Editorial: No longer ignored

Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004 | 9:21 a.m.

Within the span of three days in Nevada this week, we have had the unprecedented sight of the major parties' presidential tickets visiting our state. Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards was in Reno for a rally on Monday and Republican President Bush visited Las Vegas on Wednesday, followed today by a stop in Las Vegas from Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and a visit to Reno from Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. Both Bush and Kerry were in Las Vegas to address the National Guard Association's convention, so the two were speaking to a national audience more than they were directly to Nevadans. Nonetheless, they have made so many trips to our state that you'd think that tiny Nevada was a behemoth like next-door neighbor California -- and in a way it is.

In the Electoral College sweepstakes, with a winner-take-all system of allocating each state's votes for president, Nevada is one of the states in this year's race for the White House that is still up for grabs. Neither candidate is putting much money or time in uncontested states, such as California, that clearly will vote Democratic, or Texas, which obviously will vote Republican. Nevada traditionally has leaned conservative and voted Republican in presidential elections, but nevertheless Democrat Bill Clinton carried the state twice in the '90s. It's also one of the beauties of the way we elect our president that even sparsely populated states such as Nevada -- and the issues they care dearly about, such as this state's opposition to Bush's plan to build a nuclear waste dump here -- still matter. Indeed, Kerry's opposition to the Yucca Mountain project could be just the defining issue that enables him to beat Bush in Nevada -- and put him in the White House.