A roundup of campaign trail tidbits

By Jon Ralston (contact)

Friday, Oct. 24, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

Eleven days and counting until insane political people — candidates, their consultants and their supporters — regain their equilibrium and stop hectoring the poor, put-upon members of the Fourth Estate with tales of horrific dirty tricks that simply must, must be reported before Nov. 4.

As the countdown to tranquility continues, chew on these campaign morsels:

• Presidential race in Nevada: Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan on Thursday not surprisingly played down the massive advantage that Democrats have in early voting this year, saying they had the same big lead four years ago and the GOP nominee still took Nevada.

So let’s fact-check Duncan’s comments, made on “Face to Face.”

In 2004, after five days of early voting in Clark County, Democrats had a lead of about 2,500 voters in Clark County out of 70,000 cast — 45 percent to 41 percent. Democrats eventually ended up with a 14,000-voter lead by Election Day, but only a 4.5 percentage point advantage in early and absentee voting, which, I said at the time, did not bode well for Democratic nominee John Kerry. (Yes, I was right. But I digress.)

So is that the same as this year, as Chairman Duncan said? Not quite.

After five days of early voting, the Democrats had a 35,000-voter lead, or a 30 percentage point lead — 25 percent if you include mail ballots. I understand Duncan’s desire to spin the situation into a “we’ll be fine because our folks will turn out on Election Day” scenario. But with Democrats also crushing Republicans in Washoe County, if those numbers hold, there are not enough red-blooded, true Americans in rural Nevada to save John McCain.

• Congressional District Three: Is Rep. Jon Porter on a “death list” or finding new life?

U.S. News reported on a blog this week that it had obtained an internal GOP document that listed 10 Republican-held House seats as “likely gone.” Porter’s seat was on it.

But the National Republican Congressional Committee, which pulled ad buys for weeks, has a new purchase here and clearly believes it can save Porter. Early voting in CD3 shows the Democrats with a 20 percentage point lead — if they can maintain that edge, Titus should hold on, no matter how many Democrats and independents she is hemorrhaging because of Porter’s hyperbolic tax/pension assault.

If it were any other Democrat but Titus, who has recent baggage from that governor’s race, Porter would be looking to sell his D.C. digs.

• Legislative control: The Democratic turnout swamping the state must be causing extraordinary worry among Republicans, who have employed every means available to try to save Bob Beers and Joe Heck from the campaign being run against them by ... now, what were their names?

Allison Breeden? Shirley Copening? I can’t tell them apart, mostly because they are invisible.

But those hollow women may benefit from the Obama coattail effect in Clark County, as Democrats are destroying Republicans in early voting in both of those state Senate districts. Not much is at stake here, to pilfer from Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, except control of the Legislature, the future of several political careers and the state’s political direction for a decade as orchestration of reapportionment and redistricting in 2011 could be at stake, too.

• State Supreme Court: After being relatively docile for months, the race for Justice Bill Maupin’s seat has exploded, especially after George Knapp’s piece on the alleged proffer of a quid pro quo to candidate Kris Pickering to sign a secret recusal letter.

Now Pickering, running against Washoe Judge Deborah Schumacher, is exploiting the controversy in an ad that begins, “When political insiders tried to extort special treatment from Kris Pickering, she called the police and blew the whistle, triggering an FBI investigation into judicial corruption ... She stood up to judicial corruption. She’ll stand up for you.”

The Pickering folks say they would not have used the issue if the “insiders” they refer to in the ad — consultant Gary Gray and attorney Laura Fitzsimmons — had been truthful about what happened when Gray approached Pickering with the letter. Pickering told Knapp she thought she was being extorted, that Gray was saying longtime enemy Fitzsimmons would bundle money against her if she did not agree to get out of her longtime rival’s cases should she be elected.

Gray has said he was merely telling a client what was out there in the campaign contribution world, but he also told me that he felt uncomfortable presenting the letter to Pickering.

Whether or not the Pickering campaign always intended to use the incident for political gain, it certainly is now.