Sharron Angle dodges the media in Nevada (again)

A week before Election Day, Sharron Angle is still dodging the press in Nevada.

The GOP Senate nominee hasn't held one public event since her Oct. 15 debate with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In response to Angle's latest media lockdown, reporters have started to stake out her closed-press events in hopes of getting the candidate to talk to them on the record. On Monday, local reporters got word of an Angle event at a Microsoft licensing office in Reno. While the press wasn't allowed inside, several TV crews and reporters still showed up hoping to get Angle on camera.

But as the Las Vegas Sun's Anjeanette Damon reports, Angle ditched the media. Just before she departed, reporters heard a campaign staffer in a nearby car say loudly into his cell phone, "She's ready? She's coming out now?"

Unbeknownst to the media, Angle had already escaped through a side door. Thinking she was still inside the building, reporters and producers waited outside for another half an hour, until one reporter asked a Microsoft employee if she could use the bathroom. Inside, she confirmed that Angle was no longer there.

The Reno decoy ploy marks the latest wrinkle in what has been a strained relationship between Angle and the media. Earlier this month, she was captured on camera shushing a reporter who asked her a question. In July, she called a news conference, only to walk away from the podium refusing to take questions. ("Angle takes the phrase 'Senate run' too literally," said the headline on a post by the Awl's Alex Balk at the time.) In August, Angle defended her unavailability to the media, telling Fox News' Carl Cameron that she "needed to have the press be our friend."

(Photo of Angle on Capitol Hill: Susan Walsh/AP)