Sharron Angle: Her campaign is God's 'calling'

LOS ANGELES - Republican Sharron Angle says her campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada is "a calling" from God and that her faith is helping her endure a fiercely competitive race in which Democrats have depicted her as a conservative extremist.

"When you have God in your life ... he directs your path," Angle told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview posted on its website Wednesday.

Asked why she entered the race, Angle said "the reason is a calling."

"When God calls you he also equips you and He doesn't just say, 'Well today you're going to run against Harry Reid,'" the Tea Party favorite said.

In the Bible "Moses has his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time," the former legislator said, citing her years in public office as her preparation for the race.

"God knew all of this in advance," Angle added. "I don't know what's coming up tomorrow but I do know that He is there. He saw it and that He has provided a way of escape and a way for me to endure."

In a wide-ranging interview, Angle said her media appearances are guided by the need to raise money for her campaign and she defended an overhaul of her campaign website in which many of her earlier positions on Social Security and other issues were rewritten, condensed or deleted.

Angle, a Southern Baptist, has called herself a faith-based politician who prays daily. Among her positions, she opposes abortion in all circumstances, including rape and incest.

Since her come-from-behind victory in the June 8 primary, Angle has appeared largely on conservative media outlets. She said her public schedule is being driven by the need to raise money and she gets the best return for her time on conservative programs, which drive up donations.

"The whole point of an interview is to ... earn something with it and I'm not going to earn anything from people who are there to badger me and use my words to batter me with," she said.

In mainstream media outlets "there's no earnings for me there," she added.

Asked about the retooling of her website, she said she was advised by consultants to condense the long-running text on her site. Reid's campaign later posted the website's original language.

"I am pretty wordy," Angle said. "We're still working on those precise statements."

Meanwhile, Angle is airing her first TV ad of the fall campaign - a scathing attack on Reid's record on jobs in a state with a U.S.-leading 14 percent unemployment rate.

Ominous, dirge-like music plays in the 30-second as a black-and-white photograph of a grim-faced Reid and images of shuttered factories and shuffling workers appear. Text in the ad points out that unemployment in the state has risen nearly 10 percentage points since Reid became majority leader.

Reid launched a new ad statewide Wednesday that takes Angle to task for saying she would not have stepped in to save a major construction project in Las Vegas, CityCenter. Reid is credited with pressuring banks and saving the project when its financing was at risk. "She wouldn't have lifted a finger," the ad says. Angle has said Reid's move cost jobs elsewhere in the city.