Nevada Presidential Caucuses 'the Test in the West'

LAS VEGAS — Nevada's presidential caucuses on Saturday are being billed as "the test in the West," the first chance to measure not only the political clout of Hispanics in the 2008 presidential campaign but how much of a battleground the Western states will be in the fall general election.

A record turnout is expected in the Democratic caucus, where Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a statistical dead heat in a contest very different from the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primaries earlier this month. Here, in the nation's fastest growing state, the contest is a battle over Nevada's sizable blocs of Hispanic, union and urban voters.

The Republican caucus is harder to gauge because for the past two months, the major GOP candidates have all but ignored the state, concentrating instead on their party's primary in South Carolina, which is also being held Saturday. Ron Paul has been advertising here for months. But only in recent days, since his victory in the Michigan primary, has Mitt Romney paid any attention to the Nevada GOP caucus, running ads and scheduling rallies Friday in the Reno area.

Romney's sudden shift in attention from South Carolina to Nevada is, in part, a simple numbers game. Nevada has 34 delegates up for grabs, while South Carolina has 24. "I'm playing to get the nomination. I'm not looking for gold stars on my forehead like I was in first grade," Romney told reporters Thursday.

Still, most of the attention here will be on the Democratic caucus and the 33 delegates at stake in the voting, largely because it is the first contest in a Western state, an area the Democratic Party believes is ripe for winning in the 2008 general election, because it involves a large number of Hispanics, the fastest growing minority in the country, and because it reflects the political clout of service industry unions.

Thomas Schaller, author of "Whistling Past Dixie," a book that examines how the Democratic Party can build a winning coalition in the West, calls the Nevada caucus an historic event because "it marks the beginning of a serious effort to recognize the significance of the Hispanic vote in American politics, especially within the Democratic Party."

Four years ago, fewer than 10,000 Democrats showed up at this caucus, about 2 percent of those who were eligible, and it had little impact on the selection of the party nominee. But subsequently, the Democratic National Committee designated Nevada as one of the four states to kick off the nominating process, in part, because of the growth of the Hispanic population.

The number of Hispanics eligible to vote rose from about 14 million in 2000 to 17 million in 2006, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. However, voter turnout among Latinos has traditionally been low. In 2004, about 16 million Latinos were eligible to vote, but only 7.6 million cast ballots, the center found.

A recent study by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California estimated that about 9.3 million Latino voters will go to the polls in 2008, up 23 percent compared to 2004. And in states like Nevada, with Hispanic's comprising almost a quarter of the population, the increase could be enough to move the state into the Democratic column in the general election for the first time since 1996.

Obama has the backing of two key unions - the Nevada chapter of the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) and, perhaps more importantly, the Culinary Workers Union, which represents 60,000 workers mostly in the glitzy hotels, casinos and resorts of the famous Las Vegas Strip.

Consequently, while there will be more than 1,700 caucus precincts across Nevada, most of the attention will be on the nine luxury casinos on or near the Strip - including the opulent Bellagio, featured in the blockbuster movie "Ocean's Eleven" - where caucuses will be held starting around noon on Saturday (Pacific Standard Time).

A teachers' union with ties to the Clinton campaign went to court to prevent caucusing at special precincts in the casinos, but a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Nevada Democratic Party had the right to set its own rules for caucuses and the rules, as approved last August, allowed the casino precincts.

Both parties' caucuses generally follow the same format as Iowa's. The GOP contest is basically a straw poll, with ballots cast in secret. The Democratic caucus will be conducted in the open, with supporters allowed to realign in support of another candidate if their original choice does not muster enough support to remain viable.

One key difference, though, is that in Nevada, only supporters of nonviable Democratic candidates will be able to switch to a different corner during the realignment period, a rule that is intended to discourage political gamesmanship in which precinct captains of viable candidates can direct a small number of their people to a rival corner in order to change the delegate count.

Obama may have union leaders' backing, but he and Clinton both have considerable support among rank-and-file union members, as does Edwards, who has long courted organized labor. But Clinton is the choice of the casino owners and executives. She has collected more than $60,000 from the gambling industry nationwide, compared to Obama with nearly $25,000 and Edwards with $14,000, according to data released Thursday by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group in Washington that keeps track of campaign finances.

But Schaller suggested that the Democratic winner on Saturday may be the candidate who speaks not just to the state's Hispanics, union members and gambling industry but to the thousands of Americans who are relocating to Nevada almost daily from other parts of the country, making it the nation's fastest growing state. Edwards repeatedly addressed these transplants in the debate with Obama and Clinton here on Tuesday, saying they are coming to Nevada "to find the promise of America."

"These transplants are trying to make new lives for themselves in the new West," Schaller said. "The candidate that speaks to them will have an edge this week ... and the party that speaks to them will have an edge in November."

Cox correspondent Eunice Moscoso contributed to this report.