News

Poker faceoff

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, who previously said his colleague Harry Reid should take the lead in getting an online poker bill enacted, backed away from that stance this week.

In a Sept. 10 letter, Heller objected to a deadline set by Reid and also said that “as discussed, it would be beneficial for the House of Representatives to first address this issue.”

Reid has lined up between 40 and 50 Democrats in the Senate to support legislation making online poker legal and had asked Republicans Heller and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona to bring 15 GOP senators on board. Because of Reid’s system of “imaginary filibusters” in which a single member of the Senate can impose a 60-vote threshold on the 100-member Senate, Reid and Heller need 60 votes to pass the measure. Reid also called on Heller to come up with the 15 votes by this week. This was “not a strategy we discussed,” Heller responded.

In the letter, Heller said he and Kyl have approached about half the Republicans but didn’t say what the results were. Reid’s office issued a statement: “Several months ago Senator Reid asked Senator Heller to secure Republican votes to help pass an Internet poker bill, and to date, Senator Heller has not been able to secure any support.” Heller’s office did not respond.

Reid and Heller are seeking to make online poker legal and all other forms of online gambling illegal to aid the Nevada casino industry.

Climate takes economic toll

If the economic prognosis for Nevada is poor, the climate prospects are no better.

The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center warned “The Drought Outlook valid through the end of November 2012 indicates drought conditions will remain essentially unchanged in large sections of the central Mississippi Valley, the central and southwestern Great Plains, most of the High Plains, the central Rockies, the Great Basin, and parts of the Far West.”

Nevada occupies most of the Great Basin.

The relentless heat and nearly nonexistent rain is also compromising the nation’s ability to generate energy.

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that operators of Hoover Dam and other hydroelectric dams across the nation are scrambling “for ways to produce the same amount of power from the hydroelectric grid with less water.” Nor is hydroelectric generation the only casualty of the drought. “[L]ow water levels affect coal-fired and nuclear power plants’ operations and impede the passage of coal barges along the Mississippi River.”

Business Insider reported that “virtually all power plants, whether they are nuclear, coal or natural gas-fired, are completely dependent on water for cooling. … Given the drought, many facilities are overheating, and utilities are shutting them down or running their plants at lower capacity. Few Americans know (or up to this point have cared) that the country’s power plants account for about half of all the water used in the United States. For every gallon of residential water used in the average U.S. household, five times more is used to provide that home with electricity via hydropower turbines and fossil fuel power plants, roughly 40,000 gallons each month.”

She was there

Nevadan Jennifer Terhune, who attended the Republican National Convention in Tampa, has posted her account of Nevada delegation events. Though it sometimes assumes the reader’s knowledge of intra-party matters, it still makes interesting reading.

It can be read at www.jenspen.com.

—Dennis Myers

Caucuses still primary

Early rumblings of changing system come to nothing

After some reporters were inconvenienced in the Iowa and Nevada Republican cauby cuses in January and February, there Dennis Myers was considerable agitation—especially by online sites—to do away with caucuses. “Unable to control how its county parties count and report results, state Republicans were scrambling Sunday to explain why, almost 24 hours after most caucuses ended, the votes still have not been counted,” Politico reported after the Nevada caucuses.

“You’re likely to get a more engaged voter in caucuses.”

Ken Bode Political analyst

As much as anything, the “problem” appeared to be young reporters who hadn’t understood that caucus vote-counting is slower than primary vote counting. “After back-to-back fiascos in Nevada and Iowa, the term ‘caucus’may be on its way to becoming a bad word in the GOP lexicon,” reported the Associated Press in a story that quoted Nevada Assembly GOPLeader Pat Hickey: “The average voter does not want to go to an event that is going to take one, two or three hours.”

But there was never any likelihood that the political parties—and least of all the Republicans—would do away with caucuses. And that was something that many of their critics failed to understand—that the caucus process was under the control of the parties, not the government.

Caucuses are only secondarily presidential selection events. They are, first, the way the political parties do business—electing officers and adopting policy positions every two years, not just in presidential years. In other words, they are events held not by the government but by private organizations, and those organizations make use of them for more than selecting presidential candidates. Some states have presidential primaries. All states have caucuses.

But presidential selection—or rather selection of delegates to presidential nominating conventions—is when the caucuses get most of the attention.

