DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

In 1998 when backers of Republican Kenny Guinn were busily trying to wire the governor's race for him by shutting off campaign money to all other candidates, they worried less about Democrats than about another Republican -- Dean Heller, the secretary of state.

Heller, like Guinn, had a moderate public image that made him attractive to Democrats as well as Republicans and he had a stronger base of support in the GOP than Guinn. As a member of the Nevada Legislature and then as Nevada Secretary of State, Heller had been a liberal to moderate officeholder.

And whenever Heller did anything that made Guinn's people think he might be getting ready to jump into the governor's race, such as hiring a new public relations person in the secretary of state's office, they freaked out. Paranoia over Heller ran rampant in the Guinn campaign.

In fact, they never had anything to worry about. Not until 2006 did Heller try to run for another office, when he ran for the U.S. House.

In the Republican House primary that year, Heller faced state legislators Dawn Gibbons and Sharron Angle. Gibbons, like Heller, had a reputation as a moderate Republican while Angle is an extreme rightist. Angle had the hard right all to herself while Heller and Gibbons split everyone else. The result was very close -- Heller won with 35.90 percent to Angle's 35.29 percent. Gibbons received 25.10 percent.

In other words, the moderate vote in the GOP primary came to 61 percent.

Heller went on to win the general election easily by a 5.4 percent margin over Democrat Jill Derby. He took office in January 2007.

As a member of the House, he has done something that puzzled many of his fellow Republicans and political observers generally. The results of his primary election, in which the two moderates took 61 percent of the vote to Angle's 35.29, seemed a clear message that he was positioned just where he needed to be.

That made his behavior in the House all the more strange. He soon began cultivating the 35.29 and alienating the 61. Heller dashed to the right, obliterating his image as a middle of the roader, linking himself to one polarizing hot button issue after another.

Many of his fellow Republicans felt betrayed. "He was an alternative to guys like [Bob] Beers and [Jim] Gibbons," said one Carson City GOP leader who has watched Heller since his days as a legislator. "Now he's just another nutty right winger. No, I take that back. Beers means it. Dean, he just adopted it."

At the same time that he was converting to a dogmatic conservative, Heller also torpedoed his reputation for openness, something he'd carefully constructed as secretary of state (he kept the door to his inner office open for 10 years). But in Congress, he seems to have become something of a recluse. "We used to see him all the time," says one television reporter. A minor controversy last week over his comments about the GOP needing a housecleaning attracted attention less because of what he said than because he was actually making public comments on something other than Yucca Mountain and the Mining Law of 1872.

As the fortunes of Gov. Jim Gibbons have gone into a tailspin, other candidates have been lining up to run against him. Heller, in his previous incarnation, would have been the logical frontrunner. But the metamorphosis of the last two years is now an anchor on his prospects. By reinventing himself, he has steadily reduced the distinction between himself and the governor -- just as Gibbons was engaged in self-immolation. If the only thing Heller ever wants to be is a House member, he's set. But he has quite deliberately narrowed his appeal from that of a candidate with a broad base of support to that of a right-wing ideologue.

After spending two years turning himself into a philosophical clone of Jim Gibbons, it is now much more difficult for Heller to make himself look like an alternative to Gibbons.