Las Vegas Review-Journal - Geoff Schumacher

John Chachas, a Wall Street investment banker, has decided to run for Harry Reid's U.S. Senate seat. This is goofy but at least it's good for Nevada's economy. At this point, short of a high-level nuclear waste dump, we'll take whatever we can get. Chachas is spending all kinds of money on advertising. He's actively campaigning, which includes paying for hotel rooms, restaurant meals and car rentals. He's also employing some people to help him with his campaign.

Chachas, 45, grew up on a cattle ranch in Ely but fled the pastures of White Pine County for the East Coast when he was 18 years old. And who could blame him? No doubt a fine student, he earned the opportunity to attend two of the nation's finest universities, Columbia for his undergraduate degree and Harvard for his master's. Chachas knew then and he should know now that he could never come close to getting that kind of a higher education in Nevada.

Name recognition is Chachas' biggest problem right now, and no wonder. Nobody knows who he is, because he hasn't really been involved in Nevada for more than two decades. While the rest of us have been toiling away here, working hard, contributing to the community the best ways we know how, Chachas has been working on Wall Street. And when he's looking for campaign contributions, his Wall Street friends hold fund-raising dinners in the Hamptons, not rural Nevada.

Although Chachas apparently has kept an eye on Nevada over the past 23 years, when he was working, living and raising his children in New York, he now is considering the idea of moving back to the Silver State. But only if he wins, of course. If he doesn't win, and it's hard to imagine he will, you gotta believe he'll stick it out in Manhattan. After all, until he got all amped up about taking on Reid, that's where he had chosen to set up his life and his family.

By the way, Chachas fits the Webster's definition of carpetbagger to a T.