The military vote

“Showing up is 80 percent of life,” Woody Allen once said.

Nowhere is that truer than in caucuses, which demand a commitment of time. Participants arrive, register, meet with other people from their own neighborhoods, declare their support for a presidential candidate—and possibly for a second choice if their first choice does not meet a threshold—and elect delegates to a county convention. What happened in Tampa and Charlotte in the last couple of weeks

Voters checked in at a Republican caucus site in Sparks in February.

all began at these “local precinct meetings,” which is actually the legally correct term for them in Nevada.

“Caucuses give you a real sense of democracy,” said Ken Bode, former NBC reporter and aide to several presidential candidates. “You have an opportunity to be with your neighbors. You probably get a more involved electorate. There’s diversity and interest in the process. It takes more time to sit in the caucuses, that’s for sure.” He said some people, including journalists, “don’t understand caucuses and haven’t taken the time to understand them.”

Those who want caucuses replaced with primaries are often the people who oppose government spending. Primaries are paid for by the government, caucuses by the political parties. Nevada once had a presidential primary, but it was eliminated as too expensive. State law now allows the parties the option of holding primaries, but when the GOPdid it in 1996, it cost more than half a million dollars and the turnout was poor.

Last month, the Republican National Convention in Tampa did make a challenging change that future GOPcaucuses will have to deal with. Beginning in the next presidential election—not the midterm conventions of 2014—state Republican Parties will have to make an effort to include absentee military voters and injured servicepeople in caucuses.

“Time, distance, and military regulations preclude … service members from coming home to Iowa to participate in caucus night activities,” retired Navy officer Sam Wright wrote to Iowa GOPleaders. “Is it too much to ask that you make arrangements to give them a reasonable opportunity to participate in the nomination of a presidential candidate in 2016 and beyond?”

It’s not clear how this will work in Iowa or any other caucus state. By their very nature, caucuses demand a physical presence. Asuccession of decisions by each participant is made on the spot, each dependent on the outcome of the previous one. How does an absentee participant choose who to vote to send to the county convention, since the county delegates are not nominated until the day of the caucus? How do they designate their presidential choices after the first round of voting at the meeting eliminates some candidates?

Bode, who once served as research director for a Democratic Party delegate selection commission, said, “It’s a very impractical thing.” He considered and rejected in his comments ways the overseas voters could be accommodated.

Being there

Showing up is something that some candidates’supporters do better than others. Ron Paul’s supporters appear to be the current champs. They turned a third-place showing in the Nevada caucuses in February into a Paul delegation from Nevada to the Republican National Convention this year by showing up in force at both county and state conventions while Romney’s supporters were less diligent.

At the Tampa convention, Republican leaders wanted new delegate selection rules to keep that kind of thing from happening. One rule they proposed would have allowed a candidate to overrule state conventions and choose his or her own delegates. That was a bit much, with many delegates—certainly including the Nevadans—believing that would turn the process into even more of an insiders club and give still more advantages to candidates with money, blocking grass roots movements.

The party leaders more or less gave up, agreeing to a rule that merely binds delegates to the candidates they are chosen to represent.

The notion of binding delegates is a relatively recent one. During most of U.S. political history, delegates were free agents, able to move from candidate to candidate as the convention unfolded. In those days, the principal concern was selecting a leader for the party who could win the election, and the delegates were the experts since they ran the campaigns at the grass roots. Today, however, delegates are more issueoriented, and the most passionate, highly motivated delegates often line up behind candidates that party leaders believe cannot win, as with Democrat Howard Dean in 2008 and Republican Ron Paul this year. Such highly motivated delegates were among those who successfully blocked the rule that would have allowed a candidate to overrule a state convention.

But then a second rule was adopted that would allow the Republican National Committee to change the party’s rules before 2016. In the voice convention vote, it was not clear who won, but John Boehner—who was presiding— declared the rule passed. If that was not enough of a power play, convention officials decided to change the convention rules after the convention was already under way in order to prevent Ron Paul’s name from even being placed in nomination. It was a little like deciding in the second inning to require two strikes for an out by one of the teams. It was an affront to Paul and his supporters at a time when a party’s leaders normally are trying to bring losing candidates into the party fold.

