The battle for Nevada
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:17 AM by Mark Murray
A Las Vegas Review-Journal/Mason-Dixon poll has Clinton up by nine points, 41%-32%, with Edwards at 14%. On the GOP side, “Romney leads John McCain by 15 points, 34 percent to 19 percent. Giuliani, who led the last Review-Journal poll, is in sixth place.”
And the Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll has Clinton up by five points, 42%-37%. But a caveat about the Nevada polls: We just don’t know who will actually show up at these caucuses. If Iowa was difficult to poll, Nevada might to 10-times harder.
Clinton picks up an endorsement from the Las Vegas Sun, while Obama gets one from the Reno Gazette Journal.
Do note, however, that the Sun’s editor, Brian Greenspun, is a HUGE Clinton supporter.
“Fearing he would set a precedent that affects presidential caucuses across the country, a federal judge refused Thursday to interfere with the Democratic Party's plans to hold at-large precinct caucuses to accommodate Strip shift workers,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal writes. “U.S. District Judge James Mahan said political parties have the freedom to set up their own guidelines for caucuses if they do not discriminate against voters based on race, gender or religion. ‘They have a right to govern themselves, set up their own rules,’ Mahan said. ‘If the Democratic Party said, “We're going to exclude African-Americans, we're going to exclude women or Jews,” I would say you've got my interest.’”
The Las Vegas Sun notes John Kerry stumping for Obama yesterday. “Kerry was quick to counterpunch for Obama after his chief opponent, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, landed some blows. ‘I think any effort to suppress the vote in the Democratic Party, any effort to limit access to polling places, is not the future of the Democratic Party. It’s old politics and it’s inappropriate,’ he said, referring to a lawsuit filed by Clinton allies to shut down special caucus sites on the Strip. Kerry then defended Obama’s record on the nuclear repository project at Yucca Mountain, which Obama opposes. Clinton’s attacks on Obama, saying he’s aligned with supporters who favor the dump, are disingenuous, Kerry said. ‘It’s the kind of politics I expect from the other party, not ours,’ he said.”
The Boston Globe looks at the potential of the Latino vote on this eve of the Nevada caucuses. "[T]housands of Latino voters find themselves squarely in the spotlight in Nevada's presidential caucuses tomorrow, hoping to capitalize on newfound clout that could help tilt a state that went for President Bush the past two elections toward the Democrats in November. The caucuses, closely contested by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, will also offer a first look at the influence of Hispanic voters on a national campaign and a hint of how the race in other Western states with burgeoning Latino populations might unfold.
"Political analysts say the Republican focus on cracking down on illegal immigration could rouse a voting bloc that some observers call 'a sleeping giant' and cost the party votes among Latinos in Nevada and nationwide. Others are skeptical that Latinos will vote in large numbers, pointing to low turnout in the past."
So how well is Clinton taking advantage of Obama's semi-anti-gaming votes he made in Illinois? Apparently quite a bit.
If the finger pointing between the Democratic campaigns over third-party ads had a familiar ring to it yesterday, it may be because an argument started in Iowa has carried over to Nevada -- except this time its the Obama campaign who finds itself on the defensive. Per NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan, Unite HERE, a union affiliated with the Culinary Workers, is running radio ads against Hillary Clinton saying she wants to suppress the Hispanic vote because supporters of her campaign launched a lawsuit to prevent casino workers from caucusing on the strip.
When asked why it was okay for the Obama campaign to criticize the Edwards and Clinton campaigns in Iowa for receiving third-party funding there, media strategist David Axelrod said the campaign had criticized John Edwards for not repudiating a 527 that his former campaign manager was running but had never questioned the right of AFSCME, who was running mailers against Obama's. "We questioned the substance of those ads... the inaccuracies and the tone," Axelrod said (referring to the debate on health care mandates), but argued that the Obama campaign had never argued that AFSCME never had the right to air them and said that two types of ads -- those aired by unions versus those aired by 527s "shouldn't be conflated."
