Mid-June 2010: Nevada Republican Senate Candidate Scrubs Web Site of Controversial Content

Screenshot from ‘The Real Sharron Angle,’ a Web site containing information from Angle’s previous site and hosted by the Nevada Democratic Party. [Source: CNN]Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle (see January 2010 and June 30, 2010) “relaunches” her campaign Web site after winning the Nevada Republican primary. Before the June 8 victory, Angle’s Web site contained a great deal of information about her far-right views, including her intention to, as an elected senator, dismantle Social Security and the Department of Education, cut funds for child support organizations, further deregulate the mortgage and lending industries, repeal health care reform and deregulate the health care industry, relaunch the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, and advocate armed insurrection against the US Congress under Democratic leadership. After the primary victory, Angle’s campaign scrubbed the Web site of almost all its content. Now the site is far more moderate, containing little of the information it contained while Angle was working to secure the GOP nomination. The campaign of her opponent, Harry Reid (D-NV), will post the information from Angle’s “old” site on Reid’s campaign site, leading the Angle campaign to issue a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Reid remove the material. Reid’s campaign will do so, and the Nevada Democratic Party will launch its own Web site, “Sharron’s Underground Bunker,” featuring synopses of the material on Angle’s previous campaign site. Reid’s campaign spokesman Jon Summers says: “These are Sharron Angle’s positions in Sharron’s own words from Sharron’s own Web site. What was good enough for Nevada voters to read during the primary should be good enough for them now. Sharron has long believed in killing Social Security, eliminating the Departments of Education and Energy, and shipping nuclear waste to Nevada. We’ve always heard that Sharron Angle is an unapologetic conservative. It has to be embarrassing for her to have her handlers trying to hide who she really is.” Reid campaign deputy communications director Zac Petkanas says, “Sharron Angle is hiding her views from Nevada voters.” [Nevada Democratic Party, 7/2010; Mitchell, 7/2/2010; TPMDC, 7/5/2010]