"...I guess he [Jon Porter] thinks everyone in the district is so stupid that they'll believe Hafen owning a house in Virginia (where she lived while working for Sen. Harry Reid in D.C.) means that she's somehow not a third-generation Nevadan, who grew up in Henderson, went to school in Henderson and spends her Christmases in Henderson with her huge native-Nevadan family! The fool! What was he thinking? He wasn't thinking. This is glorious."
It's 10 a.m. on a recent weekday and Tessa Hafen is leading a quick tour of "old" Henderson before heading to a campaign stop across town. "Old Henderson isn't that big," says Hafen, 30, referring mainly to downtown's Water Street and parts of the city untouched by suburban sprawl. "Much of it hasn't changed, so this shouldn't take long."
Over the next hour, we drive by the schools she went to, churches she worshipped in, even her parents' old home—and all without the aid of a Frontboy map or a GPS tracking system. For a carpetbagging political opportunist—as she's been characterized by Republican incumbent Jon Porter, whom she is challenging for the 3rd Congressional District seat—Hafen is a mighty fine tour guide. "When I first heard that [television] ad," Hafen says, "I thought it was ridiculous, especially since he knows me and knows my family. His wife was a librarian at McCaw Elementary and actually taught one of my sisters. ... He intentionally misled the public about my history." The first stop on the tour is Hafen's O.K. Tire Store on West Lake Mead Parkway. Henderson may be America's 11th-fastest growing city, but that's not apparent once you enter the parking lot. There's a folksy, small-town feel to the place. Two dirt-caked Dodge pickups sit out front. Flecks of billboard have fallen off the B.F. Goodrich sign, and time has weathered the shop's exterior. Inside, the walls are coated in a grungy blue. Shoe prints stain the floor. Nearby is a dilapidated Pepsi machine that once sold sodas for 35 cents. In the garage, two older mechanics chat about something or other, pointing to the diagram of a car.
"It still looks the same," Hafen says. "I can't remember the first time I came here. We always brought our cars here as a family. I took my first car here. It was 1964 Dodge Dart with a push-button transmission."
Opened in 1954 by her grandfather, Herschel Hafen, the shop is Henderson's oldest family-run business. Twenty five or 30 cars come through a day, mostly for tire repairs, but today business is slow. In the front room is a makeshift office—a few cobbled-together desks and a chair—where Tony, Hafen's second cousin, works. He's been at the shop for 26 years—almost as long as Tessa's been alive. I ask him what he thinks about his cousin running for office in what has become a contentious, gloves-off campaign.
"I don't really keep up on politics," he says. "But one lady did come in and ask who Tessa was. I told her she was my cousin. She told me that someone was taking down Tessa's signs. She said she wanted to meet Tessa and talk to her. ... As far as me, I haven't heard a lot of negatives about her. She's my cousin!"
*****
Where you will hear negatives is from the Porter camp, calling Hafen, among other things, a carpetbagger and a political novice with no clue and no platforms.
When I first talk to David Cherry, Hafen's press secretary, he's in full Porter-bash mode. He says Porter, a former Boulder City mayor, is the actual carpetbagger: "He's from Iowa. He moved to Nevada in his twenties. When he was playing rock 'n' roll in college, the Hafen family was here doing business. Their family has a record of community service that is encouraged by their Mormon faith. Tessa hired people from here to work on her campaign. Most of Porter's campaign folks are from out of town. I mean, you would hope that Porter would encourage any staff members who are from here to learn what they can in Washington, then come back to Nevada and run for office."
Cherry says Hafen, an eight-year veteran of Sen. Harry Reid's office—who worked her way up from full-time staffer to press secretary to senior advisor—didn't want to go negative, but had to to set things straight. Her campaign countered with an ad that encouraged voters to forget Porter's "sleazy campaign" and instead "remember his record."
Canny, says left-leaning Las Vegas blogger Hugh Jackson (www.lasvegasgleaner.com). "When Hafen is telling voters to 'forget his sleazy campaign,' she's actually inviting voters to remember all his sleazy campaigns, hopefully prompting viewers to say, 'Oh yeah, that guy. Say, he is a sleazy campaigner. Time to show his sorry ass to the door.'"
But Porter has incumbency and money ($2 million to her $1 million) to his advantage, and Hafen will have a hard time catching up. "It's really sad that a 30-second campaign ad can turn a campaign," Cherry says. "Jon Porter is a GOP yes-man who's voted against the interest of Americans and Nevadans."
*****
We're across from Basic High, from which Hafen graduated in 1994, in the parking lot of a Mormon church where, as a youth, she went to seminary weekday mornings at 6:15 a.m.
