'People in red states don’t even know who I am,' Reid says. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Reid's plot to keep the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes Republicans have walked into his trap.

As he’s tightened his grip on the Senate and protected vulnerable Democrats from casting politically tough votes, furious Republicans have made the mantra “fire Reid” a rallying cry and major fundraising push ahead of the midterm elections.


But in Reid’s mind, Republicans are training all their fire on a guy most voters barely even know.

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“I’m meaningless,” Reid, a three-decade Hill veteran and the most powerful Democrat in Congress, told POLITICO Thursday. “People in red states don’t even know who I am.”

If Democrats keep control of the Senate this year, they believe, it will be because they have prevented Republicans from nationalizing the midterm elections, keeping the focus squarely on the two candidates in their respective states rather than an unpopular President Barack Obama. For that reason, Reid has been more than willing to shield his vulnerable Democrats from casting votes on politically charged amendments even if he takes sustained fire from the GOP for running a dysfunctional Senate.

While Republicans say Democrats are still saddled with backing much of Obama’s agenda and helping enact controversial laws over health care and financial services, some Republicans wish they could make Reid’s handling of the Senate an even bigger focus this midterm season.

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“It should be a bigger issue,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a top official at the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. “I wish it were something that more people are interested in, it’s partly our fault in not having a way to describe it in a way that makes sense to people and how it affects their lives.”

The Senate plans to adjourn Thursday until after the elections, avoiding many hot-button votes over changing Obamacare, illegal immigration and taxes. It caps a yearlong effort by Senate Democratic leaders who have the singular focus aimed at bolstering the reelection chances of senators from battleground states — namely Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alaska, New Hampshire and Colorado.

With the race for the Senate still very competitive, the pressure has grown on Reid’s inner circle to amp up fundraising.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the No. 3 Senate leader, quietly transferred $1 million out of his campaign account this week to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to a source familiar with the matter. (He had $13.3 million in cash through the end of June.)

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And in addition to headlining a slew of fundraising events for the DSCC and Senate candidates, Reid has attended a staggering 81 meetings in 13 cities with big-dollar donors for the high-spending Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC spending more than any other Democratic outside group to save its party’s majority, a source said. Reid will attend even more in the final stretch of the season.

Republicans need to win a net of six seats to take back the majority and already essentially have three in the bag: Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota. But holding all the GOP seats and picking off three of those six Democratic seats in battleground states — as well as Iowa — is anything but a sure bet.

With less ammunition to use against their incumbents, Democrats hope that enough of their members will survive.

“The two overriding issues that the public cares about are obstruction and bipartisanship but I don’t think the specifics of what happens in the Senate affects them as much as those two,” said Schumer, blaming the GOP for obstructing hot-button economic issues.

For that reason, Reid has scheduled votes on a politically populist agenda devised by Schumer aimed at forcing Republicans to block bills aimed at wooing students, women, seniors and the middle class. Democrats have repeatedly put forth bills that have little chance of passing — like on increasing the minimum wage, gender pay equity, contraception access and student loan assistance. And even when there are efforts they actually support — such as Obama’s executive action on immigration — Democratic leaders have lobbied the White House to punt on the issue to avoid hurting their vulnerable incumbents and candidates in red states.

Behind the scenes, the fundraising game has stepped up.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), No. 4 in party leadership, who will travel to New Hampshire for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen this month, has transferred $250,000 to the DSCC from her campaign account and donated $225,000 from her political action committee. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is the only one of the four leaders who is running for reelection this year, though he has raised $4 million for the party committee since 2007, an aide said.

In addition to his super PAC work this cycle, the 74-year-old Reid has headlined 21 DSCC fundraisers across the country, barnstormingfrom New York to Los Angeles, in addition to seven Washington fundraisers for candidates and seven in Las Vegas.

In July, the Republican National Committee launched a campaign on social media to “Fire Reid,” an effort an RNC official said helped nationalize Senate races and seed local stories about how Reid was running the Senate. The official declined to give an exact figure on how much money the campaign brought in but said it was in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said no matter what Reid believes, his handling of the Senate will be a key factor come fall.

“How do you explain to your constituents even as a member of the majority party you are unable to get a piece of legislation voted on and heard on the floor?” Cornyn said. “To me, the biggest charge they’ll have to defend is being ineffective – and it’s all at Sen. Reid’s feet.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is poised to take Reid’s job if he survives his race in Kentucky and the GOP wins the majority, said he believes about half of the Democratic Caucus is “uncomfortable” with the lack of legislating in the chamber. If he becomes majority leader, McConnell has vowed to “restore” the Senate, bringing back five-day workweeks, rebuilding the weak committee process and holding a free-flowing set of votes on the floor.

McConnell pointedly noted that Sen. Mark Begich — a vulnerable Democrat up for reelection in Alaska — has yet to have an amendment vote on the Senate floor, even as the GOP leader’s own regular filibuster threats have helped bottle up progress in the chamber.

“The way the Senate has been operating has actually been a negative in his reelection campaign,” McConnell said.

Begich argues that since joining the Senate in 2009, he has had a number of bills and votes adopted in committees, which have worked their way through process and eventually become law. But he has not been afraid to whack Reid for not allowing votes, even surprising the majority leader and his staff when he blasted out a statement in July highly critical of the majority leader.

“We should have just as much right of the House members to vote on these issues and vote them up and down,” Begich said in an interview. Asked if his stance against Reid’s stewardship resonates with Alaskans, he said, “Oh yeah, I don’t like it. And I think a lot of Alaskans are frustrated with it.”

In Louisiana, Rep. Bill Cassidy is seizing on Reid’s handling of the Senate as a way to paint his opponent, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, as ineffective. Cassidy recently came under fire from Democrats for saying Reid runs the Senate “like a plantation,” a comment he wouldn’t say he regretted in an interview this week.

“What I regret is that more people don’t take offense that he has squelched debate,” Cassidy said. “I wished there was as much outrage — how come you’re not writing the story about how Reid has taken the world’s theoretically greatest deliberative body and made it something with a weak committee structure, in which senators who have been in the Senate for six years have not a single bill to show for it?”

Reid said Republicans are miscalculating if they believe November will turn on the GOP’s griping of the Senate, saying voters will now focus on the handful of economic issues he has tried to drill home.

“The early part of the elections, [it’s all about] national issues, Obama being popular or not popular,” Reid said. “Six weeks out of an election, all they care about are things that affect them personally.”

Reid added: “If the election were held today, we would unquestionably maintain control of the Senate.”