Sharron Angle heads to D.C. for lobbyist money

 Lobbyist money,

Nevada Senate challenger Sharron Angle has been bashing Majority Leader Harry Reid for his ties to K Street, but Angle is planning her own Washington money trip next week to tap into the deep pockets of the lobbying community.

Angle will hold a fundraiser at the National Republican Senatorial Committee on Sept. 16, according to an invite for the event. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) will be in attendance.

Several major GOP lobbyists and fundraisers will host the event, including former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.); Tim Powers of Artemis Strategies, a former Republican National Committee and Bush-Cheney 2000 staffer; David Norcross of Blank Rome Government Relations, a former RNC general counsel; former Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), now a lobbyist at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Barney Skladany, also of Akin Gump; Kirsten Chadwick of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, a former White House aide under President George W. Bush; Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a major GOP fundraiser; and Jade West, senior VP for the Wholesalers and Distributors Association and a former top Senate Republican aide.

Angle has been bashing Reid since an earlier POLITICO report this summer that showed she had attracted little support from K Street while the Senate majority leader had attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbyist donations this cycle.

An Aug. 5 press release from the Angle campaign dubbed Reid “King Harry, The Washington Lobbyist ‘Godfather,’” and slammed him for his “reliance on Washington lobbyists to fund his nasty smear campaign on Sharron Angle.”

Now Angle will mingle with some of those Washington lobbyists at her fundraiser. A spokesman did not return calls from POLITICO seeking comment.

“In the 20-plus years Harry Reid has been in Washington, he’s taken more than $6 million in lobbyist money and his name has become synonymous with special interests and backroom deals such as the Cornhusker Kickback,” said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh. “We’ll let the voters of Nevada decide which candidate in this race is on their side.”

Angle, a former Nevada assemblywoman and favorite of the tea party movement, has also bashed the lawmakers who supported the 2008 Wall Street bailout bill, known officially as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Angle has called out unnamed “domestic enemies” in Congress, and in an interview with ABC News, she suggested those enemies include bailout supporters.