"It's actually changed since I went there," she says of Basic, pointing to a theater and other buildings that weren't there a decade ago. Two generations of Hafens have graduated from the school, including six first cousins. Hafen played on the girls' golf team, but was no Michelle Wei. Nor did she cut her political teeth in student government. "But I did graduate in the top 10 percent of my class," she notes. The next stop is Water Street, the cultural lifeblood of downtown Henderson, where we pass the Eldorado Casino, whose exterior is the color of a ripened pomegranate. In high school, Hafen worked there as a secretary.
A right turn on Atlantic and up a few blocks to Lynn Lane, and we're at Gordon McCaw Elementary, her alma mater. Hafen—a substitute teacher—doesn't want to go in because she hasn't cleared the visit with school officials. "The district knows I'm campaigning but I try to keep that separate from my job," she says. Though she's yet to get a call from Basic, on Friday she taught one of her young cousins. And she's only had a few chances to teach political science classes. When she teaches, she tries to schedule campaign stops accordingly. High schools get out around 1 p.m., making it easier to campaign in the afternoons. "I've had really early breakfast appointments or early-morning radio interviews and have taught at an elementary school in the nearby areas," she says. If she had her druthers, she'd work exclusively in elementary schools. "It's tougher teaching them because you have to make sure you capture the attention of 15 to 20 first-graders, and it makes you get creative."
After pointing to her fifth-grade classroom, Hafen circles the playground she used to frolic on, and we watch two dozen kids play in the midday sun. I ask her if 2006 isn't merely a prelude to a 2008 political run when, presumably, she'll have more money, better name recognition and more time to campaign.
"2008 is a long ways away, and we're only six weeks away from this election. I want to win this election," she says. "It's taken every last ounce of energy to do this race. I'm not even thinking about 2008."
Next question: Did Harry Reid put you up to this? Is she a sacrificial lamb or does he think she has a chance to unseat Porter?
"I never call him Harry because I have so much respect for him," she says. "Sen. Reid didn't put me up to this. Yes, I did talk with him at length. But I always wanted to run for office. My dad has been on the Henderson City Council for 20 years. My grandpa's cousin, Tim Hafen, was speaker of the state Assembly in the '70s. All six kids [she and her siblings] are registered to vote. We're very active in church and our neighborhoods. Sen. Reid obviously had an influence on my decision. But he's obviously more concerned with helping Democrats in the Senate. I'm a Democrat running for Congress."
On our way to Ocean Street, where Hafen used to play softball in the fields behind the Mormon church, she describes her political evolution. In high school, she got an inkling for politics. At dinner, her father would talk politics. Occasionally, she'd accompany him to City Hall. "I would always get doted on," she says.
A trip to D.C. at age 14—Dad was there for a League of Cities conference—made an impression on her; she was taken in by the statues, the architecture, the feeling that, hey, this place is important. She met Reid at the weekly meetings he hosts for with visiting Nevadans. After graduating from Southern Utah College with a communications degree, Hafen applied for and got a job in Reid's office. She stepped into the political barnburner that was Reid's contentious reelection campaign against John Ensign. Her boss squeaked out a whisker-thin victory, 428 votes.
"I was brand new and working the front desk answering phones. I was on the front lines, and I learned that people on both sides [Democrats and Republicans] were angry. They said some pretty vicious things. But I got to learn how things work in Washington."
I ask Hafen if there's really any difference between a yes-man for the majority party and a freshman lawmaker from a minority party (assuming that the great Democratic takeover of 2006 fails to materialize)—aren't they both powerless?
"It's about doing what's best for Nevada. He's not an independent voice," she says.
But Porter is on the record opposing Yucca Mountain, likely the most contentious issue facing Nevada.
"That's easy to oppose," she says. "The Democratic candidates who've come to Nevada have all gone on the record opposing Yucca Mountain. They know if they want support from the state party, they have to do so. Porter hasn't gotten those same guarantees from Republicans." Other gripes include Porter's:
• record of voting with Bush (nearly 90 percent of the time, according to Congressional Quarterly);
• waffling on a $1,500 bonus for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq—voting for it in October 2003, then against it after pressure from GOP colleagues;
• vote to change the rules when former GOP majority leader Tom DeLay was indicted in a campaign-finance scheme.
Earlier this month at a UNLV press conference, Hafen accused Porter of voting for the largest-ever cuts in the student loan program; Porter countered by saying he supported legislation offering loan forgiveness to librarians, nurses and teachers who go into low-income areas to work. In response to Hafen's call for a measured, gradual pull-back of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq that is contingent on training Iraqi forces to keep the peace, Porter told the Review-Journal: "Here's Tessa Hafen's three-point plan for Iraq: No. 1, fire [Defense Decretary Donald] Rumsfeld. No. 2, pull the troops out. No. 3, tell the world what our plan is to fight terror. She doesn't have a solution." Are Porter's attacks gaining traction? That's hard to say. He has more money and has been campaigning longer. Hafen declared her candidacy in February. Is that enough time to articulate a platform? How effectively can you build a platform on critiquing whatever your opponent does or doesn't do?
