All eyes on Nevada

J. Patrick Coolican and Michael J. Mishak

Sunday, Dec. 24, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

A native Iowan, Jean Hessburg has a long history with the state's caucuses.

She traces her political experience to 1972, the year the caucuses became nationally significant as the first statewide contest for presidential candidates in the nation, giving Democratic Sen. George McGovern a critical early boost.

She also worked on the campaign of former Democratic Rep. Dave Nagel, who, in the mid-1980s, cut a deal with New Hampshire's political leaders to keep Iowa's caucuses first in the nation.

Later, after nearly a decade of living in Los Angeles and working for the liberal activist group People for the American Way, Hessburg returned to Iowa in 1999 as a political consultant.

In 2002 she landed the executive director job at the Iowa Democratic Party, where she oversaw more than 300 field and administrative workers and managed a $3.4 million budget in the midterm election.

In 2004 Hessburg managed the state's presidential caucuses, which attracted more than 124,000 voters, the highest turnout in Iowa caucus history.

Still, President Bush won Iowa in the general election, and Hessburg left the state party, taking a job with the Iowa State Education Association, where she now works.

She'll remain in Iowa through the 2008 presidential caucus, directing things in Nevada from afar and visiting on occasion.

With Hessburg living in Iowa, Jayson Sime, who directed field and canvass operations for the Iowa Democratic Party in 2004, will be the campaign director's full-time assistant in Nevada.

Sime managed U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell's re-election campaign this year in Iowa, and served as the state's caucus director in 2004.

Among his duties: conducting caucus training sessions for county parties, elected officials and campaign staff; overseeing meeting locations; and building a call center to receive incoming results from about 2,000 precincts on election night. He'll be responsible for much of the same in the Silver State.

Leading the national communication effort will be Jamal Simmons, Bill Buck and Roger Salazar - all professionals with national campaign experience who got their start with President Bill Clinton. In the 2004 presidential race, Simmons and Buck worked for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, and Salazar worked for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

The trio will be responsible for promoting and explaining issues important to Nevada and the Mountain West in the national media, in addition to local Hispanic outreach efforts.

Now comes the hard part.

Nevada Democrats are ecstatic that they've landed an early spot in 2008's presidential selection calendar, but now they face an unforgiving reality.

With the national media watching, Democrats must put on a caucus that draws candidates and lots of voters while being free of flaws.

It's the biggest challenge that the state party has ever confronted, said former party Chairman Rory Reid, the Clark County Commission chairman.

"No question, nothing compares to this," he said.

Holding an election sounds simple enough, but a caucus is different from a standard election.

The party, rather than the state, must manage the caucus. On caucus day, Democrats will gather at hundreds of sites at a specific time and publicly declare their support for a candidate.

Voters gathered at a caucus site are allowed to argue with one another about the best candidate. For voters accustomed to secret ballots and the flexibility of early and absentee voting, the process will be daunting.

Despite the challenges, Tom Collins, the current party chairman, was his usual cheerleading self when asked about the caucus.

"Nevada is No. 1 at tourism and a bunch of other things, and we're going to be No. 1 at caucuses," Collins said.

But many Democrats and Nevada political observers, cognizant of the huge task ahead, are more cautious.

"If it becomes a huge mess, everybody in the world is going to say, 'I told you so,' " said UNLV political scientist Dave Damore, referring to naysayers at the Democratic National Committee worried about whether Nevada Democrats can get the job done.

Mike Sloan, a gaming lobbyist and longtime Democratic operative, is running the fundraising for the caucus, which he said will cost between $1.5 million and $2 million.

"It's going to be a challenge," Sloan said. "Doing anything you've never done before is hard."

The state party is well aware of what's ahead, which is why Sen. Harry Reid, who was instrumental in delivering the caucus to Nevada, is playing a significant role in preparing the party for the caucus. His communications and political staffers have been using their free time on the caucus.

Their first big move was hiring Jean Hessburg, formerly the executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Nevada's caucus will be modeled on Iowa, long an influential player in determining presidential nominees and which in 2008 will come a few days before Nevada.

Hessburg, who was recently in Nevada to meet with party officials and activists, is credited with running a successful caucus in 2004 that saw 20 percent turnout, the highest ever for the Iowa caucus. (The fact that 20 percent was the highest turnout ever is an indication of how difficult it can be to draw voters to a caucus.)

