LAS VEGAS, Aug. 14, 2008
Republicans' Fortunes Falling In Nevada
Washington Post: A Confluence Of Problems Has Left A Once-Potent State Party In Tatters
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An unceasing barrage of negative publicity for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has caused many of his fellow Republicans to avoid association with him. (AP)
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The scandal-plagued Republican governor is so politically toxic that few of his party's prominent candidates will be seen with him. The GOP's most powerful state senator survived a tough primary after 36 years of never even facing a credible opponent. And the party may quickly be losing its grip on a state that could be critical to the outcome of the presidential election.
If Republicans are hurting nationally this election year, there may be few places where the pain is quite as acute, or has arrived as quickly, as Nevada, where a confluence of problems has left a once-potent state party in tatters. Just two years ago, Republicans occupied all six statewide constitutional offices. Today, they hold only the posts of governor and lieutenant governor.
Democrats now enjoy a 60,000-voter registration edge in a state where the parties were virtually tied a year ago. The state GOP raised less than one-third of the $1.3 million the Nevada Democratic Party's central committee took in during the first half of 2008. And the Republicans who hold two of the state's three U.S. House seats are in danger of losing them.
A Republican primary race between the state Senate majority leader, Bill Raggio, and a former assemblywoman was emblematic of the trend. Raggio, 81, won a six-point victory on Tuesday after being forced to campaign actively for the first time since his initial race in 1972. His opponent is a hero of Nevada's hard-core fiscal and social conservatives angered by Raggio's compromises on such things as a large 2003 tax increase.
"Obviously there has been creeping disunity within the party," Raggio said. "I have not had a very serious, tough election up until this primary."
Former governor Kenny Guinn and Reno Mayor Bob Cashell walked Raggio's district with him earlier this month but the current governor, Jim Gibbons, did not.
Nor, say several prominent Republicans, have many GOP candidates asked for Gibbons's help, preferring to avoid association with the former five-term congressman, who is the subject of an unceasing barrage of negative publicity.
The Republican chief executive's troubles began in 2006 when a cocktail waitress accused him of assaulting her in a parking lot after a night of drinking three weeks before Election Day. Surveillance video cast doubt on the accuser's claim and no charges were filed, but the flap turned an expected Gibbons walkover into a squeaker.
Then came reports in the Wall Street Journal that the FBI was investigating Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, in a public corruption probe
This year, Gibbons has been mired in controversy over allegations by his now-estranged wife that he has had an affair, and revelations that he sent a married woman 850 text messages in one month on his official cellphone. The Gibbonses are divorcing, but Dawn Gibbons refused to move out of the governor's mansion in Carson City for two months, a further embarrassment. And last month Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre, a Republican, went public with accusations that the governor pressured him for a property tax break on 40 vacant acres Gibbons owns there.
Gibbons has become so politically isolated that Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign turned to Lt. Gov. Brian K. Krolicki rather than to the governor to chair the Republican candidate's Nevada effort.
"I don't know if the problems in the [Gibbons] administration drag the ticket down rather than that it's a loss of the opportunity to lift the ticket up," said Pete Ernaut, a veteran GOP activist and Guinn strategist who predicted that Gibbons will face a primary challenge in 2010. "I don't think the governor's numbers have negative coattails, but it's the loss of the opportunity to be able to stand next to the governor."
Beyond Gibbons's woes, though, Ernaut and others note that the state party has not recruited high-quality candidates the way it did in the 1990s.
"You can't get any higher than where the Republicans were in 2002," said Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Erin Neff. "They really won it all. Once they hit that level, their farm team had been pushed up. They weren't grooming anyone for office. That was going to result in an uptick for Democrats irrespective of the national scene."
In the past 40 years, Nevada has gone Republican in all but two presidential elections -- 1992 and 1996, when Ross Perot's independent candidacies helped Bill Clinton pull off upsets.
In addition to how dispirited many Republicans are, the Democrats enjoyed a huge boost in registration and fundraising from its Jan. 19 caucuses. About 116,000 Democrats took part, more than double the number of Republican participants.
Nevada GOP Chairman Sue Lowden is one of the few who say they do not see significant problems in the state party. She points to the 45,000 Republicans who participated in the Nevada caucuses as a success story, and she insisted that Gibbons has been actively campaigning and effectively fundraising on behalf of state and local GOP candidates. She also dismissed assertions by Ernaut and others that Gibbons could face a revolt from within in 2010.
She said the party's woes, if there are any, come from the broader anti-GOP mood nationally.
"The overall Republican brand doesn't seem to be as appealing," Lowden said. "But I'm optimistic that all of our incumbents are going to win. . . . If we stay a red state, I'll be a hero. If we don't, I'm not going to be happy."
The Nevada Democratic Party's executive director, Travis Brock, said his team also deserves credit for building a solid party full of appealing candidates and for taking better advantage of the early caucuses to excite the base. He's particularly pleased about the prospects of state Sen. Dina Titus, who lost to Gibbons in the 2006 governor's race, to topple three-term U.S. Rep. Jon Porter in a district where there are now 25,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. The Democratic edge was about 3,000 voters when Porter won his last reelection by fewer than 4,000 votes.
"One of the real reasons I wanted to pursue this career opportunity was that I saw an organization that was on the edge of a big sea change," said Brock, who assumed the job in April 2007 after years working for Democrats in Iowa. The Republican Party's problems, he said, were evident even then and have only grown worse since. "To say that I love it is an understatement," he said.
By Steve Friess
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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Byee-byee Repugs!
Fossil John is toast.
RCP Average
Obama 46.1
McCain 41.6
Obama +4.5
Choke on that.
"The overall Republican brand doesn''t seem to be as appealing," Lowden said. "But I''m optimistic that all of our incumbents are going to win. . . . If we stay a red state, I''ll be a hero. If we don''t, I''m not going to be happy."
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The apple doesn''t fall far from the tree. The people are sick of bad fruit and are now going to chop the useless (Republican) Tree Down and burn it.
Posted by usais11 at 10:34 AM : Aug 14, 2008
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Keep believing that nonsense and then you can join the other lemmings who will be jumping off the cliffs.
When the leader goes over all the rest will willingly follow. McSame doesn''t have a prayer.
Only i-diots will vote for this War-Machine
Posted by usais11 at 10
Ya might as well play the Edwards scandal up as much as it can to make it sound like the Dems are as morally stricken as Larry Craig, Vitter, Thrumond, Bob Allen to name a few--here''s more if interested:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/Dahbud/rpubsbad.html
Want to talk hypocrisy now?? I sure can find more.
Have a few more!
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Posted by noloyalisti at 01:34 PM : Aug 14, 2008
+ report abuse
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Believe it. Remember, that half of us voted for Bush, TWICE, so Americans really can be ignorant (and dumb.)
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by tonyd_31
August 15, 2008 10:03 AM PDT
- I don''t take pleasure in anybody''s bad situation but for the record, I find it difficult to sympathize with the selfish, corrupt, brain-washed GOP''ers. May they all get on a boat and move to another country (if there is such a country that would like to have these sort of people in their midst...which I doubt)
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