Dean Heller, friend of big business, friend of Dick Cheney, friend of Halliburton.

Yep, the company formerly chaired by Dick Cheney, the company getting probably the most bang for the buck out of the Iraq war, the company so infamous that there's an entire website devoted to its shameful practices, that company, Halliburton Energy Services, has contributed $1,000 to Heller for Congress on August 1. And Heller gladly excepted it.

Cross posted from My Silver State.

Remember 2004? When the incumbent Senate Democratic Leader was beaten when he was running for reelection in South Dakota? The first time the Republican  Senate Leader Bill Frist broke one of those so called DC "gentlemen's agreeements" of not actively campaigning against the leader of the other party?

You want that to happen again in 2010?

No? Then follow me below the fold to see what you can do NOW to stop the Republicans from beating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010!

Nationally, many pundits and bloggers didn't take Nevada's 2nd district too seriously in 2006. It was too safe a Republican district to be even slightly competitive, so the argument went.

Well, we all know that Dean Heller in the end won his election against Democrat Jill Derby. Against expectations though, his result wasn't very convincing. The man who was elected Secretary of State of Nevada three times, barely won more than 50% of the vote in a district that doesn't include Democratic Las Vegas. So today, I ventured out in search of Republicans who won their districts in 2006 and did worse than him. Turns out that there weren't that many.

When talking about trying to win the 2nd congressional district in Nevada, which encompasses almost all of Nevada except for the heavily populated parts of Clark County, you almost always encounter one argument: Democrats cannot win in the rurals.

Now, at first look that might be true, statewide Democratic candidates often lose the rural counties and often by a large margin. One reason for that might be that statewide Democratic candidates most often hail from Clark County and might not campaign too much in the rurals.

However, when you take a closer look you might come away shocked. Why? Because Democrats actually get elected in the rurals on a regular basis.

A lot of us were mighty afraid what "October surprise" the almighty Karl Rove may have in store of us this year. Somehow that one big surprise that could swing the election back to the Republicans never materialized. Instead there were oh so many October surprises the Republicans were not so happy about.

Therefore, tomorrow could be a historic day. In Nevada's 2nd district this could especially be so. Jill Derby is on the course to make history (as the Las Vegas Sun observed) by being the first Democrat ever elected from this predominantly Republican district which was created after the 1980 census and encompasses almost all of Nevada except most of Clark County.

Here's the fun part: Karl Rove spent five years in the city of Sparks, Reno's little sister from 1961-66. He was 16 when he left Nevada but somehow, 40 years later, Nevada still seems to be on Rove's mind. Why else would he have sent President Bush twice within one month to this usually safe Republican district?

I was born and raised in a very catholic, very conservative county. The less evil German equivalent to the Republican Party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has run this county continuously for the last 60 odd years raking in election results between 60 and 85% in all towns.

As everywhere, majority parties can get arrogant and complacent. This has been the case in the county of Vechta as well. The CDU is so used to winning that losing never came to mind. Traditionally, the parliamentary district comprised of the counties of Vechta and adjoining Cloppenburg always end up as the district with the best election results for the CDU in all of Germany. That is how conservative this area is.

However, voters in this county - like voters everywhere - aren't as stupid as many politicians make them out to be. The CDU made some really bad choices when looking for candidates for mayor in several towns in the last few years which has led to the result that as of now only six out of ten towns have a CDU mayor.

Jill Derby is on course to making history. With every new poll she's inching up closer and closer to Republican Dean Heller. The newest Mason Dixon Poll, conducted Sep 19-21 was published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal today and it shows Jill Derby well within the margin of error:

Jill Derby 42%
Dean Heller 45%
MoE 5%

Jill Derby continues to be on an upward trend in this very Republican district that has never before elected a Democrat.

The Reno Gazette-Journal released the first post-primary poll for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District today. It has Democrat Jill Derby within the margin of error against Dean Heller:

    Jill Derby 37
    Dean Heller 45
    moe: +/- 4%

While Jill Derby might still be down by 8 points it has Republicans worried: