Sharron Angle's Ethnic Eye Test
Sharron Angle's 11th hour push to overcome Nevada Senator Harry Reid was defined by her blunt and controversial appeal to illegal immigration hawks. In ads portraying her opponent as soft on the issue, the Republican featured images of dark-skinned men wearing bandanas sneaking across the border to join gangs, which drew cries of racism from Latino groups. Angle's attempts to defend the ad campaign hardly helped matters. In an October 15 meeting with Hispanic students, Angle explained that she never intended the men in the commercials to be explicitly Latino. Just to prove her colorblindness, Angle told the room full of Latino youths: "Some of you look a little more Asian to me." The crowd was taken aback, as was the electorate; Hispanics turned out in big numbers and voted overwhelmingly for Reid.