Sharron Angle

Sharron Elaine Angle (née Ott; born July 26, 1949) is an American far-right politician who served as a Republican member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007.

In 1992, Angle was elected to the Nye County School Board of Trustees and served one term.

Before this time, she was registered as a Republican.

During this term, she was an active member of the Independent American Party of Nevada.

She re-registered as a Republican in 1997 after deciding to run for elected office.

In 1998, she won election to the Nevada State Assembly and served until 2006.

During her time in the 42-member assembly, she voted "no" so frequently on matters of wide consensus that votes were often called as "41-to-Angle".

In 2003, she hired John C. Eastman of the Claremont Institute to fight the Supreme Court decision when then Governor Kenny Guinn sued the Legislature to nullify the state constitution and allow a simple majority of the legislature to pass an $836 million tax increase in Angle v. Guinn.

Angle used her personal funds to defend the state constitution's two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes and, with Eastman, took the case to Federal District Court in Nevada, which referred it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Legislature subsequently passed the $836 million tax increase by a two-thirds vote.

In 2003, Angle attempted to arrange a trip to an Ensenada, Baja California prison to assess a drug treatment program implemented there.

She also arranged to visit a prison in New Mexico to assess the "Second Chance Program", which licensed its materials from Criminon, a program for rehabilitating prisoners using methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Angle sponsored legislation aimed at placing this program in certain women's prisons in Nevada.

In 2005, she was the sole voter against a bill that split the property tax abatement by applying a 3% rate to residential and 8% rate to commercial property.

She stated that she voted no because the Nevada Constitution states that taxation must be uniform and equal and so could not vote against her oath of office to which she swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution."

Angle ultimately prevailed in the suit; in 2006, the state supreme court reversed its 2003 decision and restored the Nevada Constitution's two-thirds vote provision.

On August 15, 2006, Angle narrowly lost the primary for U.S. Congress in Nevada's 2nd congressional district which was vacated by Rep. Jim Gibbons.

Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller received 24,781 votes to Angle's 24,353.

Gibbons' wife Dawn, a former State Assemblywoman herself, finished with 17,328 votes.

On August 25, Angle called for a new primary election on the grounds that some poll workers showed up late for work, or didn't show up at all, in Washoe County, where she was the strongest.

On September 1, the Carson City District Judge denied her appeal for a new election.

She ran unsuccessfully as the 2010 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, garnering 44.6 percent of the vote.

On April 15, 2010, she received an endorsement for the U.S. Senate race from the Tea Party Express at a rally in the nation's capital.

The next day, she received an endorsement from conservative talk radio personality Mark Levin and she was endorsed by several other conservative individuals and organizations, including the Club for Growth, Sarah Palin, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, singer Pat Boone, and Phyllis Schlafly.

Angle ultimately won the June 8, 2010, primary, capturing 40.09% of the vote, and beating Sue Lowden (26.11%), Danny Tarkanian (23.29%), and John Chachas (3.94%).

A June 9, 2010, Rasmussen Reports post-primary poll showed her leading incumbent Senator Harry Reid by a margin of 50% to 39%.

A July 2010 poll showed Reid leading Angle by seven points.

The change of margin, 18% in less than a month, is the largest in Senate elections history.

Some prominent Republicans opposed her candidacy.

Immediately after the primary, the Republican mayor of Reno, Bob Cashell, who backed Lowden in the Republican primary, endorsed Reid for the general election, calling Angle an "ultra-right winger".

Other notable Republicans supporting Harry Reid included Sig Rogich, a former campaign staffer for Ronald Reagan and assistant to President George H. W. Bush; Geno Martini, the Republican mayor of Sparks; Republican State Senator and Minority Leader William Raggio; Dema Guinn, the widow of Kenny Guinn, Republican Governor of Nevada; and former Lieutenant Governor Sue Wagner.

On October 3, Nevada's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed her bid for U.S. Senate against Reid.

That same month, Nevada Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian released a tape to the media of a recorded conversation he had with Angle where she asked him to drop out of the race.

In the tape, Angle speaks candidly about her campaign and says that she cannot defeat Reid with Ashjian on the ballot.

One of Angle's campaign ads aired on television late in her campaign entitled "The Wave" was cited as racist and despicable by Sen. Robert Menendez.

On election day, Reid defeated Angle by a margin 50.3% to 44.6%.

Angle was criticized during the campaign for largely avoiding answering questions from the press, both local and national.

In September, the Las Vegas Review-Journal sued her for copyright infringement after she allegedly posted entire articles from the publication on her campaign website without permission.

On September 15, 2013, she was unanimously elected the fifth President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, and resigned in 2016 to run again for the Nevada U.S. Senator position being vacated by Harry Reid but failed to win the Republican primary.

In 2018, she ran in the Republican primary for Nevada's 2nd congressional district and lost to the incumbent, Mark Amodei.