David Damore's blog

After the events of last week, one thing that is for certain is that there is never a dull moment when it comes to Nevada politics. Indeed, last week the state was treated to the spectacle of Republicans acting like Democrats, Democrats acting like, well Democrats, and Gov. Jim Gibbons doing a Bush-like late Friday afternoon, avoid the media document dump.

After taking grief for months for their party's inability to effectively organize and efficiently conduct party business, there must have been plenty of smiles among the state's Democratic brain trust as the normally well-managed Nevada GOP saw its state convention descend into a chaotic mess compliments of the Ron Paul-fueled insurgency.

What a difference 16 months makes. Last January, when he first came into office, Gov. Jim Gibbons was largely panned for what many saw as a leadership style that attempted to import Republican/D.C. politics into the Silver State, scandals and all.

To refresh, first, the Governor pulled-out the GOP all-purpose canard of national security to justify his midnight swearing in. Of course, the real reason that Gibbons maneuvered to take office prior to the official inauguration had nothing to do with protecting the homeland, but rather was engineered to stave off a last minute appointment by out-going Gov. Kenny Guinn to the state's powerful Gaming Control Board.

Recent news reports detailing the machinations accompanying various proposed ballot initiatives in Nevada indicate that political dysfunction is not something that is the sole provenance of the Democratic presidential nomination process. Just as the inability of the Democrats to settle on a presidential nominee suggests institutional processes going awry, so do the recent court challenges that have further muddied the waters about what is and is not an acceptable ballot initiative in the state of Nevada.

To review: the successful removal of the TASC proposal from the ballot during the last election cycle on the grounds that that its sponsors circulated different versions of the proposal when collecting the requisite signatures opened the floodgates for various interests to use the courts as means to preemptively challenge proposed initiatives that threaten their comfortable hold over the status quo.

The last post in this space critiquing the efforts of the Clark County Democratic Party's performance at the county convention generated more feedback than all prior posts combined.  Nearly all of the comments were resoundingly negative.  For some, it appears that the criticisms touched a nerve in regards to the efficacy of the Clark County Democrats' effort.  Others dismissed my comments as reflecting the inchoate ramblings of an academic too ensconced in the ivory tower.  And still others took umbrage with my choice of syntax.    

In just five weeks the Nevada Democratic Party has twice failed to execute the most essential element of winning electoral politics:  efficient and organized mobilization.  And if the November post-debate Jefferson-Jackson Dinner fiasco at the Paris is thrown-in, we are really talking about 0 and 3; a record that does not instill much confidence in the party faithful moving into a general election that may well define the Democrats’ fate in the Silver State for a generation to come.

Although the Nevada presidential caucuses have receded from the consciousness of most political observers, as recent news reports suggest, beyond the actual selection of Nevada's delegates to the Democratic and Republican Party national conventions, there is still a fair amount of unfinished caucus business, particularly on the Democratic side.   read more »

A week that began with the Democratic presidential candidates sharing the Las Vegas spotlight with the AVN awards, ended with Nevadans supporting the candidates who had gained early footholds in the state and captured their respective party establishments. In between, we were treated to a rebuking of O.J. Simpson by Clark County Judge Jackie Glass; an invasion of national and international reporters trying to figure out how to make sense of Nevada politics; a media narrative dead set on accentuating racial and gender differences and refighting the Civil Rights movement; Democratic presidential candidates refusing to take the media’s bait and choosing to play nice (at least during Tuesday’s debate); a feisty and combative Bill Clinton taking on reporters, Barack Obama, and union bosses alike; a lawsuit that laid bear the animosity between traditional unions supporting Hillary Clinton and unions aligned with UNITE HERE! that disdain all things Clinton; a fiery John Edwards who attempted to stay relevant in a state that feels little guilt about ignoring poverty; accusations and counter-charges of dirty politics between the Obama and Clinton campaigns; and a state Democratic Party that did not believe its own hype and was thus, unprepared for so many caucus participants.

In sum, caucus week in the Silver State did not disappoint and in all likelihood established Nevada as the gateway for the battle for the west for the near future. But since we are talking about politics and at the end of the day, politics is about winning, what follows is my round-up of caucus week winners, losers, and those somewhere in between.

By this time next week, the Nevada caucuses will be over and the state, for better or worse, will have left its impression on the presidential nomination process.  In the mean time, the state is abuzz with unprecedented campaign activity and media attention.  In what follows are some observations about what has occurred to date and what is likely to occur between now and the 19th.

Nevada as the Saucer:

The post-reform presidential nomination process has been characterized by the Iowa caucus followed a few weeks later by the New Hampshire primary.  The gap between these two contests provided time for the media and voters to put the results of Iowa in perspective and gave candidates the opportunity to reevaluate their messages and strategies before testing their mettle again.  Not so in 2008.  Because of the desire of more states to have an earlier say in the process, New Hampshire moved its primary up five days after Iowa; providing little chance for meaningful reflection between the contests with the end result being a media narrative run amok. 

From an objective perspective, the results of the Iowa caucuses may tell us very little about the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination campaigns.  After all, because of its sparse population (less than one percent of the nation's total), Iowa is allocated very few of the delegates needed to secure either party's nomination and the preferences of its largely homogenous population may prove to be atypical of the electorate in general.  Unfortunately, like many things in life, political outcomes tend to be interpreted through a subjective lens.  Thus, the results of the first in the nation caucus will go a long way in shaping the media's narrative for both the Democratic and Republican campaigns.  How this narrative is presented will have significant implications for what occurs in Nevada on January 19th.

The results of a recently commissioned poll by the Las Vegas Review Journal were probably warmly received by the Nevada state Democratic organization.  Indeed, polls indicating a tightening of the Democratic race nationally, in the other early voting states, and in Nevada suggest that Hillary Clinton may not have the cake-walk through the nomination process that many expected just a month or so ago.  These same polls also indicate a Republican contest that is increasingly more fluid by the day and open to a myriad of scenarios.  All of this, in turn, should elevate the importance of what happens in Nevada on January 19th.

At the same time, the Review Journal’s poll of 300 likely Democratic and Republican caucus voters belies the difficulty of polling in caucus states.  First, polls with sample sizes of 300 tend to lack precision, resulting in large margins of error.  In this case, the margin of error in the RJ poll for both the Democratic and Republican fields is plus or minus six percent!   This means on the Democratic side that Hillary Clinton’s lead in Nevada over Barack Obama could be anywhere between two and 20 percent.  Similarly, Rudy Guillani could either be in a statistical tie with Mitt Romney or lead by as much as 17 points in the Republican contest.