Nevada political roundup: Tax initiative, Nevada’s north/south split (UPDATED)

By David McGrath Schwartz

Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2008 | 5:43 p.m.

Updated at 5:43 p.m.

The Obama campaign just released details of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s event on Friday. The event is free, though tickets are required.

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Updated at 3:49 p.m.

July fundraising totals in the Third Congressional District: $52,833 for state Sen. Dina Titus, according to a Titus release, which says they outraised Rep. Jon Porter. Titus has raised $710,000 since getting in, a healthy haul, and she'll need it.

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Originally posted at 10:58 a.m.

Early Line is brought to you from Carson City, where Santa announced he's running for office.

In state political news, the Nevada State Education Association challenged the property tax initiative pushed by state Senate candidate Sharron Angle. She has enough "raw signatures," but the teacher's union says the petition is defective and must not appear on the ballot in November. As the Sun's Cy Ryan notes, it will probably end up in court.

After a lot of hand-wringing about all the ballot initiatives that could shape policy, we're facing the real possibility that none of the proposed initiatives successfully qualify.

-- The Rocky Mountain News this morning highlights the north/south tensions in Nevada, and its effect on the presidential race.

-- There are some noteworthy quotes from my Northern Nevada neighbors, as MSNBC's First Read points out:

From a gun dealer: "When Hillary Clinton announced she was running, I was swamped. Guns were flying off the shelf."

-- In presidential news, Sen. John McCain is coming back to Las Vegas on Saturday to address a disabled veteran's group. Sen. Hillary Clinton will be stumping for Sen. Barack Obama on Friday, though we're still waiting for details.

-- Molly Ball reports on Ralph Nader's visit to Las Vegas, and notes his poor performance in 2004 when he got 0.6 percent of the vote in Nevada compared to 2000 when he got 2.5 percent.

- In other news of candidates unhappy with the presumed Republican and Democratic nominees, Incline Village's Santa Claus

announced his candidacy for president.

Other political news:

-- Sam Skolnik has a nice rundown of the race to replace Larry Brown. More to come later.

-- David Kihara has the latest in the strange saga of District Court Judge Elizabeth Halverson, who is up for re-election.

-- Sen. Harry Reid is traveling in central Asia and Europe, having left Sunday for eight days. No word if Iraq and Afghanistan are part of the Senate-organized trip. Here's the news release from his office.

-- Labor is shooting for 60 Democrats to get a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate, meaning they’d need to take nine senate seats from Republicans. A tall order, if not impossible, as this CNN story points out. U.S. Sen. John Ensign, who’s job it is to keep that from happening, is saying that if Republicans lose only four Senate seats on election night, that would be a good thing.