Kerry, Bush duke it out with Yucca Mountain ads

Kirsten Searer

Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.

Nevada voters are facing dueling television ads that argue about which presidential candidate the state can trust on the Yucca Mountain issue.

On Monday the Bush-Cheney campaign launched an ad attacking Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for supporting the so-called "Screw Nevada" bill of 1987. The bill designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site to be studied for a national nuclear waste repository.

Kerry also pushed the project through a series of votes and letters of support, the ad states.

"Listening to John Kerry, you'd think he'd been against Yucca Mountain his entire career," the ad says. "But Kerry voted to establish the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Kerry voted seven times to make it easier to dump waste at Yucca and said, 'A repository for nuclear waste could be established there and be made functional by 2015.' "

Clearly the issue of Yucca Mountain is becoming key in the close presidential election. The Bush ad comes on the heels of an ongoing Moveon.org ad that attacks President Bush for his support of the project.

Kerry adviser Tad Devine said no single issue in a state has become as important as the waste storage issue in Nevada. Recent public polling in 10 battleground states showed Kerry behind in just one -- Nevada, Devine said.

Kerry's national campaign strategists this morning said the new Bush ad caught their attention, but they had not decided whether to run a commercial in Nevada to counter it.

Devine added that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had urged Kerry to launch a counter-attack. Reid spoke to campaign managers on Monday calling for a response "right away," Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.

Bush campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt defended the ad, saying it's important for Nevadans to know that Kerry has changed his position on this issue because he is trying to turn his stance into a "political poker chip,"

"Nevada needs to understand that, while he says he's strongly against storing waste in the state, he voted several times to make it easier to store waste at Yucca Mountain," Schmitt said. Local Democrats, who have tried to carve a niche for Kerry as the anti-Yucca candidate, quickly defended him. Former Sen. Richard Bryan called the Bush ads "disingenuous."

"This president is the one whose actions approved Yucca Mountain as a high level nuclear waste dumpsite," Bryan said. "You can see that they're concerned about this issue and they're trying to fuzz it up."

Sean Smith, Kerry's Nevada spokesman, called the ad "smear politics."

"Their only hope on this issue is to try and confuse voters," Smith said. "Frankly, it's an insult to the people of Nevada."

Kerry has pledged to stop the waste site but has been attacked by Republicans for his early votes on the issue. Chris Carr, executive director of the Nevada Republican Party, said that Kerry's record "speaks the truth" about his feelings on Yucca Mountain.

When asked if President Bush is better for Nevada on the Yucca Mountain issue than Kerry is, Carr said the state cannot know for sure.

"We don't know because we don't know really where John Kerry stands," Carr said. "I'd rather have someone that I may disagree with but will be honest with me. That's why I'm supporting the President. I believe in his leadership and how he stands up for what he believes in."

While in Nevada in mid-August, Kerry told local media that he voted in 1987 for the "Screw Nevada" bill because he wanted to study the idea of a national repository.

Now that he has more information about the potential problems of a national repository, Kerry said he is opposed to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain or anywhere else. He voted against the project in 2000 and 2002.

"And there you go," Kerry told Nevada reporters. "I subsequently voted no, which puts me in a very different position from George Bush, who is pushing to open the damn thing. There's the difference. He wants to open it, I don't. Big difference."

Nevadans know where Bush stands on the issue, Schmitt said. "The President's been clear and consistent that any decision would be based on sound science," she said. "His consistency stands in stark contrast to what we've seen from Senator Kerry."

Bush told Las Vegas supporters in an August campaign stop that he has relied on "sound science" when making decisions on the project.

"When I campaigned here, I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics," he said. "I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner. And that's exactly what I did."