They voted for the health care bill. With enough money behind the opposition, could they be voted out of office next year?

Republicans aim to find out with a new effort to raise campaign funds for challengers to two dozen House Democrats who voted for the health care bill earlier this month.

Reverse The Vote Victory Committee was established this week with the Federal Election Commission as a joint fundraising committee that will collect contributions to distribute among 24 GOP challengers.

It's still months until the first nominees will be formally selected in primary elections, so the committee for the time being will give campaign funds to 24 separate "congressional victory committees" that in turn will deliver the funds to party nominees once they are determined.

With President Obama out of the country, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stepped out on the campaign trail over the past two days with stops in Nevada and Arizona to raise funds and rally support for local Democrats.

And the Connecticut Democratic party announced Monday that he will attend a luncheon in support of embattled Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn. Dec. 11, signaling a new level of intensity in the vice president's party-building efforts that have already seen him visit, by his count, 54 House districts this year.

Biden's made appearances Sunday and Monday with vulnerable Reps. Dina Titus, D-Nev., Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz.., and Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., all of whom face competitive races in states that have been particularly hard hit by the housing crisis and economic recession.

According to a report by the Pew Center on the States released last week, Arizona ranked second and Nevada fifth among states in the most "fiscal peril" in 2009. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won Kirkpatrick's 1st District and Mitchell's 5th District in the 2008 presidential race, while Obama snared Titus' 3rd District.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's airwave offensive continued Friday with the launch of his fourth television ad of the 2010 campaign, a sign that despite his nonchalant attitude, the four-term Nevada Democrat is deeply concerned about his re-election chances.

The one-minute spot is the most direct yet in making what is Reid's central appeal: that his political clout is too valuable for the state to replace him.

"He's the most powerful senator Nevada has ever had," the ad begins, "And Harry Reid's working harder than ever to get Nevada's economy back on track." It goes on to list federal funds, tax credits and other pork projects Reid has delivered to the state.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is up with his third television ad in his home state of Nevada, just more than a year before he faces voters in a bid for a fifth term that has become unexpectedly difficult for him.

The latest ad, titled "Right Direction," focuses on alternative energy and how Reid "is leveraging his seniority to make Nevada the nation's leader in renewable energy and clean jobs," campaign manager Brandon Hall said in a statement.

The ad comes on the heels of an introductory ad campaign Reid launched two weeks ago which featured two spots touting Reid's Nevada roots and his ability to use his clout in the Senate to help his home state.

Reid campaign aides have said they need to get an early start to re-introduce the senior senator to Nevada residents because the state's population has boomed. A third of the state's electorate wasn't living in Nevada when Reid last won re-election, without trouble, in 2004.

After announcing he was including a "public option" for government-run health insurance in the Senate's health insurance overhaul bill, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid won a hearty round of accolades from progressive groups.

Now, one of the most prominent, MoveOn.org is following that up with a round of newspaper ads in Nevada and Washington D.C. lauding Reid for his "courageous leadership."

"We're standing with you in the fight for real health care reform with the choice of a public health insurance option," the full page ad will read. MoveOn send a note to is e-mail list Thursday asking backers to ad their names to those expressing thanks in the ad.

The support from MoveOn comes as Reid faces a tough re-election battle, with national Republicans gunning for his seat in 2010. And that stamp of approval could help him shore up support from the more liberal portion of the Democratic base, a constituency that has often been suspicious of the majority leader in the past.

NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh, in turn, has accused Reid of paying "more attention to the liberal special interests in Washington than to the interests of his constituents in Nevada."

MoveOn.org did not respond to a call for comment on details of the ad purchase.

CQ Politics rates the general election contest Leans Democratic.

Nearly a decade after leaving Congress, Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey is close to emptying a still-active campaign committee account that was in the seven figures even after he was no longer running for office.

Kerrey, who served in the Senate from 1989 through 2000 and is now president of The New School in New York City, gave a $120,000 charitable contribution in August to the University of Nebraska Foundation via his campaign committee, according to a third-quarter report recently filed with the Senate's public records office.

That six-figure donation for Kerrey's alma mater, along with a $4,000 contribution to the 2010 re-election campaign of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, left Kerrey's campaign committee with $25,000 in the bank.

It looks like progressive groups are trying to play a little good cop-bad cop routine with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as they push for Senate Democrats to include a "public option" for government-financed insurance in their health care overhaul legislation.

Americans United for Change, a progressive non-profit group backed by labor union funding, announced a $23,000 radio ad campaign in Nevada Wednesday aiming to "cheer on" Reid as he fights to get "health care for all Americans - including a public option - this year."

The hope, Americans Untied for Change spokesman Jeremy Funk said in a statement, is that "by publicly reinforcing the efforts of the Senate Majority Leader," the group will "send a message to all Senators that advocates of health insurance reform will have their back in supporting the public option."

The ad is airing for a week on stations in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.

The parents of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., pitched in to help Democrat Harry Reid, the state's senior senator, in his 2010 re-election battle.

Mike and Sharon Ensign, who made waves in July after admitting to giving $96,000 to Ensign's mistress and her family, each gave the maximum $4,800 in contributions to Reid's campaign committee in the September, the Senate Majority Leader's campaign disclosed in its third quarter fundraising report.

Despite being on opposite sides of the partisan divide, Reid and Ensign have an unofficial non-aggression pact, and Reid has remained silent on his colleague's admission over the summer that he had carried on an affair with Cynthia Hampton, a staffer and wife of one of his top aides, Doug Hampton.

Harry Reid is beginning to dip into his $8.7 million campaign war chest, airing two new television ads starting Friday to reintroduce the increasingly unpopular Senate majority leader to Nevada voters.

The ads, entitled "Nevada Jobs" and "Hard Work," emphasize Reid's Nevada roots and his ability to use his clout in the Senate to help his homestate. The tag line in both: "Determination that makes a difference."

The Reid campaign noted in a release announcing the ad launch that "approximately one third of all registered voters" in Nevada are new to the state since Reid's last election in 2004 and framed the ads an introduction for those new voters.

Recent polls show that Reid's problem is not that he is not well-known, but that what Nevada residents know of the four-term incumbent, a majority of them don't like.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is hoping money can buy him love in Nevada. The four-term incumbent added another $2 million in receipts to his warchest as he prepares for re-election in 2010, his campaign announced Tuesday, giving him $12 million total in receipts for the election cycle and $8.7 million cash on hand.

Poll results from Mason Dixon and the Las Vegas Review-Journal over the weekend show that those millions could come in handy in what is shaping up to be the toughest race of his career. Reid continues to trail two relatively unknown Republican candidates -- former state Sen and former Republican party Chairwoman Sue Lowden and real estate developer Danny Tarkanian -- and half of the voters polled said they held a negative opinion of their senior senator, compared with 38 percent who view him favorably.

Neither Lowden nor Tarkanian have released third-quarter fundraising numbers. Lowden, who has personal wealth from the casino industry, officially launched her campaign Oct. 1, a day after the close of the third quarter, though she'd been raising money via an exploratory committee before that.