Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

POLITICAL MEMO:

This time, rural Nevada isn’t looking so red on its face

Democrats’ playbook narrowing traditional gap

A year ago Cindy Trigg called a meeting in White Pine County to organize rural Democrats. Two people showed up.

Her next meeting netted six. And the one after that drew enough to fill a room. A small room.

Slowly but surely, driving 21,000 miles across rural Nevada, Trigg saw the scenario play out time and again: Democrats emerging from the shadows in the state’s reddest counties.

“They do want to be paid attention to,” she said. “They got energized once they knew they had some help. They knew they weren’t going to have to do it on their own.”

It’s exactly what Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean envisioned when, after the 2004 election, he promised to stop the party’s slide toward geographic isolation. He created what he called a “50-state strategy,” sending field operatives such as Trigg into deeply red states and rural counties across the country in hopes of helping Democrats compete everywhere.

Today all of Nevada’s 15 rural counties have functioning Democratic central committees. A big reason was the state’s early presidential caucus, masterminded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“It was really the beginning of the demise of the Republican Party we’ve known in Nevada for 25 years,” Reid told reporters last week. “I’ve never seen organizing like this. We’re in as good a shape as I’ve ever seen in a presidential election. (Barack) Obama has a campaign organization that is unparalleled.”

State Democrats credit Dean, who has funded three rural organizers in Nevada over the past two years, for laying the groundwork in the rural areas, and the competitive campaigns of Sens. Hillary Clinton and Obama for expanding the ranks.

To be sure, Democrats aren’t predicting wins in such places as Elko, Esmeralda and Eureka counties, which voted overwhelmingly for President Bush in 2004. The goal is to cut into the Republican margin enough — combined with wins in Las Vegas and Reno — to make a statewide difference for Obama in November.

The strategy is playing out across the Intermountain West, where Democrats hope to capitalize on the damaged Republican brand and economic uncertainty.

“Rural America all over this country has been really hurt by the Bush-McCain policies,” Dean said last week, stopping at UNLV for a voter registration rally. “If you think it’s tough to live in Las Vegas and pay $4 a gallon for gas, think what it’s like when you have to commute 50 miles. Folks are quitting their jobs in rural America because they can’t afford to commute anymore.”

Large rural margins were central to Bush’s campaigns. He won rural counties nationally by 16 points in 2000 and 19 points in 2004. A poll conducted for the Center for Rural Strategies in May found McCain leading Obama among rural voters in battleground states, including Nevada, but by only a single-digit margin (9 points). Voters favored Obama on the economy, their No. 1 issue.

Democrats, who will open their national convention in Denver this week, see opportunity in the West. “Everyone has put the focus on Ohio,” said Rebecca Kirszner, spokeswoman for The Western Majority Project. “But if John Kerry had won Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, this convention would be about him.”

The region is trending Democratic. In 2004, Republicans held a 124,000-voter advantage in overall party registration in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. Today the latest reports in the four states show Democrats with a 73,000-voter edge.

The Democrats’ gains in rural Nevada may boost Jill Derby’s chances of unseating Republican Rep. Dean Heller in the state’s sprawling 2nd Congressional District. She lost to him by five points in 2006 in the race to replace Republican Jim Gibbons, who was running for governor.

Last week, according to a Reno Gazette-Journal/KTVN Channel 2 poll, Derby was trailing Heller by five points — a surprisingly strong showing given that Heller is the incumbent and campaigning hasn’t begun in earnest.

“It’s a totally different landscape than what we had in 2006,” Derby said.

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