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Republican Sue Lowden wants everyone to know she’s not afraid of what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might do to knock her out of the running for his Senate seat in the 2010 election.

Mrs. Lowden, a former chairman of the Nevada Republican Party and longtime businesswoman, told conservative-leaning journalists at a roundtable breakfast meeting that she expects the “full strength and power of the AFL-CIO behind him … and I might even see it in the primary.”

“He’s not a charming guy,” she said of Mr. Reid, whom she once supported with political donations because, she said, she thought he was a “Reagan, blue-dog Democrat … a conservative, pro-life Mormon.”

“He’s a bully,” Mrs. Lowden said of the majority leader today. “And if he doesn’t get his way, there’s ramifications” for Nevada businesses owners who, according to her, are well-aware of the fact that Mr. Reid’s son, Rory, is a county commissioner and fear retaliation from him if they don’t play nice with his father.

But, Mrs. Lowden has some experience running against a Democrat with majority-leader status.

She beat Nevada state Senate Majority Leader Jack Vergiels in 1992, and assured writers repeatedly “I’m not afraid” of the scrutiny that will come in running against the U.S. Senate’s most powerful Democrat.

“The unions protested my house and laid down in the lobby of my businesses,” Mrs. Lowden recalled, chuckling softly about how children once had to walk over protesters to get to hockey practice at an ice-skating rink she owned.

To win the Republican primary, Mrs. Lowden will need to beat out a bevy of other Republican candidates; primarily, Republican lawyer Danny Tarkanian, a former basketball standout at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and son of legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian.

But she declined to go negative in the roundtable meeting, despite repeated attempts by questioners.

“I more or less generally support what they say,” she said of the others vying for the Republican nomination.

Rather, she emphasized the work she did building up the Republican infrastructure as party chairman in her state and her defeat of Mr. Vergiels. “I ran in a Democratic district and defeated a Democrat and made a difference in the Senate,” she said.

Validated

A majority of Republican voters in South Carolina say the Republican Party should be more like conservative hard-liner Sen. Jim DeMint than the more moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham.

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