Sharron Elaine Angle (née Ott; born July 26, 1949) is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007. She ran unsuccessfully as the 2010 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Nevada,"Sen. Harry Reid survives challenge from Sharron Angle in Nevada", Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2010 garnering 44.6 percent of the vote. On September 15, 2013, she was unanimously elected the fifth President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, and resigned in 2016 to run again for the Nevada U.S. Senator position being vacated by Harry Reid but failed to win the Republican primary. In 2018, she ran in the Republican primary for Nevada's 2nd congressional district and lost to the incumbent, Mark Amodei.
Political career
Nevada Assembly In 1992, Angle was elected to the Nye County School Board of Trustees and served one term. Before this time, she was registered as a Republican. During this term, she was an active member of the Independent American Party of Nevada. She re-registered as a Republican in 1997 after deciding to run for elected office. In 1998, she won election to the Nevada State Assembly and served until 2006. During her time in the 42-member assembly, she voted "no" so frequently on matters of wide consensus that votes were often called as "41-to-Angle".
In 2003, she hired John C. Eastman of the Claremont Institute to fight the Supreme Court decision when then Governor Kenny Guinn sued the Legislature to nullify the state constitution and allow a simple majority of the legislature to pass an $836 million tax increase in Angle v. Guinn. Angle used her personal funds to defend the state constitution's two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes and, with Eastman, took the case to Federal District Court in Nevada, which referred it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Legislature subsequently passed the $836 million tax increase by a two-thirds vote. Angle ultimately prevailed in the suit; in 2006, the state supreme court reversed its 2003 decision and restored the Nevada Constitution's two-thirds vote provision.
In 2003, Angle attempted to arrange a trip to an Ensenada, Baja California prison to assess a drug treatment program implemented there. She also arranged to visit a prison in New Mexico to assess the "Second Chance Program", which licensed its materials from Criminon, a program for rehabilitating prisoners using methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Angle sponsored legislation aimed at placing this program in certain women's prisons in Nevada.
In 2005, she was the sole voter against a bill that split the property tax abatement by applying a 3% rate to residential and 8% rate to commercial property. She stated that she voted no because the Nevada Constitution states that taxation must be uniform and equal and so could not vote against her oath of office to which she swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution."
2006 run for U.S. Congress
On August 15, 2006, Angle narrowly lost the primary for U.S. Congress in which was vacated by Rep. Jim Gibbons. Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller received 24,781 votes to Angle's 24,353. Gibbons' wife Dawn, a former State Assemblywoman herself, finished with 17,328 votes. On August 25, Angle called for a new primary election on the grounds that some poll workers showed up late for work, or didn't show up at all, in Washoe County, where she was the strongest. On September 1, the Carson City District Judge denied her appeal for a new election.
2008 run for Nevada State Senate Angle ran for a seat in the Nevada Senate by challenging incumbent William Raggio in the Republican primary. Angle lost, 53–47%.
2010 run for U.S. Senate
On April 15, 2010, Angle received an endorsement for the U.S. Senate race from the Tea Party Express. The next day, she received an endorsement from conservative talk radio personality Mark Levin. Angle was endorsed by several other conservative individuals and organizations, including the Club for Growth, Sarah Palin,Palin, Angle, planning campaign event , CNN Political Ticker, Mark Preston, August 18, 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2016. Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, singer Pat Boone, and Phyllis Schlafly. Angle ultimately won the June 8, 2010, primary, capturing 40.09% of the vote, and beating Sue Lowden (26.11%), Danny Tarkanian (23.29%), and John Chachas (3.94%).
A June 9, 2010, Rasmussen Reports post-primary poll showed her leading incumbent Senator Harry Reid by a margin of 50% to 39%. A July 2010 poll showed Reid leading Angle by seven points. The change of margin, 18% in less than a month, is the largest in Senate elections history.
Some prominent Republicans opposed her candidacy. Immediately after the primary, the Republican mayor of Reno, Bob Cashell, who backed Lowden in the Republican primary, endorsed Reid for the general election, calling Angle an "ultra-right winger". Other notable Republicans supporting Harry Reid included Sig Rogich, a former campaign staffer for Ronald Reagan and assistant to President George H. W. Bush; Geno Martini, the Republican mayor of Sparks; Republican State Senator and Minority Leader William Raggio;"Top Nevada GOP lawmaker endorses Harry Reid", Boston Herald, Associated Press, October 8, 2010Siegel, Elyse (October 7, 2010). "Top Nevada Republican Endorses Harry Reid, Slams Sharron Angle". The Huffington Post. Dema Guinn, the widow of Kenny Guinn, Republican Governor of Nevada;Ball, Molly (October 8, 2010). "Reid gets top GOP endorsements". Politico. and former Lieutenant Governor Sue Wagner.
On October 3, Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed her bid for U.S. Senate against Reid. That same month, Nevada Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian released a tape to the media of a recorded conversation he had with Angle where she asked him to drop out of the race. In the tape, Angle speaks candidly about her campaign and says that she cannot defeat Reid with Ashjian on the ballot.
