WASHINGTON -- On a November morning, former enemies Harry Reid and John Ensign are seated side-by-side in a television studio in the U.S. Capitol, taping interviews with one station after another.
Between feeds Nevada's two senators -- bitter campaign rivals just three years ago -- talk like old buddies in a barber shop waiting for a haircut.
"I had a great run today," Reid, a Democrat, tells fellow jogger Ensign, a Republican.
"Yeah?" Ensign says.
"I don't know what it is," Reid said. "Some runs, I don't feel so good and some days I feel great."
The two don serious expressions long enough to plow through another interview, then quickly resume their off-air chat. Ensign tells Reid a story about Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., a former professional football player, and the two share a good, long laugh.
It is odd enough that these two are sharing the media spotlight at all, considering their history. But their conversation -- more buddy-buddy banter than awkward small-talk between political rivals -- is downright strange.
These two used to hate each other.
What happened?
In 1998 Ensign, then a House member, challenged Reid for his Senate seat. What unfolded was among the most bitter, expensive and closest statewide races in Nevada history.
An example: Ensign launched one television commercial that called Reid a "card shark" and urged voters to tell Democrat to "deal straight." A Reid ad countered, "Be careful Congressman Ensign. This sleazy commercial can come back and bite you."
The mudslinging went on and on. In September 1998, Reid said Ensign showed a "lack of maturity" in calling for President Clinton's resignation. "Every day all he is doing is attacking me," Ensign said of Reid.
On Election Day, Nevadans picked Reid by one of the slimmest margins ever: 428 votes.
After all the rancor, Reid said he admired Ensign for not contesting the election beyond a recount. When Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., a longtime Reid ally, announced his retirement less than two years later, Ensign became an instant front-runner.
Reid saw the writing on the wall. He made a decision. "I set out to be nice to him," the senior senator said.
Ensign returned to Washington not expecting to get this close to the Democrat: He figured they might synchronize their efforts on a few issues that affect the state, but hardly more. Aides who worked on his 1998 campaign are still shocked that he goes anywhere near Reid, Ensign said.
But over the course of a few early meetings, Ensign and Reid agreed to forge a partnership that would benefit the state, Ensign said.
"It's hard to say exactly who initiated it," Ensign said of those days early this year. "It was kind of a mutual thing. We both said, 'Let's be professionals.' "
Of course, tending a relationship with a rival party lawmaker in a sharply split Senate takes constant maintenance.
Much of the work falls on dozens of staffers who handle the details. It's nearly impossible for two members of Congress to get along if their staffs are at war, which is fairly common among young, ambitious -- often competitive -- Capitol Hill workers.
So the senators sat down with their chiefs of staff, Ensign top aide Scott Bensing and Reid's Susan McCue. "We said, 'You WILL get along,' " Ensign said. "And as it turned out, they have a naturally good working relationship."
The two staffs communicate daily, McCue said. "It's a friendly environment."
A few Ensign and Reid aides have even explored Washington nightlife together: Details about an evening of dancing are laughed over but not disclosed to a Sun reporter.
Ensign and Reid also had a joint holiday office party. Their Las Vegas staffs did the same, somewhat to Ensign's surprise.
Bensing said many Senate staffers often have a hard time getting past fierce loyalties to their bosses, which leads them to take advantage of anyone, even the state's other senator. They will take credit for a legislative victory that wasn't really theirs, hog the press, keep a secret, spread a rumor.
"We've been able to avoid that," Bensing said. Both camps work together for a larger purpose, he said.
"We've had chances to make the other side look bad, and we haven't done it," Bensing said. "Two million people in the state benefit from that relationship."
Still, moments of friction have developed.
"That's when the relationship gets tested," Ensign said. "It's how we've resolved those moments that has strengthened the relationship."
In fact, one Senate insider said Reid's staffers get along better with Ensign's aides than they did with Bryan's. Petty differences spawned a dysfunctional relationship between Reid and Bryan's staffs -- although not the senators, the source said.
Part of the new strategy: Ensign and Reid rarely discuss issues that sharply divide Democrats and Republicans, Ensign said. "We try to give each other space on those things."
Instead, Reid and Ensign focus on common interests:
* The senators, along with Nevada Reps. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, and Jim Gibbons, a Reupblican, are plotting a complex strategy to kill the proposal to bury the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
* In May, the two secretly assembled 10 Republican and Democratic allies on Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's Commerce Committee -- enough to nearly defeat anti-gambling legislation that would hurt the state.
* They invite each other on field trips: Reid brought Ensign to the Energy Department for a rare meeting with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to discuss a proposed counter-terrorism training school at the Nevada Test Site.
* Ensign and Reid also lobbied together to lure Mexico into establishing a consulate in Las Vegas.
* And Reid, who has long held a weekly "Welcome to Washington" breakfast for visiting lobbyists, businesspeople and Nevada residents, invited Ensign to be a part of the gatherings.
"We walk side by side in parades -- who would have thought of that?" Reid said, adding, "and people love it."
The Reid-Ensign relationship is real, Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., Reid's Republican counterpart, said.
"There's a lot of partisan nonsense going on (in Congress), and it didn't used to be that way," Nickles said. "When it is that way, it's nice to have a senator in both camps." Ensign mended fences with Reid early as a kind of "self-preservation," University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor Ted Jelen said.
Both seem to have a keen, valuable ability to "keep it impersonal," Jelen said. "There are no real friends in politics."
Still, Senate chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie said he sees a bond developing between Ensign and Reid beyond lawmaking.
"They really care for each other as people," Ogilvie said. "They have both reached out to each other."
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