This morning on the drive to work, I heard Heidi Harris say (on talk radio KXNT) that Obama will be opening four more campaign offices in Las Vegas this week. Not surprising now that McCain has a slight edge in the polls.
The good news for the Dems is their voter registration edge of about 60,000, many of whom were signed up by the Obama campaign in recent months. In addition, the Las Vegas Sun reports that the Dems have trained 600 new precinct leaders in addition to the 1,000+ who were trained for the caucuses.
The bad news for Obama is that he has to overcome the senate’s most liberal voting record in a state that is unwaveringly pro-gun and has a deep aversion to tax hikes. He’s also got a problem in re: to energy because the majority of Nevadans – in both parties – support creating more energy (drill, drill, drill) vs. cutting consumption.
The question is: will those extra voter registrations and the opening of these new campaign offices make a difference for Obama in November – and should the NV GOP follow suit?
Republicans tend to be more reliable voters, so the GOP doesn’t always have to work as hard to get their peeps to the polls. With numbers this close, though, McCain’s people may want to take a page from the 2004 Bush-Cheney playbook. The Republican ground operation in Nevada was huge and Kerry was defeated by 21,500 votes.
Not sure that’s going to happen, though. The McCain campaign seems to be focusing more on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — states with larger numbers of electoral votes than Nevada – I guess thinking that if they can win 2 out of 3, they can win the whole enchilada.
Obama seems to be taking a different approach: grabbing enough (other) Bush states such that losses in the big Midwestern states won’t mean as much. Clearly, Nevada is one he wants in the bag.
