Public employee unions and their allies in the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to protect their lucrative perks against fiscal conservatives, including spending lavishly on political mailers containing distortions and outright lies.

It works on gullible voters who fail to take the time to educate themselves before throwing away their votes, ignorantly offering up more of their tax dollars to fund the salaries and pensions of public employees that far exceed what they could ever expect.

This tactic took out two of the brightest and most thoughtful state senators on election day.

State Sens. Bob Beers and Joe Heck were ousted using smear tactics.

Heck in particular was accused of favoring letting women get cervical cancer because he voted against a bill that would have required insurance companies to pay for an expensive vaccine that might offer some protection from a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. Heck, an emergency room physician and a colonel in the Army Reserves, reasoned the cost was too high and efficacy unproved.

Yet he was hit with mailers that said he voted against cervical cancer screenings, which was never the case. (Read
Molly Ball's story on the campaigns against the two Republican state senators.)


That story we know, but there is more that took place behind the scene.

In a letter to the Review-Journal Saturday morning the wife of Dr. Heck, Lisa Heck, bemoaned the ill-informed voters who simply voted for a party instead of a candidate.

Then she revealed Senate Majority Leader Harry had called her husband about the tactics his party was using.

“Harry Reid, who called Sen. Heck to plead his denial of having anything to do with these tactics, refused to denounce the smear campaign when Sen. Heck asked him to,” Lisa Heck wrote. “Reid has turned into a political whore, abandoned Nevada when he became majority leader and is nothing more than your basic strategic liar.  Steve Horsford, who arrogantly thinks he is the next Obama, called Sen. Heck a ‘whiner’ for asking Reid to have some integrity and help stop the false accusations. Is it whining, Mr. Horsford, when you are asking someone to campaign fairly, with integrity, and simply tell the truth? How sad for him he finds playing fair with honor unfathomable. Neither of these men, as well as Ms. (Democratic opponent Shirley) Breeden have any respect for the political process, another human being or most importantly, themselves. To attack a man and a U.S. soldier of impeccable character and integrity the way they did, after serving his country to provide trauma care to our wounded sons and daughters, is truly disgusting.”

Dr. Heck recently served a tour of duty in Iraq and wrote about it for the Review-Journal. (Part one, part two, part three of his dispatches.)

Lisa Heck went on to add, “No one should have to explain what we had to, to our 11-year-old son, and no one should have to see the hurt in their children's eyes or alleviate the fears the way we did when these three created lies about their father.  Where in God's name is their common social decency? Ms. Breeden, Mr. Horsford and Dirty Harry can never understand the damage they did to an innocent child, all in the name of climbing the political ladder.”

An argument can be made that those who will not publicly denounce despicable behavior condone it.