Because of Hispanic Growth, Nevada Gains 2008 Spotlight

LAS VEGAS (By Jennifer Steinhauer, NYTimes) October 13, 2006 — No longer is it, "Um, Dina who?"

The name of the Democratic candidate for governor here, Dina Titus, is tattooed on the brain of most every Democrat who wants to be president, because of Nevada’s newly vaunted position in the 2008 election calendar.

Since Democrats moved the caucus here smack between the Iowa caucus, the first contest of the year, and the New Hampshire primary, Ms. Titus has worked the fund-raising circuit with Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Senators Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Evan Bayh of Indiana and Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa are on their way.

"They raise money for me, and I get them face time," said Ms. Titus, a little-known state lawmaker who has leveraged the attention into a suddenly competitive race against Representative Jim Gibbons, the Republican candidate for governor.

The decision this summer to move the Nevada caucus has infuriated Democratic officials from Iowa and New Hampshire, accustomed to being the electoral prom queens of the primary season, who have been criticizing Nevada’s low turnout in elections and questioning the state’s ability to pull off the complex process of a high-profile caucus.

The jokes about strippers in the union halls and caucusing over the craps tables are presumably being written now.

"I met folks from Nevada before," said Gordon R. Fischer, the immediate past chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. "It seems like a nice group of people. But I don’t think you can overestimate the amount of work that goes into this. I think it is bad, with all due respect. I think it is bad for the Democratic Party and bad for the country."

Nevadans, not surprisingly, reject this idea.

"We’re not talking about figuring out the DNA strand here," said Jon Ralston, Nevada’s most respected and widely quoted political reporter, who said he had already identified the state’s biggest winner: "Me!"

How Nevada changes the calculation for Democratic contenders is a matter of debate within incipient campaigns, a sort of election wild card. And even as they zip off to the state to appear at fund-raisers, most potential candidates do not want to discuss the issue, partly out of fear of alienating New Hampshire.

Interview requests to the offices of the Democrats were greeted with initial cheer, but the responses became mostly frosty when the subject of the Nevada caucus surfaced.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut was an exception.

"There is a healthy quality to this because you’re going to have to be more places," Mr. Dodd said in a telephone interview. "It is true I would not be normally going to Nevada this time of year. It changes the amount of time I spend in the state. I think the country benefits from that."

Smarting from losses in the West in 2004 and looking to gain momentum among Hispanic, exurban, union and other Western voters, the party has calculated that Nevada is the perfect swing-state entree into the 2008 campaign. It also bumped up South Carolina’s primary.

For Nevada Democrats, the January caucus will seal their state’s importance in national politics.

They point to Las Vegas, the nation’s fastest-growing big city, the booming number of Hispanic residents and the local issues that differ from those in other states to underscore why their time has come.

Still, Nevada is not entirely ready to answer questions about logistics.

"I haven’t even thought of that," said D. Taylor, secretary of the Culinary Workers Union of Nevada, which lobbied to move up the caucus. "Right now we’re focused on a minimum wage bill that comes up in November."

Although Nevada has held a presidential caucus for 40 years, the scope of this event will be well beyond any of those. In 2004, 9,000 people came out to caucus here; 125,000 caucused in Iowa that year.

In previous caucuses, Nevada has set up one location in each of its 17 counties; in 2008, party officials are aiming for 1,000 sites statewide. The Nevada Democratic Party anticipates spending $1 million to train people and publicize the race. "Obviously the process isn’t easy," said Kirsten Searer, the state party spokeswoman.

And how, Iowa caucus veterans say.

"It absolutely takes a tremendous amount of money, knowledge and organization to pull off a caucus," Mr. Fischer said. "We have nearly 2,000 precincts in the state of Iowa, and I compared it to planning 2,000 weddings that all go off at the same time."

Unlike primaries, caucuses have myriad built-in impediments to their own success. The first is simply getting people to show up, because going to a caucus takes more time and energy. Precinct captains, some of whom in Iowa have been playing their role for decades, must be trained. Coordinating the reporting of results, perhaps the key component, can be turbid.

"You have to go with your neighbors and publicly declare your support of a candidate, and that can take a couple hours or more to complete," Mr. Fischer explained. "You need a public meeting place, you need to get packets of information to all the precinct captains, who need to be trained in caucus procedures — there is math involved.

"Then, the hardest thing of all is reporting results. There have to be layers of security to make sure they are reporting accurately and timely. You can’t have some that report right away and others that wait until 3 a.m."

Unlike the well-trodden coffee shops in Iowa and New Hampshire where candidates awkwardly tossing pancakes are as essential to winter as snowplows and mincemeat pies, Nevada is still puzzling out its pit stops.

Bagel Mania in downtown Las Vegas, a favored spot among power brokers, is in the running. But is it a good place to spot likely Democratic voters? "Absolutely not," said Evan Garfinkel, the restaurant’s assistant manager, noting the clientele’s conservative leanings. But Mr. Garfinkel anticipates serving the candidates scores of corned beef sandwiches nonetheless.

Nevada officials see their caucus as a chance to showcase issues — growth and water use in particular — that have often been ignored in primaries.

"So much a part of life in the Southwest are overcrowded schools, sitting in traffic, a lack of fire stations and libraries," said Ms. Titus, the candidate for governor, in an interview here. With Hispanics now making up 10 percent of all voters, immigration issues are also expected to be important.

New Hampshire is less than enthused with Nevada’s new status. Its officials argue that Nevada’s low turnout — its 2004 primary, the state’s contest for nonpresidential races, attracted 29 percent of registered voters — and the fact that Nevadans are unschooled in big caucuses are reasons enough to try moving up New Hampshire’s date. The Democratic National Committee said it would punish any candidates who participate in a state that violates the official schedule by denying them delegates.

Here is the recent editorial take of one New Hampshire newspaper, The Portsmouth Herald: "What makes more sense — to have a racially diverse population that is not engaged in the political process or to have a predominantly white population that is politically involved and active?" The choice of Nevada, the editorial said, stemmed from "maneuvering by Nevada Senator Harry Reid and the influence of big Las Vegas gambling money on the process."

But national party officials remain confident in their choice.

"Nevada had all those magic things in terms of being a Western state, having a large Hispanic population, a large Asian population and a labor population," said Stacie Paxton, a Democratic National Committee spokeswoman. "We will work with officials from the state party to make sure they are ready to have a successful caucus."

Meanwhile, Democratic attention remains fixed on Ms. Titus. A professor at the University of Nevada and the minority leader in the State Senate, she is battling for the governor’s office against Mr. Gibbons, a congressman with deep pockets, longstanding ties to the gambling industry and a lead in the polls.

The attention from national candidates has raised Ms. Titus’s profile, garnered free publicity and energized her base. And as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware tells it, Nevada’s caucus rivals are no worse for it.