Veep candidates gone, Nevada still a tossup state

Brendan Riley

Saturday, Oct. 28, 2000 | 10:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Democratic and GOP candidates for president and vice president spent a surprising amount of time stumping in Nevada. Now that they've finally moved on, a political expert says the race in this state is still too close to call.

"I wouldn't bet a nickel either way," said Ted Jelen, head of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "I'll be up late on election night just like everyone else."

Late-campaign stops in Reno on Tuesday by GOP candidate George W. Bush's GOP running mate, Dick Cheney, and in Las Vegas on Thursday by Democrat Al Gore's vice-presidential choice, Joe Lieberman make it clear that Nevada's four electoral votes are still up for grabs, Jelen said.

Cheney underscored the importance of the state, telling supporters, "Leave no stone unturned to make sure we carry Nevada. Because if we carry Nevada, we are going to win this election."

But Jelen said Cheney's appearance was "almost bizarre, in the sense that he was almost hermetically sealed and whisked away" with no opportunity for reporters to ask questions. The same thing happened when Bush was at Lake Tahoe earlier in the campaign season.

Lieberman spent a half-hour with local reporters, taking a cue from Gore who also made time for questions when he was in Las Vegas. But while Lieberman was Nevada-friendly on the state's nuclear dump issue, he wasn't on the issue of betting on college sports.

Gore has said sports betting is an issue for individual states and not Congress. Lieberman said he supports a proposed ban - which would put a dent in Nevada's legal bookmaking industry.

Cheney avoided any foot-in-mouth problems by giving prepared comments on nuclear waste and then not taking any questions. But his effort to put Bush on equal, pro-Nevada footing with Gore on the nuclear issue was undercut by GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Campaigning in Illinois this week, Hastert criticized a Democrat's vote to sustain President Clinton's veto of a bill that would have launched construction of the nuclear waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Hastert said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, "said he was worried about the children of Nevada. I think we ought to worry about the children of Illinois."

Even if Hastert had said nothing, Jelen questioned the value of Cheney's 11th-hour effort to minimize nuclear waste as a campaign issue.

The Bush camp has been trying to play catch-up on the issue throughout the campaign. After President Clinton vetoed a bill to relax nuclear waste safety standards and Gore promised the same - along with a vow to veto any attempts to temporarily store nuclear waste here - Bush remained silent until state GOP leaders persuaded him to say more.

"It's one hit and that's pretty much the end of it," Jelen said. "I certainly don't think he can take care of this over a weekend."

Jelen also said both the Bush and Gore campaigns "are having trouble delivering their bases" in Nevada and nationally.

"They focused on the margins and took the bases for granted, and that's one of the reasons the race is so close and so volatile," he said.

If Gore is to win Nevada's four electoral votes, Jelen said the state's Democratic Party and pro-Gore labor activists must step up their get-out-the-vote efforts, which seem to be lagging behind Republican efforts in the state.

For Bush to win Nevada, Jelen had the same advice: get GOP voters to the polls and forget about undecided voters. "Anyone undecided at this point is just not paying attention," he said.

Brian McKay, former Republican state attorney general and former state GOP chairman, says Bush would win if the election were held today, and will win Nov. 7.

"But it's going to be close, by only three or four points nationwide and in Nevada," he said.

"People are finally focusing on the election, and they recognize we need to change the leadership of the country," McKay said. "Al Gore doesn't reflect a change and George W. Bush does."

McKay says Bush, to ensure he wins Nevada, must "stay on the message that he's been on for the last three weeks: education, national defense and responsible government."

McKay also said the nuclear dump comments by Cheney should help despite efforts by Democrats to discount them.

U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said that between now and Nov. 7 Gore must "drive the point home that the next president is the man who holds the veto pen, who holds the fate of Nevada's nuclear waste fight in his hand."

Bryan sees the outcome of the presidential race in Nevada as "Al Gore by a nose, by a point or two. We might see the same kind of squeaker as the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960." In Nevada, that was a 51-49 percent win for Kennedy.

Republicans cite tracking polls slightly favoring Bush in Nevada while Democrats say their surveys show a statistical dead heat.

The last independent poll was done Sept. 9-12 for the Las Vegas Review-Journal poll showing the race 46-42 Bush-Gore with a 4 percentage point error margin.

The fact that the vice presidential candidates were in Nevada with less than two weeks to go "tells it all," Bryan said. "They may love us, but they're not going to spend time for four electoral votes unless it's a real nail-biter, unless it's a pivotal state.

"Clearly, Nevada is."