Hessburg and Nevada Democrats face a number of major issues as they get ready for the caucus:

Securing proper locations to hold about 1,000 meetings

Peverill Squire, a University of Iowa political scientist and a caucus expert, said this must be the first priority.

The selection of sites will largely depend on estimated guesses about voter participation in various parts of the state.

In Iowa, about 2,000 caucus meetings are held at firehouses, schools and even homes. By contrast, Nevada had just 17 caucus sites in 2004 - one per county.

That led to problems in Clark County, when about 6,000 people showed up at Chaparral High School, overwhelming the state party, which had prepared for less than half that number. As a result, the fire marshal moved the caucus outside to the school's football stadium, where party leaders used field markers to designate precincts.

"There was some chaos," Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said. "We don't want to see that again."

Informing voters about the caucus process, the caucus itself and encouraging turnout

Caucuses have been a staple of Iowa life for more than 35 years.

While Nevada has used the process for just as long, the Silver State's contest has traditionally fallen so late in the presidential nominating calendar - late May, early June - that turnout has been abysmal, largely because the contest was seen as having negligible impact.

With the exception of 2004, when about 9,000 voters participated statewide, turnout often has numbered in the hundreds. In 2000 fewer than 1,000 participated.

"I just don't think it mattered in the past," Rory Reid said . "The deal was done by the time they got to Nevada."

Consequently, the Nevada caucuses drew mostly the same hard-core Democratic activists year after year.

As Terry Hickman, president of the Nevada State Education Association, put it: "Caucuses are those things other people go to."

The challenge now is to engage a transient and largely politically aloof population. The state party has its work cut out if it hopes to realize state Sen. Steven Horsford's prediction of attracting more than 100,000 people statewide.

Organizing, recruiting and training volunteers

In Iowa, Hessburg and Co. had to train about 2,000 people in 2004.

Organization is critical. "When you've got a lot of people showing up you have to run things reasonably smoothly so people have confidence in the outcome," Squire said.

While Hessburg said it's still too early to estimate just how many volunteers will be needed in Nevada, the state party's effort will involve multiple recruitment and training trips to the counties. The "talent parade" of likely presidential contenders coming to Nevada will help drive interest in the caucus as well, she said.

At any rate, Iowans are already cutting Nevada some slack.

"You're not going to do it all in one year," said David Yepsen, political columnist for the Des Moines Register and a caucus expert. "But you want to get it as right as you can the first time out."

Reporting voting results in a timely fashion

With the national media in town, getting results from the various caucus meetings to a central tallying location - quickly and accurately - will help to establish Nevada's credibility as an early presidential contest.

Ensuring a fair contest

Because the Nevada Democratic Party is not known for its activist army, the state's big labor unions will play a critical role in the run-up to the caucus.

But the nature of their involvement could cast a shadow on just how fair the playing field is in Nevada.

Pilar Weiss, political director of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, the state's largest union, has said the group won't make an endorsement until late in the process.

Also at issue is Harry Reid's involvement in the caucus. While he says he won't endorse a candidate, his track record of recruiting and supporting his own slate in local elections suggests otherwise.

An endorsement by an official at the center of the caucus process could damage Nevada's credibility.

Involving all parts of the state party

Democrats realize they must put their differences aside and start 2007 with a united front.

Backroom alliances have often hurt the party's statewide efforts, most recently in its failed campaign to elect Titus governor.

Titus, a polarizing figure to some, largely relied on her own get-out-the-vote organization, which could be a formidable force in 2008.

"Our party, unfortunately, tends to be not as open as (it) should be in terms of bringing a variety of people to the table," said Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, a Democrat who headed Howard Dean's Nevada campaign in 2004.

"It's too closed. And if that continues, you're going to see chaos."

Reid's top-down approach to the caucus is already rankling some Democrats.

"There's a problem with communication. With elected officials. With the press. And with rank-and-file Democrats," a Democratic insider said.

"Sen. Reid is deciding stuff on his own, and we're just finding out. They have to pass information, and there has to be a dialogue with Democrats."

Labor has felt the sting as well.

"Democratic activists might be comfortable with decisions from the top if there was more communication about what's going on," said Julie Whitacre, director of government relations for the Nevada State Education Association.

"An overall plan needs to be made and each player needs to have a part. We need to know what our role is and what's expected of us."

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