Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.
After all the hype and excitement about Nevada being an influential state in the presidential race, after all that has been said and written about how important our oft-ignored or easily ridiculed state has become, do we really matter?
My definitive, unequivocal answer: Maybe.
As the new kid on the block, Nevada has been tormented by the older, more established bullies on the presidential playground. National types (mostly those infernal Eastern elitists!) recently have taken to deriding us, and the candidates (mostly those confounding Republicans!) have been concentrating more on the traditional early deciders of Iowa and New Hampshire.
As the Nevada novelty has ebbed and the quadrennial powerhouses are threatening to move up their dates, some here are feeling jilted by the candidates and the media. We'll always have Carson City, Elko, Pahrump and, of course, Las Vegas, they seem to be telling us; but our first love is back East.
This is mostly about the Democratic caucus es so far because the Republicans started late and are planning a scaled-down version of the more intimate, Iowa-like caucus es the Democrats have envisioned. And with South Carolina Republicans moving up their date, the Republican candidates, save for Mitt Romney, see Nevada less as a place to campaign than as a place to alight briefly (usually at Gondolier Numero Uno and Republican Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson's Venetian) and walk away with some cash.
The Democrats continue to come, albeit not at the clip they were , and some of the second-tier contenders appear to have lost interest. This is both understandable and, perhaps, shortsighted.
As journalist and author Matt Bai pointed out in a piece published recently in the Los Angeles Times, the Democrats need to be turning westward. "The candidates may give the impression of a party centered east of the Mississippi, but in every other way, the Democratic universe is tilting West," wrote Bai, who has published a book, "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."
Bai makes his case by pointing out that the Democratic leaders of both congressional houses are from the West - Nancy Pelosi of California and Harry Reid of Nevada. More important , he wrote, is that at the activist level, "the power and energy in Democratic politics now runs increasingly along an East-West current."
A glance at electoral maps for the last two cycles shows what changes in the West could bring to the Democrats. Except for a blue coastline, a sea of red suffuses the West, with enough electoral votes in places such as Colorado, Arizona and Nevada to have changed both of the last two outcomes. (Nevada alone could have made Al Gore president.)
Some of the conventional wisdom along with the conventional caricaturing of the state has hurt Nevada. County Commission Chairman Rory Reid's early endorsement of Hillary Clinton and his decision to head her campaign here were seen by many insiders as a channeling of Reid the Elder - that is, a message that this state was locked up by Harry Reid for Hillary Clinton. I don't believe that's true, but what matters here is what the candidates and media think.
Nevada is not yet a sure thing for Clinton, despite any attempts to make her win seem inevitable. Barack Obama has begun to erect a solid organization here and John Edwards, his Iowa or bust campaign notwithstanding, keeps coming.
The real reason Nevada may yet be important is the inherent lunacy of the process. We are lucky it is so crazy and here's why: National polls that show Clinton a runaway winner right now and Romney out of the game in single digits don't mean nearly as much as polls in the early states. Remember that John Kerry was nowhere before Iowa last cycle and his showing there destroyed Howard Dean and fundamentally altered the dynamic.
The media are so focused on these early results - and thus, so is the public - that overnight an also-ran can become a contender, a front-runner can be seen in free-fall. That's why Nevada, whether we end up second or third, could still be important - for the candidates and the media.
In his piece, Bai argued that candidates and the media should recognize what he called "a new landscape of Democratic politics."
"The sun is going down on the old, Industrial Age party," he wrote. "To get a good view of the sunset, look West."
And that should mean Nevada, too. Maybe.
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