One of Angle's campaign ads aired on television late in her campaign entitled "The Wave" was cited as racist and despicable by Sen. Robert Menendez.
On election day, Reid defeated Angle by 41,424 votes.
In its analysis of Reid's victory over Angle, Politico reported that the Reid campaign had placed advertisements opposing Angle's main primary opponent, Sue Lowden. The purpose of the ads was to enhance the "polarizing" Angle's chances of winning the Republican nomination.
Avoidance of the press and disputes with them Angle was criticized during the campaign for largely avoiding answering questions from the press, both local and national.The MSNBC journalist was refused an interview with Angle In September, the Las Vegas Review-Journal sued her for copyright infringement after she allegedly posted entire articles from the publication on her campaign website without permission. After the campaign ended, it was revealed that the campaign developed a code word to alert office workers if the media entered campaign headquarters: "It's time to water the plants."
Scientology issue During the primary campaign, Lowden took out a political ad criticizing Angle's alleged associations with Scientology and claiming Angle "pushed a bill favored by the Church of Scientology." Although the Las Vegas Review-Journal said that "no bill was ever introduced," the Las Vegas Sun noted that Angle's website credited her with a successful bill against psychotropic drugs in schools, a position also supported by Scientologists, and that she had accompanied celebrity Scientologists Jenna Elfman and Kelly Preston to promote the bill in the U.S. Senate. Angle herself promoted a similar bill in the Nevada Assembly but was not successful.
During a KVBC-hosted debate on Face to Face with Jon Ralston, Angle was asked about "recent whispers" that her legislative proposal to establish the Scientology-linked Second Chance Program in Nevada prisons was a "strange foray into Scientology", a reference to her 2003 proposal to study the program implemented in Mexico and New Mexico. Angle responded, "This program had a recidivism rate of less than 10 percent. They aren't massages. … it was more of a karate chop. The sauna was a sweat box. When you're in there with 30 guys, it's not exactly a sauna."
Angle has repeatedly denied "the rumor that she's a Scientologist", stating that the controversy had been "largely distorted". Regarding these claims relating to Scientology, Angle told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "The way to ruin a conservative is to pass them off as part of the radical fringe. They always try to marginalize me."
Dearborn, Michigan controversy In September 2010, Angle told a group of Tea Party supporters that "Sharia law" had taken over the cities of Dearborn, Michigan, and "Frankford, Texas", and that these locations represented a "militant terrorist situation." Dearborn mayor John O'Reilly criticized Angle, saying, "There's no sharia law in Dearborn, Mich. … It isn't even talked about in Dearborn," that Angle's claims were dishonest, and that "Muslims have been practicing their faith in our community for almost 90 years without incident or conflict. To suggest that they have taken over ignores the fact that Dearborn hosts seven mosques and 60 Christian churches." Jim Mitchell, in an online editorial for the Dallas Morning News, clarified that "Frankford" was a town that had been included in Dallas in 1975, and didn't exist otherwise.
Canada–US border controversy The Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Gary Doer has asked Angle to retract her assertion that the hijackers in the September 11 attacks entered the United States through Canada. Angle claims that the Canada–United States border is the "most porous border we have" and "what we know is our northern border is where the terrorists came through." U.S. law enforcement determined that the hijackers entered the U.S. directly from third countries with visas issued by the U.S.
Patriot Caucus On December 12, 2010, Angle announced the formation of a PAC named the Patriot Caucus to "organize a ground game across most battleground states for the 2012 election cycle". According to Politico, Angle "[dropped] it in February ahead of a decision to run for the Republican nomination for a Nevada House seat."
2012 elections On January 26, 2011, while attending a screening of The Genesis Code in Iowa, a reporter asked Angle if she was considering a run for the White House. "I'll just say I have lots of options for the future, and I'm investigating all my options," was her reply. By February 10, she had decided against a run. On March 16, she announced that she would run for the House seat then held by Dean Heller, who at the time was running for the Senate seat held by retiring John Ensign in 2012, a seat which he was later appointed and subsequently elected. A year later, Angle announced she would not be running for any office in 2012.
National Federation of Republican Assemblies Angle became a member of the Nevada chapter of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) in 2006, and in 2007, while she was still polling third in a three-way race, received the endorsements of both the state and national organizations for her United States Senate run. After her general election defeat, Angle became President of the Nevada Republican Assembly, and in 2011, Pacific Region Vice President of the national organization. In September 2013, Angle was unanimously elected NFRA President at the group's national convention in Dallas, Texas.
2016 run for U.S. Senate
Angle again ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016 when Harry Reid retired. Angle finished a distant second in the Republican primary to winner Joe Heck, who garnered 64.9 percent of the vote to Angle's 22.8 percent.https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_Nevada,_2016 | title = Nevada 2016 Elections | publisher = Ballotpedia