Derby works Rurals, preps for Heller rematch

CARSON CITY-Democratic 2nd Congressional District candidate Jill Derby was in Dayton today, meeting with Healthy Communities Coalition leaders from Storey, Mineral and Lyon Counties. 

Derby, who announced in late February that she will challenge Republican Congressman Dean Heller in a rematch of 2006, heard coalition members' concerns about diminishing federal funding for community projects and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind on rural education before sitting down with PolitickerNV.com to discuss the difficulties of trying to pick off a now-incumbent congressman.

"I love what y'all are doing," said Derby to the eight coalition leaders at the Public Works building on Lakes Blvd. in Dayton.  "That's part of what has me running for congress really, is all the compelling needs of our communities and our state that are going unmet."

Derby sought to tie problems of funding community programs to Heller and the ongoing war, referring to funding for the war as an "incredible amount of money we're pouring into the sands of Iraq."

"Families are struggling and it seems as though we elect representatives that go back to congress and are listening to other voices, like corporate lobbyist voices, in terms of how they vote, rather than being in touch with working families back home," said Derby.

"The congress voted to give $13 billion, and our Representative Dean Heller voted with the majority, in tax breaks to big oil, which is making record profits at the same time we're paying record prices at the pump.  Instead of that $13 billion going to big oil as a kind of a tax giveaway, why not direct it to these kind of programs."

Speaking about her campaign afterward, Derby said she "feels good" about first quarter fundraising numbers that showed her with $143,879 raised in the six weeks between her announcement and the Apr. 1 reporting deadline.  Heller raised $186,578 in the first quarter and has a substantial lead over her in cash-on-hand.

"There's been a great response to the campaign," said Derby.  "I'm not starting from ground zero; I have a base of really great supporters who stepped up to the plate."

Derby responded to charges from Nevada Republicans that her taking the chairmanship of the state Democratic Party in 2007 showed that she was not the independent "different kind of Democrat" she ran as in 2006.

"The people who know me know I have always been independent," said Derby.  "Taking the state party leadership was a great opportunity to grow political participation in Nevada and put Nevada on the political map."

Derby stressed that on issues like the forthcoming wilderness bill, if legislation did not meet with popular support she would vote against members of her own party, including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"I'm not a lockstep partisan," she said.

Derby is anticipating a lot of help from national Democrats in her second run for the seat.  Since her announcement, she has spent a week in Washington D.C. reviewing issues and taking candidate development training with the Democratic Congressional Committee's "Red-to-Blue" program.  The program, which has already endorsed Robert Daskas in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District, supported Derby in 2006 and she hopes will again this year.

Aside from the DCCC's anticipated support, Derby is receiving organizational help from the Democratic National Committee, who has a full-time rural organizer working the state as part of DNC Chairman Howard Dean's "50 State Strategy."  Combined with the registration gains that came with the Democrats' Jan. 19 caucuses, Derby believes she will stand a better chance of beating Heller this year.

"It's a different cycle, isn't it?" Derby asked.  "The landscape is so different than it was two years ago and a lot of that comes out of the good work the state party did in organizing down to the precinct level, identifying leadership at the precincts, training them and so forth, so we end up with a network of activists all over Nevada.  That was something that was never in place before."

Nonetheless, Derby faces an uphill climb.  While Republicans' voter registration advantage in the district has shrunk from more than 48,000 votes going into the 2006 election to only 31,000 now, that still represents more than eight percent of the district's registered voters.  Derby will rely, therefore, on appeals to independent voters and a sense in the district that the country "is going in the wrong direction."

"Nevadans are pretty independent," said Derby.  "It is a characteristic of the entire inter-mountain west.  People are fed up and frustrated with the way things have gone, and fed up and frustrated with our own representative and how he's voted," said Derby.  "I run into that frustration everywhere I go."

Derby believes that Heller's record in congress will give her something to run against.

"He's voted over 90 percent of the time with the Bush administration for more of the same," said Derby.  "He's the candidate for more of the same.  I say if you want to change Washington, you've got to change the people you send to Washington, and that's a message that resonates with people."