In 2004, John Thune made history, and became a Republican star, by defeating sitting Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Daschle’s defeat was the first since 1952 in which a sitting party leader was defeated. This year, in the desert of Nevada, history may repeat itself. Current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is facing an excruciatingly tough race to remain in Washington with several Republicans vying to be the next king killer. Chief among them is former State Senator Sue Lowden.

Lowden recently sat down with TNL for a short interview where we asked her how she viewed Harry Reid.

“When you’re from a western state that’s center-right, it’s very hard to be carrying a liberal agenda on your back and be a leader of that agenda,” Lowden said. “Harry Reid is following anything that the Obama administration asks him to do, and he, along with Nancy Pelosi, are leading America down the wrong track. He’s lost touch with the people here.”

A recent Public Opinion Strategies poll shows that Lowden is right. A whopping 80% of Nevadans believe that their state is on the wrong track. Harry Reid’s favorability ratings are horribly low, struggling to get out of the low thirties, and ballot match-ups show he can’t get more than 40% of the vote against any possible contender.

Lowden seems poised to be the king killer that the GOP is looking for in Nevada and she’s hammering Reid where it may hurt him most – health care. Nevada is a state filled with retirees seeking all the sun, warmth, and quarter slots that the Silver State has to offer. Many of those senior citizens rely on Medicare. As Sue Lowden told TNL, “Seniors are frightened. For a lot of people Medicare is their only insurance. For my own parents Medicare is their only health insurance.” As Lowden noted, many of the aging voters she meats are afraid they won’t be able to get a hip replacement, a heart transplant, or other needed care under the legislation being pushed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and President Obama.

Sue Lowden is the first GOP candidate to be on the air, and her latest commercial aims to tighten the screws on Reid over the health care issue.

Lowden faces a tough battle ahead with Reid, but first must win her own GOP primary. The Republican race is a crowded one, but Lowden’s most significant contender is Danny Tarkanian, a perennial GOP candidate in Nevada whose name surely sounds familiar to college basketball fans. Danny Tarkanian is the son of beloved UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, who took the Runnin’ Rebels won a National Championship in 1990, and made four appearances in the Final Four.

Danny has earned some important support in the conservative community, gaining the endorsement of Red State’s Erick Erickson, and begun a debate over whether Lowden is the “establishment” candidate in the race. In recent GOP elections, the “establishment” label has been a death sentence. Just this week, Texas Governor Rick Perry defeated US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary. Hutchison was very much the “establishment” candidate, backed by former Bush family members, administration officials, and became, in the mind of voters, the “Washington” candidate, not their candidate. Perry harnessed this and leveraged his support among Texas Tea Party supporters to soundly defeat the Senator on Tuesday night.

Lowden has strived to buck that establishment label noting, “Danny has been on the ballot three of the last four election cycles. I haven’t been on a ballot since 1996.” She’s brought on a tough team of experienced staffers, some from that famous Thune team of 2004, and worked to get in touch with voters across Nevada the old fashioned way – retail politics. With an RV, town-hall meetings, and plenty of door-to-door campaigning, Lowden is trying to draw a crisp comparison to Reid, whose hands-off approach to the race has angered some Nevadans, and helped the argument that the Majority Leader is out of touch with his constituents back home.

A poll from just earlier this week shows Lowden ahead of Tarkanian 47% to 29%, with both defeating Reid, but the twist in the November election could be the Tea Party candidate, Jon Ashjian. A Nevada businessman, Ashjian stands to bleed away as much as 11% of GOP votes. With the Tea Party candidate included in the latest polls, the conservative vote splits. Lowden leads Reid 42% to 37% with Ashjian garner 9% of the vote, and with Tarkanian as the candidate, Reid’s numbers get even better with him only trailing by one and Ashjian pulling 11% in a November match-up.

These numbers, and the strange beginnings of his campaign, are leading some in Nevada think that Ashjian is a part of a Democrat effort to help Reid win reelection by syphoning away Republican votes. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the Tea Party of Nevada’s secretary is Barry Levinson, a registered Democrat and attorney, who is orchestrating Ashjian’s campaign. The Tea Party of Nevada has only been in existence since January and has many in the GOP suspicious, prompting a response from Ashjian. “I am not for Harry Reid, I have never been supportive of Harry Reid. My candidacy is real, The Tea Party is real, and we are not going away.”

Don’t count out Lowden from trying to win over the Tea Party voters though. She has embraced the Tea Party efforts in the Silver State, even loaning 30 phone lines in her office to Tea Party volunteers during the tight race for the Senate in Massachusetts, so they could make get out the vote calls for Republican Scott Brown. Lowden also says that she has been a regular participant in tea parties herself. She reiterated that she’s a strong proponent of those who didn’t feel like they had a voice in politics until the Tea Party movement began last year.

After defeating Tom Daschle in 2004, John Thune arrived in Washington a hero to many on the right, and is now even mentioned as a dark-horse candidate for President in 2012. Sue Lowden hopes to become a Republican hero herself by knocking off the man leading the liberal charge in the Senate today – Harry Reid. If she can get past Tarkanian this summer in the GOP primary, and coalesce enough Tea Party voters in November, Lowden may just be the next John Thune, and a new influential female voice in the Republican party.