A tough day to be Right

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Saturday, Aug. 19, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.

Conservative candidates took it on the chin in Tuesday's Republican primary, and a few of Nevada's grass-roots activists are concerned about the health of what conservatives sometimes call "The Movement."

Subscribers to the e-mail newsletter of conservative activist Chuck Muth were greeted with this Wednesday morning: "OK, here's the headline encapsulating yesterday's GOP primary races: 'Conservatives Lose.' It's just that simple."

Muth went on to describe the bruising: Bob Beers, Sharron Angle, Barbara Lee Woollen, Brian Scroggins, Cliff Fields, all conservatives challenging more moderate candidates, and all losers.

Opinions were mixed as to the cause of the massacre, and some conservatives said they were perfectly happy with the outcome. Republican Party regulars said it's for the best, as the more moderate candidates are the more electable in November.

Still, there was lingering disappointment among social conservatives and libertarians.

"I thought it was a rough day," said Don Nelson, president of Nevada Life Issues Forum and Education, an anti-abortion group. "At the end of the day, I thought, wow, conservatism is in trouble, especially social conservatives."

Nelson pointed to Angle's loss as particularly disappointing. Angle was running in the primary in the 2nd Congressional District. She lost to Secretary of State Dean Heller. She was the only anti-abortion candidate, and she was heavily backed by the Club for Growth, a conservative D.C. group. "If someone wasn't excited about Sharron Angle, then I don't know what's going to do it," Nelson said.

For Mark Warden, a Las Vegas libertarian activist and small-business man, disappointment came in the form of contempt for the voters: "My take is that voters just don't pay attention. They're not educated on policy or philosophy, and they take the easy way out. Voters are supporting more government, and they're abdicating their personal responsibility in doing so."

Muth blamed poorly run campaigns. "The difference was (Beers and Angle) both could have done a better job running professional campaigns early on. They didn't hire good political talent. If they'd hired better they could have done better," he said in an interview.

Beers, who lost in the gubernatorial primary to Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., should have hired a top-notch finance director to raise money, Muth said. Angle, meanwhile, was well financed by the Club for Growth, but ran a shoddy grass-roots campaign, he said: "Her problem was they kept telling her to listen to some unimpressive guy in D.C. He was more interested in running an air war without grass roots."

Muth is concerned that conservative defeats in the primary will drive down turnout in November.

"This has been building up for a long time," he said. "Since 1994, conservatives thought, well, now we can get our agenda. They have the House, the Senate and the White House, and they still haven't done anything. The spending is worse than under the Democrats, and they still haven't done anything on illegal immigration."

His view is supported by an Associated Press poll from the spring that showed 31 percent of conservatives want Republicans out of power. Nelson said he's without a candidate in the 2nd Congressional District, and Warden said he has very little interest in the governor's race now that his candidate, Beers, is finished.

Recent evidence suggests conservatives will come home in November, however.

Steve Wark, a Republican consultant who does extensive voter interviews, said conservatives will finish stomping their feet and support Republicans in November: "Republicans are as committed to turning out as they have been in other off-years," he said, by which he meant a nonpresidential year.

He conceded that some might stay home in isolated regions of the country and in some specific races. "Republicans are going to have to work very hard to get them to come home, but they will."

Tuesday's primary results should be heartening to Republicans, as 36 percent of registered Republicans turned out, against 32 percent of registered Democrats, according to Dan Burdish, a former executive director of the state party.

Ron Knecht, the Carson City party chairman, said conservatives should be happy with Gibbons and Heller, both good conservatives.

"I don't think they'll stay home in November, and I don't think they should," Knecht said. "As a member of the Assembly during 2003, I remember that Jim Gibbons' two-thirds requirement was our bulwark," he said, referring to the Gibbons-sponsored voter initiative that requires tax increases to be approved by two-thirds of both the Assembly and state Senate.

Knecht said there's another factor that will motivate conservatives, and that's the Democratic nominee for governor, Dina Titus: "I think they'll come out in the general because the thought of having Dina Titus is unthinkable."