Nevada squarely in candidates’ cross hairs

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

ELKO - A weekend of presidential campaigning begins with the four-hour drive from Reno to get here, one of the most remote towns in the lower 48. The absence of state patrol and a well-maintained Interstate 80 make for ideal driving conditions. The Great Basin Desert landscape, with its big sagebrush and occasional deer carcass, offers a stark contrast from typical presidential campaign scenery of New Hampshire bucolia and Iowa maize.

The desert is about to enter the national political imagination, at least until Jan. 19, when Nevada Democrats and Republicans hold their caucuses, second in the nation behind Iowa. Four presidential contenders worked in the state this weekend, treating Nevada like a new but important friend.

Elko is die-hard Republican country, a place where President Bush beat Sen. John Kerry by nearly 60 percentage points. Arizona Sen. John McCain, on his campaign announcement tour Saturday, wanted to be the first candidate to visit this de facto capitol of rural Nevada. He drew a crowd of 300 or so to his presentation, which combines biting humor with an aggressive pro-war posture. The effect is like Don Rickles, if the comedian read The Weekly Standard.

"What did one inmate say to the other? The food was a lot better when you were governor," he said, a tad risque considering the FBI investigation of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons.

He rattled off all the Arizonans who have run for president and lost - Barry Goldwater, Morris Udall, McCain himself in 2000. "Arizona is the only place where mothers tell their children they can't grow up to be president."

About being a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam: "I was able to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my airplane."

He's always been a political gambler, having lashed out at the religious right during his 2000 run. It's what gave him such a prosperous national profile - a hero who'd been there and wouldn't take gruff from the likes of Pat Robertson.

Since his 2000 defeat, when he lost in a vicious South Carolina primary infamous for its whisper campaigns about his sanity and his adopted Bangladeshi daughter, McCain has been a surprisingly stalwart supporter of the president and was considered the Republican front-runner six months ago.

Now, he's taken the biggest political risk of his career, the veritable all-in. Although a loud critic of the war's prosecution - he calls former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the worst Pentagon chief in history - he's staked his entire campaign on Bush's latest plan in Iraq, adding 20,000 troops to try to bring security and stability.

An American withdrawal, he said, would be catastrophic, leading to chaos and genocide, and to a terrorist attack on America.

Although opinion polls show that the American public is not with him , they loved him in Elko. After his speech, he worked the rope-line for 20 minutes under the Nevada sun, and the volunteer sign-up sheets were filled.

RENO - If McCain is best telling a self-deprecating joke, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is at home in the town-hall format. She drew at least 3,000 people Sunday morning at Hug High School, and the adulation was palpable. (Second-hand reports had some fans staying overnight to get the best seats.)

Like McCain, however, the air of inevitability has seeped out of the Clinton campaign, with grass-roots Democrats moving to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, John Edwards. They worry about Clinton's chances in a November election, and still seethe at her October 2002 vote giving Bush authority to pursue war in Iraq.

She may win over doubters if they see her in her town hall venues, however.

Clinton gives off a noticeably warmer and more open vibe than in front of large arena crowds, judging by the reaction at Hug High. In the theater-in-the round format, she spoke for at least 30 minutes without notes, sounding off on the theme of the "invisible Americans" and a middle class "under siege."

The single mother, the small-business owner, the 90,000 people on the Gulf Coast still living in trailers, the soldier in Iraq - she covered all the bases.

She took questions, which sometimes drew emotional interlocutors. Rather than overdoing it, Clinton remained empathic but stoic.

Perhaps the most telling clue to her political skills: She remembered the school's principal because they'd met once before in the 1990s - when the principal was living in Washington state.

CARSON CITY - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson probably has the best resume of any Democrat running for president, having been congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, energy secretary and now governor. He's been nominated for the Nobel Prize more than once and is broadly popular in his home state. It's an indication of how crowded the Democratic field is that he's considered a second-tier candidate .

He began his day Sunday in South Carolina, before hitting Chicago, San Diego and San Francisco and was visibly tired by the time he spoke at a fundraiser for Carson City Democrats. Still, he's a high-energy candidate with a mischievous grin and a self-effacing manner.

He told a story about talking to his 92-year-old mother and telling her he'd announced his candidacy for presidency.

"President of what?" his mother asked pointedly.

Richardson's stump speech device is to say what he'd do in his first six days in office.

The first day, he would withdraw American soldiers and Marines from Iraq, while using his famous negotiating skills to get the warring religious sects, as well as foreign countries, to bring stability to the war-torn country.

The second day, he would make America energy independent. And so on.

His speech was sprinkled with promises of allegiance to fellow Westerners in Nevada and our issues, such as water, land use and traffic, which he said he understands better than anyone because they are so similar to New Mexico's pressing needs.

He also acknowledged that he must do well in Nevada and jokingly noted his small army of staff here. Strange then, that he had not been briefed on the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to build a water pipeline from rural Nevada to Las Vegas, recently approved by the state engineer and opposed by environmentalists, as well as many rural residents.

LAS VEGAS - John Edwards stood behind a table stacked with Johnny Rockets bags Monday, a sign of another day on the campaign trail. The onlookers numbered about 300, many of them activists wearing the T-shirts of their favored causes, from AARP to One.org - "the campaign to make poverty history."

The one-term U.S. senator from North Carolina, who lost a son and whose wife is battling cancer, has become a favorite of grass-roots liberals, because of his emphasis on ending poverty and creating a universal health insurance plan by taxing the rich.

Using a time-tested tool of the best preachers and pols, Edwards spun off the headlines, using the release of former CIA Director George Tenet's book to argue for a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. When he said 50,000 troops should be pulled out "right now," a man echoed from the back row, "right now." The event soon acquired a revivalist energy, with applause and even "amens" punctuating each point.

Edwards said the U.S. must acquire a new reputation abroad, hitting on education in the Muslim world and genocide in Darfur as areas where Washington could make a difference.

He said he would close Guantanamo, the prison camp for alleged terrorists, drawing the afternoon's biggest applause.

Edwards is running to the party's left, and given how they're the people paying closest attention right now, he's winning early allies.