Hafen says "we need a change in priorities and the focus of the White House and the Republican Congress. A change for what's best for the American people, not what's best for special interests like Big Oil and the drug companies."
Nice sound bite, but what specifically needs changing? One thing she'd retool is the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. "It's good in some aspects, but there needs to be some flexibility in monitoring students. We have 300,000 students here, and there are counties in Nevada with less than 100 students, so vastly different issues in each district. Plus there's the issue of funding this federal mandate."
Reached in Washington, an aide from Porter's D.C. offices says the congressman was on the House floor at the time and not available to comment on the race. "Besides, it's a profile about Tessa Hafen, so we'd have no comment anyway. Thanks."
*****
The way Harry Reid tells it, he and Hafen were in D.C., in the back of a car on the way to appointment, when he popped the question: "I said, 'Hey Tessa, why don't you run for Congress.' She said she was thinking about it. We had a short conversation and that was it. That's exactly what happened. I didn't cajole her. She made up her own mind."
Prior to that conversation, Reid says, he never talked with Hafen about running for office. Since she announced her candidacy, he says he's chatted with her a few times.
"She is in a great district with more Democrats than Republicans," Reid says. "Right now it's very unpopular to be beholden to the Bush White House, and with the low approval ratings for Bush, I guarantee this will be a very, very close race."
The way Hafen tells the story, it does come off like she's a political opportunist. She always wanted to run, she says, but the combination of low White House approval ratings, growing distrust of the GOP and Porter's partisanship created the ideal conditions. "It was a window of opportunity I couldn't pass up," she says.
But why not run for Henderson City Council, for the County Commission or statewide office? "I worked eight years in Congress, that's where my experience was, and I looked at all of the factors going into it. It's a race I know I can win as long as I keep working hard and doing what's right. I've had eight years of on-the-ground training, so it makes sense to run for the office I know most about."
Andy Hafen says his daughter has a knack for politics. He saw it when she was 11 and she helped him campaign for the Henderson City Council—walking door to door, hanging signs. "We didn't have any campaign consultants," says Andy, who was elected to the council in 1987. "It was a total family affair."
Surprisingly, he says the attacks on his daughter—the claims about being a carpetbagger, about her lacking political chops—weren't all that surprising. Politics isn't for the weak.
"I've known Jon Porter for almost 20 years," he says. "We sat down and talked once after she declared her candidacy, and he said he would go after her like any other candidate. I said I know, that's politics. But she's out there every single day. Saturday was an 18-hour day for her. She's not taking this lightly. If that counts for anything, she should do very well at the polls and she should be the next congresswoman from CD3."
The closer we get to election day, November 7, the longer Hafen's days are getting. One day included trips to Desert Breeze Park, Sunset Park, Logandale and back to Henderson. Campaigning is a full-time gig. Hafen's been on the road so much that that she and her husband, Spencer Stewart, who's an assistant vice president of campus development at Nevada State College, haven't had a full-blown honeymoon. Married on July 14, they spent a week in Lake Tahoe. A longer vacation is set for after the election.
After November 7, she also plans to resume running and outdoor activities like hiking and camping. Her favorite haunts include Red Rock, Mount Charleston and Sloan Canyon.
"Fun is like a foreign concept these days," she says, laughing. She's even had to give up the television show 24. "I love that show. I like it because the good guys always win and there are no re-reruns."
*****
The low-slung, one-story home at 250 Laval is generally unchanged from Hafen's childhood. It still looks like it was crafted from adobe. Her parents bought the home from an older Hafen family member. (On Andy's side of the family alone, there are 68 Hafens in the Valley, including District Court judicial candidate Conrad Hafen.) You can still see the mountains all around. But back then, this was less a development and more of an outpost.
"There were two homes on the street," she says. "We'd all go out in the desert and look for lizards."
Around the block, on Fairway, is the home her parents lived in. It, too, hasn't changed much. As we pass the site where Burkholder Middle School is being rebuilt—"Basic used to be there; Basic has had three different school sites," Hafen says—I ask her if the handful of planned debates with Porter will make much of a difference. She could conceivably whip the pants off Porter in the debates, make a convincing case to toss him from office and still lose.
"I wish people paid more attention to the debates rather than the television ads," she says. "Some people are very diligent about being informed."
Which brings us back to the tire shop and back to Tony, her politically incurious cousin. "I'm surprised that you got him to talk," she says, laughing. "He's usually so quiet ... Everything I do is a reflection of my family, of the people of Henderson. I'm not going to back down from the facts. I'm a Nevadan and Jon Porter's votes have been bad for Nevadans."
At that, I get out of the car and bid adieu to Hafen, who has a speaking engagement in 20 minutes.