Democrats Gambling On Nevada's Bumped-up Primary Caucus
The state of Nevada displayed its newfound--and unlikely--political prestige this week with the gathering of Democratic presidential hopefuls at a forum in Carson City. (Sen. Barack Obama was the sole absentee.) With Nevada's caucus now in pole position, just after the Iowa caucus and ahead of the New Hampshire primary, and with future presidential debates scheduled for Reno in August and Las Vegas in November, this state seems poised to be the Democratic battlefield for the '08 elections.
Seeking a much needed foothold in the West, the Democratic National Committee, with a little lobbying from Nevada's most powerful official, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, reshuffled the primary calendar to the state's favor. Citing the state's ethnic diversity (nearly a quarter of Nevada's residents are Hispanic), concentration of organized labor (about 14 percent of the workforce), and economic growth (consistently one of the strongest in the nation), Democratic leaders believe the state offers an alternative to Iowa and New Hampshire's mostly white, rural populations.
Yet the move has infuriated New Hampshire's secretary of state, William Gardner, who considers his state's voting position sacrosanct and is now threatening to hold his state's primary before the first of the year, if necessary. Not to be left behind, a dozen other states are now angling to move up as well.
Putting aside Nevada's potential political value, it's an unusual place to entrust the nomination: the legal gambling and prostitution, the gluttony of its largest city, and the desolation of its hinterlands. Nevada is a state of surrogate realities. In Las Vegas, for example, where the gaming industry can take credit for employing much of the growing Hispanic population, these new Nevadans work largely unseen, obscured by facades of New York and Paris and Venice. Beyond Las Vegas' all-night glow, in the dusty nether-reaches that are the rest of the state, the populace is little more apparent. What dominates the Nevada landscape are not humans but highways, the loneliest in the lower 48, draped like filaments across great swaths of sand and rock.
Into this peculiar place, the Democratic candidates are already converging, as are the press, the political consultants, and the policy wonks. Should the DNC's gamble prove sagacious, the people of Nevada will deliver the party a sustainable nominee, and perhaps even turn their state from red to blue. Should it prove ill conceived, the DNC won't be the first to watch their hopes evaporate in Nevada's dry desert wind.
By Jim Lo Scalzo