In Tight Nevada Senate Race, an Ethics Cloud Looms Large

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Representative Shelley Berkley is being investigated by the House over allegations that she used her office to help her husband's medical practice.

RENO, Nev. — Representative Shelley Berkley, battling for a Senate seat, flew to northern Nevada hours after appearing with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at a rally in her Las Vegas district. On Oct. 19, before returning south for the start of early voting, Ms. Berkley crisscrossed Washoe County, the battleground where her image has been largely shaped by a barrage of television advertisements from her rival attacking her ethics.

With Ms. Berkley, a Democrat, locked in a very tight race for one of the most fiercely fought Senate races in the country, her Republican opponent, Senator Dean Heller, was calculating that he could scrape his way to re-election with an unrelenting focus on the ethics cloud surrounding her, analysts said.

Mr. Heller made no public appearances during the week, but his ubiquitous television ads have hammered at the congresswoman, who is being investigated by the House over allegations that she used her office to help her husband's medical practice.

The race has remained tight despite the investigation, experts said, because of Ms. Berkley's popularity in her district, which she has represented for seven terms, her tenacious campaigning and the formidable support of Senator Harry Reid's muscular machine. In the early morning cold, Ms. Berkley sought votes from Teamster members at a United Parcel Service center before heading to a breakfast here with a receptive group of older residents.

"I will stand with you, I will work with you, and I will fight for you," she said, pledging to protect Medicare and Social Security.

A victory by Mr. Heller is critical to Republican hopes of wresting the Senate from Democratic control and dislodging Mr. Reid, this state's senior senator, as majority leader. A former congressman who was elected to a safely Republican district here in 2007, Mr. Heller was appointed last year by Gov. Brian Sandoval to succeed John Ensign, another Republican, who resigned from the Senate over a sex scandal.

Still reeling from the nation's highest unemployment rate and one of its highest home foreclosure rates, Nevada has emerged as one of the most contested states in the presidential battle, and the Senate race has also become a proxy, pitting two candidates with records of voting along partisan lines.

A onetime stockbroker who referred to the unemployed as "hobos" in an unguarded moment, Mr. Heller, 52, is a social conservative who has attacked Ms. Berkley for supporting President Obama's economic policies. A social liberal, Ms. Berkley, 61, has assailed her opponent for embracing the Republican top of the ticket's proposed spending cuts and Medicare changes.

Ms. Berkley is depending on Mr. Obama, whose formidable voter turnout operations helped him carry the state in 2008. But Mitt Romney has invested considerable resources in forging a ground operation in the state, which has a significant Mormon population. Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Heller are Mormons. Here in Washoe, the county that makes Nevada a swing state, registered Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats this time.

Darren Littell, a spokesman for Team Nevada, which oversees Republican campaigns, said candidates were now coordinating their efforts on the ground.

"I think it's going to positively affect the Senate race here," he said.

To overcome her deficit in the polls, Ms. Berkley must win big in her Democratic district and blunt a likely victory by Mr. Heller here. In Las Vegas, she tried to fire up core supporters recently, eating a hot dog at a picnic by the Laborers' International Union of North America and riding in a red Jeep in the annual Hispanic Day Parade.

Ms. Berkley mentioned her support for the Dream Act, a bill that would have given legal status to young illegal immigrants and was popular among Hispanics, who account for 14 percent of the state's electorate. Mr. Heller opposed the Dream Act, which he called a "backdoor amnesty program" and "pandering" to Hispanics, and has also spoken in favor of eliminating birthright citizenship, a hard stance on immigration that resonates in rural areas and among some white voters elsewhere.

"I believe it was a portion of the Constitution years ago at the beginning of this country. It made a lot of sense then; it makes less sense today," Mr. Heller said during the third and final debate on Oct. 15.

But more than anything, Mr. Heller's television ads, as well as those financed by "super PACs" pouring money into Nevada, have aimed at Ms. Berkley's ethics problems. A House panel is investigating whether Ms. Berkley wrongly intervened with Medicare officials in 2008 to keep open a troubled kidney transplant center with ties to her husband's practice.

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