Review-Journal to Reid: “Stop the childish bullying”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is all riled up this weekend after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reportedly told the newspaper’s director of advertising, “I hope you go out of business.”

And later, in a speech delivered to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Reid also insinuated that he would rather the Review-Journal sell ads because the Las Vegas Sun, another newspaper, is delivered inside of it, the Review-Journal reported.

Of course, this hardly sat well with the newspaper’s reporters and editors, who quickly took to the Web to excoriate Reid for his remarks. Said Sherman Frederick, the Review-Journal’s publisher:

“Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

[snip]

So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.”

Reid’s relationship with the Review-Journal has always been a bit bumpy, but this exchange — especially at a time when Reid’s poll numbers are unimpressive — could soon prove especially troublesome for the Senate Majority Leader.