“Here we are being safe and professional and earning a living, and he wants us to end it? Absolutely not,” Ms. Taylor said in an interview in her bedroom at the Bunny Ranch. “This is what I choose to do, and there is nothing wrong with it.”

Ms. Taylor, who does not use her given family name, graduated from college and worked as an administrator in a group home for young people for several years before she became a prostitute. The bedroom where she works is decorated with photos of Marilyn Monroe and framed copies of her posing in Hustler magazine. Ms. Taylor declined to discuss her rates, lest she be accused of soliciting across state lines, which would be illegal, but said, “Money is not my worry anymore.”

“We’re entrepreneurs; we’re in a business for ourselves,” she added.

Like many of the state’s two dozen brothels, the Bunny Ranch is tucked behind an industrial park, a few hundred feet off a small highway in northern Nevada. It is hardly the kind of place one stumbles upon. Visitors know to look for electric pink signs or flashing red lights, even if they do not know exactly what to expect once they walk in the door. (Anyone without an appointment is greeted with a line of women in lingerie; customers can choose whom they would like to take to a bedroom, though some choose just to have a drink at the bar.)

George Flint, who has worked as the chief lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Owners Association for 25 years, tends to abide by the consensus that the prostitutes should keep a low profile, “stay low on the brush,” the local saying goes.

But when Mr. Flint heard that Mr. Reid had condemned the brothels, he encouraged Dennis Hof, the outlandish owner of the Bunny Ranch and other brothels, to take some of his “girls” to the Legislature for the speech. Later, Mr. Hof told reporters that “Harry Reid will have to pry the cathouse keys from my cold, dead hands.”