Dean Rhoads

This year ended with more of a bang than a whimper. Joseph Cooper has the races to watch here.

Getting a freebie this year are Democrat Valerie Wiener, and Republicans Dean Rhoads and Mike McGinness. All have safe seats.

In CD-1, Shelley Berkley may just pull this one off. With a spare 60,000 voter registration advantage you would think that she is safe, but the race still managed to attract seven GOP opponents. Seven. Must be the huge Republican surge that we're seeing nationwide that makes these guys think they have a chance with those odds.

LAS VEGAS-New voter registration numbers, released yesterday by the secretary of state's office, show that state Democrats have improved on the advantages they've gained in the last several months and are now in an even stronger position to pick up seats on the assembly, state senate and congressional levels.

Democrats, who had trailed Republicans in overall voter registration as recently as March of 2007, now have 441,676 active registered voters in Nevada as compared to 396,489 Republicans. Although both parties picked up voters, the Democratic advantage has swelled to 45,187 registrations, up from slightly more than 40,000 just a month ago.

"This is just an incredible shift in voter registration," said Kirsten Searer, deputy executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party, today. "The interesting thing about this is, at this point this isn't just caucus returns. For a long time, we were getting a boost because county registrars were going through the voter registration forms from the caucus. We're beyond that and we're still seeing a huge uptick in voter registration."

So, to all of the Ron Paul Revolution guys whose toes I stepped on last time, I’ll offer an olive branch:  you are the most informed part of the electorate on subjects related to the Constitution. Probably by a mile. I admire your respect for the document, but I have no idea where you guys will come down on how easy it should be to petition to change state law or the Constitution.