The amazing saga of Tom Mechling and his historic race for the U.S. Senate

A young anti-Mafia reform candidate takes on Nevada's McCarran-Blitz machine

      Above is a screenshot of a partial memorandum that Tom Mechling of Washington Watch Editors sent me on November 4, 1988.  He told me this wonderful story a few years later.

     Tall and slim, Tom Mechling was a popular 31-year-old crusading journalist based in Washington, whom everyone in the D.C. media community knew as an All-American boy.  On N…