Big dinner could have gone better for Dems

Monday, Nov. 26, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

For the Clark County Democratic Party, its annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner is the headline event of the year.

And that's never been more so than this year's dinner, held Nov. 15 at Paris Las Vegas. It was an opportunity not just to raise money but for party loyalists to boost their favorite presidential candidates and showcase their organizational mettle in advance of the January caucuses.

The entire field of Democratic candidates attended the dinner, which followed the CNN Democratic debate. So dinner attendees wouldn't miss a beat, a debate-watching party was held before the evening's festivities.

Good thing for Democrats that the Clark County Democrats aren't running the presidential caucus, because on that night two weeks ago, the county party stumbled.

Just ask Paul Schmier, an active member of the Red Rock Democratic Club.

When he finally got to the front of the line to register for dinner, he was told he wasn't on the list.

In fact, the final list of attendees hadn't arrived yet.

"It was a nightmare," he said. "People were shouting. Everybody freaked out."

A party volunteer instructed everyone to watch the debate in an adjoining meeting room and said they could register for the dinner afterward.

"In the end we added 400 people on the last day, but everyone was accommodated and I heard nothing but positive reviews," said John Hunt, chairman of the Clark County Democrats who ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general in 2002. The dinner attracted three times the typical total from previous years, he noted.

The disorganization, though, was just one of many behind-the-scenes embarrassments.

The early presidential caucus in Nevada was seen as a way to build grass roots organization and infrastructure. Indeed, the campaigns have trained thousands of Nevadans with no previous experience in politics, which will no doubt pay dividends in elections to come. And a number of neighborhood Democratic clubs have popped up, and are getting good participation.

Theoretically, the Clark County Democrats ought to be the biggest and best of the groups to benefit from the caucus. But Democratic Party insiders, including state party officials, mostly look away in embarrassment or laugh when the subject of the county party comes up.

The state party was so wary of the dinner and its prospects for success that it left the entire event in the county party's hands.

Meanwhile, some presidential campaign aides accuse the county Democrats of mistreatment.

To be sure, the county Democrats have never had an event like this, nor one this successful, they would say. The dinner attracted 2,300 party faithful and grossed $300,000 in contributions. Given the expensive venue, though, it's not clear how much the county Democrats netted. Some Democratic operatives say it's likely they didn't bring in much after expenses. Hunt said he didn't know what the final tally was.

But such events, with the candidates together to address the attendees, are also intended to generate national media coverage. So the party's decision to hold the dinner on the same night as the debate at UNLV undercut that effort. Forced to choose the more important news event, much of the national press ignored the dinner to focus on the debate.

Moreover, reporters for the East Coast media who were covering the dinner had trouble filing their stories on unforgiving deadlines because the county party had failed to secure a wireless Internet connection inside the hall.

Organizers suggested that reporters use the hotel's business center - but it closed at 7 p.m., the time the debate was scheduled to be finished.

It wasn't that the party didn't know what was at stake with a successful dinner. To handle the media, the county Democrats hired Stephanie Cutter, who was the spokeswoman for failed 2004 Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry. She's a heavy hitter in political and media circles and comes at a considerable cost. Hunt said he didn't know how much.

Finally, Democratic operatives questioned the cost of tickets, which started at $125, hardly an attractive price to encourage more rank-and-file involvement in the county party. In Iowa, tickets were tiered starting at $20 to bring in more people. There were 9,000 Iowa Democrats at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Des Moines earlier this month, more than three times the number the Clark County Democrats drew.

"If you want to do a first-tier event, you need first-class money," Hunt said. "We're not Iowa. We're Las Vegas," he said when asked about the price.

Hunt said the dinner was an unqualified success and questioned whether the candidates would have appeared on another night.

"The event speaks for itself. Their time is precious. This was historic in nature - never in Nevada have all the presidential candidates had a debate and appeared in a social setting, and to do it on any other night, I don't think we could have gotten them all," he said.

Hunt's hiring of Peggy Maze Johnson, the longtime liberal activist, to be executive director of the county party also raised eyebrows. Johnson had been working for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton when she came on board, which had the other campaigns thinking the county party was in the bag for Clinton.

In a previous interview, Hunt rejected the accusation of bias toward Clinton and defended his executive director.

"It's incredibly fortuitous for us to have someone of that caliber to be executive director of the party. If there were anything untoward, I would take immediate action. Everything she's doing, her organizing - it's incredible," he said.

Sun reporter David McGrath Schwartz contributed to this report.