But privately, on Tuesday, during a break at this year's energy summit, Michael Yackira, the CEO of NV Energy, rose to introduce Harry Reid at a fundraiser for the senator's re-election. Indeed, Reid's staff asked Yackria, who was sitting at the table of honor with the senator, to perform the duty. The gist of Yackira's introduction: Nevada is lucky to have the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
This is Nevada politics -- and Prince Harry -- in a nutshell, the no-permanent-friends-no-permanent-enemies school of politics. It's a wary alliance to be sure. But since Reid ratcheted up his campaign to essentially get NV Energy to sponsor a no-more-coal bill in the Nevada Legislature, it has become clear that the senator and the utility are more friends than enemies. Indeed, shortly before Reid was introduced by Yackira at Aureole in Mandalay Bay, the senator was gushing about Warren Buffett's purchase of the utility and its bright future.
It's an arranged marriage, to be sure -- arranged at the point of a legislative gun by the senator. But the consecration of the union was cemented at that fundraiser Tuesday for Reid's 2016 campaign, one I am sure NV Energy passionately hopes happens and is successful.
At the National Clean Energy Summit last year, Senate Majority Harry Reid leveled a broadside at NV Energy, as he has done many times in his career.
Reid lambasted the utility for not closing its Reid-Gardner coal plant, a fusillade that fit nicely into the majority leader's personal war on coal that began years earlier as he actually induced NV Energy to abandon plans for a facility in rural Nevada.
That was then. That is the public posture.
But privately, on Tuesday, during a break at this year's energy summit, Michael Yackira, the CEO of NV Energy, rose to introduce Harry Reid at a fundraiser for the senator's re-election. Indeed, Reid's staff asked Yackria, who was sitting at the table of honor with the senator, to perform the duty. The gist of Yackira's introduction: Nevada is lucky to have the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
This is Nevada politics -- and Prince Harry -- in a nutshell, the no-permanent-friends-no-permanent-enemies school of politics. It's a wary alliance to be sure. But since Reid ratcheted up his campaign to essentially get NV Energy to sponsor a no-more-coal bill in the Nevada Legislature, it has become clear that the senator and the utility are more friends than enemies. Indeed, shortly before Reid was introduced by Yackira at Aureole in Mandalay Bay, the senator was gushing about Warren Buffett's purchase of the utility and its bright future.
It's an arranged marriage, to be sure -- arranged at the point of a legislative gun by the senator. But the consecration of the union was cemented at that fundraiser Tuesday for Reid's 2016 campaign, one I am sure NV Energy passionately hopes happens and is successful.
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