Reid's problems

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is backing away from a "poor choice of words" but new polling data may be a bigger issue for the Senate majority leader.

A book out this week on last year's presidential election quotes Reid as saying Barack Obama had a good chance to become the United States' first African-American president because he is "light-skinned" and has "no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one."

Reid, once the content of "Game Change" was revealed, called the phrasing a "poor choice or words" and apologized -- more than a year after he made the comments. Obama, indeed the first African-American U.S. president, and other Democrats accepted Reid's apology. Republicans called for his resignation, claiming a double standard that protects Democrats from penalties for such racially insensitive speech.

It is unlikely Reid will step down; he is a key player in herding Obama's agenda through the Senate. However, he is up for re-election and in Nevada support for him doesn't appear as deep as in Washington.

A poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and released Saturday indicated 52 percent of the voters in Nevada had an unfavorable opinion of Reid while 33 percent saw him favorably. He trails all three Republicans vying for that party's nomination. He's even 5 percentage points behind a candidate who has just 42 percent name recognition in the state.