HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Wiley visits the Pahrump Valley Times. Advertisement

Mike Wiley, a Republican candidate running against U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in the 2010 election, got his start in politics as a radio talk show host, just like Rush Limbaugh.

A few days before New Year's of 1994 a friend came over to the Jacksonville, Fla., radio station where he worked, alarmed at provisions in a Florida bill restricting gun rights.

Wiley announced on the air he was going to the state capital in Tallahassee to protest and invited people to join him -- he was pleasantly surprised to see 7,500 people at the rally.

Wiley carried a picture of the rally along with a flier announcing his candidacy when he stopped by Pahrump the other day.

After the Florida rally, some Republican gun rights advocates asked him to run for the U.S. Senate, but Wiley said that would mean competing against incumbent Connie Mack. So he changed parties and ran as a conservative Democrat. He related his experience in that race to the current election campaign.

A poll released by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research last month among Republicans showed 23 percent favoring Sue Lowden, 21 percent Danny Tarkanian, 9 percent Sharron Angle, 44 percent undecided and the rest of the candidates drawing less than 1 percent. Wiley called Lowden and Tarkanian the "establishment Republicans." The field also includes State Sen. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, Robin Titus and John Chachas.

Wiley scoffed at the poll. He recalled the 1998 Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Florida where he began with only 1 percent of the vote in the polls and ended up with 25 percent, finishing second to the brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hugh Rodham, who remained at 32 percent throughout the campaign.

"I'm the only candidate that's actually ever run a U.S. Senate race before. I'm also the only candidate who's been a presidential campaign spokesman," Wiley said. He was the spokesman for Pat Buchanan's campaign in New England in 1996.

"The concern with people today, they're watching a group of people in Washington that they hired with their vote to represent them, and those people have become such arrogant individuals that they're not listening to the people. They really don't care what the people say, and it scares the people because they're waking up to a government that is no longer theirs and governments that are no longer those of the people.

"Socialist governments have historically taken away people's guns and have historically killed millions of people," Wiley said. "There are devout communists in [Obama's] government, people who are Marxists and socialists and are not afraid to say so."

A Boston native, Wiley moved from Florida to Las Vegas in 2006, where he worked for the Adelson Educational Institute. He now runs his own consulting firm, the Wiley Information Network.

While Reid wants to bury the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project, Wiley is an enthusiasic supporter of nuclear power. That's part of his plan to restore the state economy.

He suggested Nevada become a leader in nuclear power by encouraging such power plants in the state, selling excess power to neighboring states, and opening up Yucca Mountain.

He also advocated not only a magnetic levitation or Maglev train from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif., but extending it north to Salt Lake City.

"You produce all the train materials here. You build the trains here. You build the track here," Wiley said. "Now you're putting people to work. At the same time, you begin the process of the studies to build nuclear power, and you turn and open back up Yucca Mountain and put people to work there."

"There's been like 6,000 transfers of nuclear waste. There never has been one accident. So evidently it's safe."

Wiley said Tarkanian doesn't even listen to talk radio, which shapes the opinions of the conservative wing of the party.

Since he announced his candidacy, Wiley has made a few visits to Pahrump, to address the quarterly Nye County Republican Party convention Oct. 3, then back again for the Republican Women's Fashion Show a few weeks later. Wiley said Nye County will be important to his campaign.

"As you get out of Clark County, there are what I refer to as God-and-country Democrats and Republicans. You know they're basically the same people. They just grew up in one party or the other, but they want people to tell them the truth, they want to keep their gun rights, they want government out of their wallets and out of their lives," Wiley said.

But he said there's a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, as evidenced by the result of the recent congressional election in upstate New York in which a moderate Republican endorsed by party officials, Dierdre Scozzafava, withdrew from the race under pressure from the party's right wing and threw her support to Democrat Bill Owens.

Owens ended up defeating Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman 49 percent to 46 percent in a traditional Republican district.

Wiley said Republicans lost the seat because Scozzafava still received 5 percent of the vote, the margin of victory.

"A conservative candidate who doesn't have any skeletons in the closet is going to be able to defeat Harry Reid," Wiley said.

Wiley said the economy struggled after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but former President George W. Bush fought the enemy and brought confidence back to the American people, resulting in 4.6 percent unemployment. But he said Democrats encouraged banks to loan money to people who couldn't afford it, leading to the burst of the housing bubble.

Wiley got visibly upset when talking about the war in Afghanistan. He'd like to withdraw the troops.

"If I'm sending U.S. troops to defend your nation and to free your people, you'd better damn well make sure that if my American companies are the best bidders to develop the copper in Afghanistan, we get the contract and not the Chinese," Wiley said. "Let the Chinese military fight al-Qaeda if you're going to give them the copper mine jobs."

Wiley said he'd ask Iraqi officials to get their act together and do something about their next door neighbor Iran.

"There's another element in Iran that wants freedom, and we should be supporting those people. But Obama doesn't support freedom. he supports socialist dictatorships. He's proven it in Venezuela, he's proven it in Honduras," Wiley said.