quickly. One is the Bush administration's politics, which I think go against what I consider to be core American values, like cooperating with other people, like having good business judgment, like planning ahead, like not allowing corporations control the people who are supposed to regulate them. Those are the kinds of things in general.

The other aspect is partisan politics. As a businessman, and these are again the business influences I have, I believe that the job of a Senator or a Congressman is to go to Washington, determine the problems that this faces from their constituents, then work to come up with a solution to combat those problems, and then go on to the next thing. That's what people really hired for. The partisan politics that they have up there... people are very much more concerned with just keeping their jobs or moving up in the power structure than they are with solving problems. So that was another aspect.

And the third thing is budget deficits, which again from a business standpoint, budget deficits are not good things. From 1991 to 2002, the Congress had a pay-as-you-go budget policy, where whenever you were going to have new spending you wound up finding some place to cut or you raised taxes. That was able to control our budget deficit during that period of time.

Since the Bush administration has got in and the Republicans have taken power, they threw that out the window, and now the budget deficit is just ballooning. And my children, who are about 30 now, all of those kids are going to wind up paying the debt that we're running up here, and that's a disgrace to me. So those are the things that got me into the race.

One of the big advantages I have, then, because of the way I got into the race, is the fact that I know what the issues are. I'm not a politician seeking reelection that's not living out there with the people, who may be too close to the trees to see the forest, I feel like a golf ball has been thwacked by a driver. I know exactly why people are mad with the Bush administration because I'm one of them and I know exactly where I'm going and I know what caused me to get there. So those are advantages I have by being 58 years old and having been in business for a long time.

Singer: How concerned are you about the potential Democratic candidacy of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman?

Carter: On a scale from 1 to 10, I'd say a 2. Is that good enough?

Singer: That's good. So are you prepared for the potential of a fairly difficult primary campaign?

Carter: The way I look at this... I'm a very philosophical person. It is not going to be up to me to decide for Oscar whether he's going to win or not. Whatever he has to do, I'm going to have to live with, and I don't get a choice at it. So if he decides to run, then I'll run against him.

Oscar would be, I think, a good candidate. I think he'd be a good opponent. He has one major flaw, however, and that is if he wins, he has to go to Washington, and I don't think Oscar really wants to go to Washington. For that reason, I think he's probably not going to run.

If he does run, I'll campaign against him, because I'm going to run anyway. I did not decide to run because I though Oscar was not going to, I decided to run because I was aggravated with the government. So I'm going to run anyway.

Oscar... he may beat me, I don't know. But I don't expect him to beat me, because I think that Oscar will have a difficult time outside of Las Vegas. His current policy as mayor is that he doesn't even go outside of Las Vegas to give speeches. So he would have trouble even in Henderson. We've got all of Northern Nevada that I've got a very good organization in already, and I think from a political standpoint that I would beat Oscar.

Oscar is a friend of mine. I like Oscar. And I don't thing, regardless of which one of us won, I don't think it would be a nasty campaign. I'm not going to say anything bad about Oscar. I doubt he would say anything bad about me. So whoever won at the end of this, the other's followers would be glad to go along with that person and go into the general election. So from a general election standpoint, I think whichever one of us comes out of it is a strong candidate. Again, if Oscar beats me, Oscar beats me. But I would not bet on Oscar; I would bet on me.

Singer: The last question I have for you is related to the blogosphere. You're talking to a blogger here. I know your daughter Sarah has devoted a lot of time to outreach. What would you like to say specifically to the readers, the members of the liberal blogosphere to get them more involved in your campaign?

Carter: I'm 58, and I'm older than a lot of the bloggers are. I know that I'm not as old as all of them, but still older than a lot. And I've seen a lot of campaigns and I've been involved closely in a lot of them (campaigns). This is, in my honest view, the most significant campaign I think that I've ever been involved in. The reason is this particular administration is driving the United States in a direction that is perpendicular to what I believe are core American values, and these are values like liberty and democracy and the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law. They're American values, family values like taking care of the elderly and the sick and the poor, and educating our children, love and responsibility for our neighbors. These are business concepts that we agree on like a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, that cooperation, whether it's in unions or corporations, can really make a difference and enable you to achieve big goals. Business planning is something that is important. Looking ahead 15 to 20 years... just good business judgment, not going into deficit spending. This government is going 90 degrees to these particular issues. And I am afraid that if we give these guys another two years, we're going to be in a situation that's going to take us 30 years to unravel.

So this particular election is important. The House seats are gerrymandered to such an extent that it is very difficult to dislodge incumbents in the House. The Senate is much more amenable to change, because obviously the district is the state, and you can't gerrymander the state.

We've got a chance here to pick up several seats in this upcoming election. If we get six seats - six additional seats - we wind up with 51 votes. When you have 51 votes, we'll be able to put at least a tourniquet on this violation of core American values that I see that can hold off until we can elect our own President, a Democrats' President, in 2008 and maybe pick up the rest of the House in 2008.

It is an extremely important election here. Nevada, we've got an excellent chance to win. And I believe we've got a very good chance of being the sixth Senate seat.

For the liberal blogosphere, there is no doubt in my mind that this is an extremely important election. For all of the ideas that we have about all men are created equal in the United States, the flip side of that is that every person out there is responsible for this government. And the liberal blogosphere are people who understand that concept. This is an extremely important election for them and they need to get on their horse and bust their tails like I am out here and help us with this race - and not only this one but every other Senate race we've got.

Singer: Terrific. Well so thank you for your time and good luck in your campaign.

Carter: Cool. Be sure to tell Sarah I did OK.

[THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.]