Columnist Jon Ralston: Gazing at the crystal ball

Friday, Dec. 26, 2003 | 3:50 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

Dec. 27 - 28, 2003

WHAT DO YOU say after the most depressing year in recent Nevada political history, which began with 157 days of Carson City hell and a reverberating Supreme Court decision and ended with Operation G-Sting indictments, Double Dippinggate at the city and county and a university system mess only the regents could make worse?

I only have one word, which no one save Oliver Twist would appreciate: More.

And methinks I am going to have more success than poor Oliver did. With electoral unrest at a zenith, 2004 promises to be positively Dickensian considering the toxic combination of events 2003 produced.

I have never felt so unsure of my Delphic footing, with anti-tax fever still running high, initiative-wielding opportunists running rampant and incumbents running for the bushes. But no one will let me use that as an excuse and pundits have no fear, so once again I unveil my dusty crystal ball to sally forth into the dangerous world of political prognostication.

Federal

State

Local

Self-congratulating and some crow-eating, too: I'd like to tell you that at this time last year I foretold of the indictments and of Wendell Williams' implosion with the accompanying shrapnel. Alas, no. But at the end of 2002, I did hit some right -- and got some wrong. I predicted Goodman's landslide win (aren't I brave?) but didn't see Moncrief's upset coming over Michael McDonald (who did?). I forecast a broad-based business tax passing, but payroll wasn't on my mind and a gross receipts hybrid was. I predicted the Assembly Democrats would be the most cohesive caucus (little good it did them) but erred in saying the Assembly GOP would be the most factionalized (that dishonor would go to the Republicans in the upper house). And I sensed Rep. Jim Gibbons would not run against Sen. Harry Reid and that Ziser would. On that one, I wish I had been wrong for t he good of all pundits.