Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki told the AP last week he was considering challenging Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid, setting off what will likely be one of the most competitive 2010 mid-term races.

From Las Vegas Sun political columnist Jon Ralston:

The next major race in Nevada, the one that started the day after the election, will be the most expensive, most watched and most vitriolic contest in state history: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bid for a fifth term.

National Republicans are plotting to erase Reid from the Club of 100, and last week the first prospective candidate dipped his toes into the water. Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki told the Associated Press he is mulling a bid against Reid, an announcement that surely made Democrats guffaw because of Krolicki's ensnarement in a financial controversy soon after he left the state treasurer's office. We can only hope, Democrats surely were whispering.

I guarantee Harry Reid was not among them.

What Reid knows is that with his problematic approval ratings -- not Bush-like or Gibbons-like, but upside-down in some polls -- any statewide elected official who can get money will have a chance. And Krolicki is not just any statewide elected official. He is an ambitious pol who paid his dues this cycle by fronting for the hapless McCain Nevada effort and who has been getting recruitment calls by would-be Reid-killers.