Cheney brings Republican campaign to Nevada

Lisa Snedeker

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

Republican vice presidential contender Dick Cheney, continuing a campaign swing through the West, said the Clinton administration has "failed to step up and toe the mark" for the mining and energy industry.

Kicking off a busy morning of campaigning Tuesday, Cheney addressed an enthusiastic crowd of about 750 during a breakfast speech at the National Mining Association Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"They have no coherent energy policy," Cheney told a cheering audience as he criticized Democratic opponent Vice President Al Gore.

"It is a basic fundamental building block of the economy to have adequate energy resources."

Later, Cheney touched on the basic themes of the Republican campaign during a 17-minute speech to about 250 members of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce at the nongaming Alexis Park Resort and Spa.

Cheney said a vote for the Democrats meant more taxes and more government. In contrast, he said George W. Bush wants to reduce government and give it back to the people.

If Bush were elected president, the Texas governor would take the budget surplus and use it to support the Social Security system, provide tax relief and beef up the military, Cheney said as he headed to a public rally.

Meanwhile, the Gore campaign issued a statement that said Cheney had misrepresented the Bush tax plan and had misled voters about how Cheney acquired his personal wealth as the head of Halliburton.

Cheney had criticized Gore's tax plan as including tax credits, when the Bush tax relief plan itself includes tax credits, the Gore-Lieberman campaign said.

Cheney also failed to mention that Halliburton enjoyed the benefit of numerous government contracts when he said during the debate with his Democratic counterpart Sen. Joseph Lieberman that the government had nothing to do with him being better off now than eight years ago.

Cheney, after meeting with local media representatives for a brief roundtable, will head to the airport for a scheduled noon departure en route to an appearance at a high school in Albuquerque, N.M.

The Secretary of Defense arrived in Las Vegas on Monday after spending the day campaigning in the Pacific Northwest.

A national CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released Tuesday showed that if the election were held today, Bush would lead Gore 50 percent to 42 percent, respectively. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.

A recent state poll by the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows the presidential race is a statistical dead heat for Nevada's four electoral votes. Previous polls for the newspaper had Bush leading Gore by 8 percentage points in March. The lead had increased to 12 points by June.

Cheney's visit to Las Vegas doesn't mean Texas Gov. George W. Bush won't come to Nevada to campaign, Nevada GOP executive director Ryan Erwin said. But it does mean the GOP presidential hopeful's anticipated Las Vegas stop probably won't occur before the last two weeks of the campaign.

Gore has made two campaign visits to Las Vegas in his presidential bid, meeting with reporters to discuss local issues in his most recent stop here.

Bush's only Nevada stop so far was in June at Lake Tahoe, where Bush refused to take questions from local media representatives.

Cheney is the first vice presidential contender to stop in Nevada.

Lieberman is expected to campaign in the state sometime during the election season.