How to bury a lede and screw up a good story

Sen. Chuck Schumer invited Harry Reid to spend Monday morning with him in Brooklyn, where some of Schumer’s well-heeled friends opened their checkbooks to help the Senate majority leader’s struggling reelection bid.

Democratic Whip Dick Durbin has invited Reid to join him next week in Chicago, where he’ll connect the Nevada Democrat with Windy City business leaders who’ll pour even more money into Reid’s campaign.

For Schumer and Durbin, it’s all part of a delicate dance. While Capitol Hill insiders say the two men appear to be jockeying to show their fellow Democrats that they’d be the logical successors to Reid, they’re also showing Reid unyielding loyalty where it counts: campaign cash.

So, there Schumer was Monday morning, introducing Reid to the big-money developers of the New Jersey Nets’ new $4.9 billion facility in Brooklyn. Schumer told the developers that he and Reid had been “through war together,” and he called the Nevadan his “foxhole buddy,” according to someone who was there.

“He is beloved by our caucus, from the most conservative to the most liberal,” Schumer told the fundraisers on Monday, the source said. “He does a great job of bringing together 59 Democrats of such broad philosophical and geographic diversity. And the egos are not small. What Harry does is amazing.”

Monday’s fundraiser was headlined by Bruce Ratner, the real estate mogul who owns the Nets — and who has donated more than $127,000 to Democrats in recent years.

While Schumer’s office won’t say how much money the event raised for Reid, cash poured in from a number of developers and real estate types. The event came just hours before a procedural vote on a plan to rewrite the rules for Wall Street, but Reid’s office stressed that the donors who turned out Monday weren’t bankers or Wall Street officials — and that, in fact, many work for Ratner’s company as well as for electrical and construction companies.