While most of the action on caucus rules this year is on the Republican side, the Democrats are more certain than Republicans to have a stake in how caucuses work next time around. That’s because whether Barack Obama wins or loses, the Democratic race will be open in 2016. But on the Republican side, it will likely be open only if Romney loses. If he wins, the 2016 GOPcaucuses will probably be as pro-forma as were this year’s Democratic caucuses. Ω

Playoff

At the Reno Aces ball park last week, customers lined up for food before the start of the game. In a playoff series against the Sacramento River Cats, the Aces took a 3-1 win followed by a 0-1 loss in Sacramento, then a win, a loss and a win at home, 11-7, 3-4, and 7-4. Reno now goes to the Pacific Coast League championship series for the first time in the team’s short history.

Decision for the Council

Cliff Young and Oscar Delgado survived the primary election to become the candidates for Reno City Council in Ward Three. Young comes to the race with a well known name—his father, also Cliff Young, was U.S. House member and state supreme court justice. The Council candidate ran for office once before, in an unsuccessful race in Assembly District 27. He has been identified with bicycling and issues like bike paths in Reno for decades. It’s Delgado’s first run for office. He sits on the Neighborhood Advisory Board f0r ward three and City of Reno Charter Committee and is also a member of the West of Wells Neighborhood Group. Both candidates are rooted in the community, born in Nevada and raised in Reno. They seek a job that may not be all that pleasant. Acity councilmember serving in hard times with little expectation for economic recovery anytime soon, could end up being very unpopular. Both candidates speak of the limitations on the city, of not losing any more ground. “I’d certainly like to try to maintain the status quo as far as employment,” Young said. “I mean, you know, 85 percent of the budget is in salaries. We have a declining tax revenue so maintaining strong police and fire department is not going to be easy.” It shouldn’t be surprising that neither candidate speaks of launching new programs. Young speaks wistfully of flood projects but also of less expensive goals: “I think we can do more with volunteers and neighborhood advisory boards ... trying to beautify parks and the town … I think coordinating the volunteers for beautification projects would be one outreach that we might be able to [accomplish].” Delgado said job creation is high on his list, and he too thinks it is important to try to keep as many city employees as possible. “Making sure that we keep our general funds up for our general uses and making sure cops on the street and firefighters are working,” he said. “You know, [that] parks are up to safety standards for our residents and our community.” The candidates haven’t been critical of each other, in part because they have encountered each other in public forums only once. The closest thing to conflict involved education. Young heard Delgado link education to the Council race. “I’m not sure what the

City Council does on that,” Young said. by Delgado: “We need to understand Dennis Myers that as a region, we all need to work collaboratively together, working with the school district a lot more closely and seeing how we can be more supportive, working with our university to see how we can be more supportive.” He said he would want to do that not just with education but with the county and Sparks governments. Young has been something of a lightning rod for criticism. He practices family law—divorces—which always generates anger (nearly all courthouse violence involves family court) and until recently there was a Cliff Young website attacking him over such cases. He has also been attacked by some of the tenants at rental properties he inherited in low-income areas. But his critics have not been good at delivering promised documentation, and examination of some of the charges tend to make him look as much like a victim as a villain, as when his properties are marked with graffiti. He said that he has had problems with tenants and drugs and has evicted half a dozen tenants because of it. By contrast, Delgado tends to be “notorious for his affability,” as one observer put it. He is regarded as easygoing and able to work cooperatively with people of different viewpoints. The public images of both candidates could be marketable. In Young’s case, a candidate who keeps things stirred up could appeal to voters who think government doesn’t work. In Delgado’s case, affability could be seen by voters as a trait of someone who gets things done. Political analyst Fred Lokken said that in this particular race, the Reno City Council’s history will probably be a factor in Delgado’s favor. “The Reno Council, especially, has had a history of problems in working together,” Lokken said. “And you can be a great lone wolf in the process, but if you can’t convince the others sitting on the Council or the mayor to go along … then your leadership is less than inspired, whereas someone who’s more affable, willing to advocate and support compromise and not be about personality or having to be out in frontOscar Delgado of the pack frankly tends to be of a greater value on the [Council].” And he said the residents who vote in Council races are those who would likely remember that history. “[W]e have outrageously low voter turnout for local elections, and so it’s only a small percentage of the voters in Reno that are engaged. They tend to be the repeat participants and ... more aware of the problems we’ve had