HOWIEINSEATTLE: "Clinton and Obama seek to break deadlock in Nevada"

Saturday, January 19, 2008

"Clinton and Obama seek to break deadlock in Nevada"

The Democrats' increasingly bitter and divisive race for the White House comes to a head in the Nevada caucuses today amid a welter of disputes about unions, management styles, and the legacy of Ronald Reagan.
After Barack Obama's win in Iowa, and Hillary Clinton's in New Hampshire, today's caucuses are seen as a potential tie breaker. A win today could provide crucial momentum before nearly two dozen states hold their primaries on February 5.

The vote is also seen as a test of the emerging influence of Nevada's Latino community, which makes up more than 20% of the population, as well as the organising ability of its unions.

An opinion poll published in yesterday's Las Vegas Review-Journal showed Clinton maintaining a comfortable lead over her rivals with 41% of the vote. Obama was on 32%, and John Edwards on 14%, undercutting his claims to be fighting a three-person race.

However, caucuses, which require attending a meeting at a specific location, are notoriously difficult to predict. That is especially the case in Nevada, which ordinarily allows voters to cast their ballots at a grocery store within a two-week period.

Obama may have gained an edge this week after a judge permitted Nevada to allow caucuses at nine casinos on Las Vegas gambling strip, which will make it easier for hotel and casino workers to participate. The workers' union has endorsed Obama.

The close contest - and the high stakes involved - have led to increasingly angry exchanges between Obama and Clinton and their supporters, barely four days after both candidates pronounced a formal truce.

In the latest episode, Obama has been under attack from Clinton and Edwards for seeming to praise Ronald Reagan. "I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time, the last 10 or 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom," Obama remarked.

In her final campaign rally before this morning's caucus in the nearby town of Henderson, Clinton reacted as if to a heresy. "One of my opponents said today that he thinks the Republican party is the party of ideas," she sneered. "Well I would agree with that to the extent that they are the party of bad ideas."

Obama was more relaxed in his last rally at a university campus in Las Vegas, offering a few jokes along with his now familiar stump speech. But he also tried to insulate himself from further damage after he admitted in a debate that his biggest weakness was his inability to keep track of paperwork. "I'm sorry, I thought when you said what's your biggest weakness you meant what's your biggest weakness. I didn't understand the question."

The two camps also traded accusations of dirty tricks. Earlier yesterday, Clinton suggested that the Culinary Workers, the main union supporting Obama, were putting pressure on their members to support him. Bill Clinton, who met with workers at the Bellagio casino, has also suggested that culinary union members are being told they must caucus for Obama.

The union has released a Spanish language radio ad accusing Clinton of trying to disenfranchise hotel workers. "Hillary Clinton does not respect our people," the ad says. "Hillary Clinton is shameless."

Today's caucuses could well provoke a showdown between the major components of the Democratic power base in Nevada: the unions, which support Obama, and the party's leadership, which has come out for Clinton.

Yesterday's opinion poll also suggests that Clinton has solid support from Latino voters who favoured her by 50% to 29% over Obama in the poll of likely caucus goers by the Mason-Dixon polling group. However, in what may be an augury for South Carolina's contest next week, Obama dominated among African American voters. He had 65% support compared to 18% for Clinton. However, the community is smaller presence in the state than Latinos.

Obama had a slimmer lead among union households over Clinton, just 7%, despite his support from the state's powerful culinary unions.

On the Republican side, the caucuses have been overshadowed by today's primary in South Carolina. Mitt Romney has been the only candidate to campaign here in the run-up to the vote. That effort and the sizeable Mormon population of Nevada should work in his favour. Romney had a 15 point lead over John McCain, his nearest challenger, in the Review Journal poll.

But even before the first votes were cast, the contest has already begun to move beyond Nevada. John Edwards will not even be in the state today - he left on Friday morning to campaign in Oklahoma. Clinton has a rally scheduled in Missouri while Obama heads south to Georgia.