DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

Dean Heller, the Republican nominee for the U.S. House district that encompasses most of Nevada, has turned a safe GOP seat competitive for the Democrats, at least according to some dubious opinion surveys. He has done it by not being true to himself.

Since his entry into Nevada politics, Heller has had enormous crossover appeal to Democrats. As a state legislator representing a western Nevada district dominated by Carson City, he resisted the allure of the political fringe that attracted so many Republicans who later gridlocked the 2003 Nevada Legislature. While many Republicans followed George Bush and Karl Rove's example of trying to win by playing to the party's base. Heller's voting record was moderate and he was able -- and, rare these days, willing -- to work with members of both parties.

As secretary of state Heller gained a reputation for treating all parties fairly, particularly when he handled the politically sensitive U.S. senate recount of 1998. He's exactly the kind of public official voters say they want, and he entered this year's congressional race with a rich lode of bipartisan appeal, but he has allowed the events of this year to compromise it.

In the primary he was faced with a challenge from one of those fringe Republicans, and allowed himself to be driven to the right in order to compete with her and he authorized the kind of vicious and rancorous television spots that he had always avoided, undercutting his appeal to independent voters.

When he won his primary, he ignored or missed one of its lessons: He and fellow moderate Dawn Gibbons had 62 percent of the vote to extreme right candidate Sharron Angle's 35 percent -- and that was in a Republican primary. Among a general election populace, there was even less reason for him to buy into appealing to the base, yet that's exactly what he did.

Shortly after the primary there were some opinion surveys that showed Democratic nominee Jill Derby running close to Heller, in one case within the margin of error. The polls needed interpretation. For instance, the sample of one of the polls was 42 percent Republican and 41 percent Democrat. But voter registration in the district is actually 48 percent Republican to 33 percent Democratic. In addition, early post-primary polls can be hazardous. In incumbent Republican Jim Gibbons' first run in the district, a survey showed his Democratic opponent Thomas "Spike" Wilson trailing by just five points. That survey was never validated by any other source, least of all by the voters.

But the Heller/Derby surveys caused concern among Republican leaders who don't know how to read polls. They telegraphed their concern to reporters, who spun the story as "Heller on the defensive." Heller panicked and started doing some things he once would not have considered. He hosted a visit to Nevada not by a moderate figure who might help him with a broadbased constituency -- Colin Powell or John McCain, say -- but by George Bush, a figure custom tailored to drive off Reagan Democrats and moderate Republicans. And Democrat Derby, meanwhile, was running as a conservative, giving those voters a place to go. The dynamics of the parties are different -- Heller running as a conservative damages him, Derby running as a conservative helps her.

Worse, on the day Bush campaigned for Heller, Heller campaigned to Bush's right. On the front page of one newspaper alongside the article about Bush's visit and a photo of the two men together was a sidebar story about Heller essentially saying that Bush was too liberal on immigration.

So, step by step, Heller has been weakening his longtime moderate appeal and looking more and more partisan and doctrinaire.

None of this is irreparable for Heller. There is a month until election, he's not an incumbent so he's clear of the Mark Foley issue, the district remains overwhelmingly Republican, and Derby's conservatism is mostly cosmetic -- a lot of sloganeering like "give career politicians the boot," but nothing specific.

If Heller can lose Karl Rove's blueprint and let Heller be Heller, he won't be the first Republican to lose the district.