Back from the blog hiatus

It's been a week since we got into Reno, and what a hell of a week. Let me share some observations I've made since arriving, on the election in general, the situation in Nevada, and other miscellany. Not all necessarily in the same post. First off, we couldn't have had a more action packed first week. Because of Nevada's swing state status, they're starting to send in some high-profile Democrats and their supporters. We've seen Greg Meeks (D-NY), Terry McAuliffe and, of course, John Kerry, who had his first rally of the campaign in northern Nevada on Friday. The latter was a hell of an event, and I got to help Kerry's crack advance staff organize it. As a result, four days into the foray to Nevada, I've met a couple of top Democratic ops and had a handshake and photo with a certain senator from Massachusetts. Here's a basic primer on the election in Nevada. The salient points: Nevada voted for Clinton twice, but voted Bush over Gore. A local issue helped that happen, and may help Kerry this time -- some in Washington (read:Bush) want to dispose of radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, an area which has been demonstrated to lie above several earthquake faults and be close to the water table. The two big population centers of Nevada are Clark County (Las Vegas) and Washoe County (Reno and carson City). Clark is, like many urban centers around the nation, heavily democratic. Washoe went for Bush last time and is considered to have a pretty sizable advantage in Republican registration. The rurals, essentially everything outside the Reno and Vegas areas, are a total loss for the Democrats (Gore won something like 12 percent in the rurals in 2000, absolutely pathetic.) The demographics here are pretty interesting. The truth is that nobody really has a handle on them. We know that the largest minority in the state is Hispanic, around 20-25% of the population and that there are few blacks here. We also know that there has been a huge influx of Californians who have come to Nevada in the last four years. Both of these trends bode well for Kerry. The economy is not a huge issue here; part of the reason so many Californians have moved here is that Nevada has added jobs in the last four years (after Vegas recovered post-9/11), and has an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent. Last time out Nevada was 48th in the nation in voter participation, at around 46%, with an even lower youth vote turnout. That will change this time around. The Democrats here have stepped up their voter registration big time, and though I can't share the results here, it will make a significant difference. Nevada has early voting, which started last week, so it won't all come down to craziness on Nov. 2. But a lot of it will. Oh yeah, and it's pronounced NUH-V-ADD-UH, not NUH-V-ODD-UH; think "Nevattitude" for the pronunciation. The locals get pissed when you pronounce it incorrectly. Trust me. The scenario for a Kerry victory goes something like this: win Clark County by a large margin, in the 60-40 territory. Hold our own in Washoe County (we're polling now at a 10-point loss, though we think it's closer, but even that would be closer than last time), to the tune of a 53-47 loss or better; and improve slightly in the rurals, to maybe 16-17 points. Can we do it? read on.