News

Campaign coverage solicited

Yahoo is looking for writers and photographers to cover the presidential campaign in Nevada. But be prepared to work for free.

“Colorado and Nevada residents, you’re the ones keeping President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigning in the West these days,” read an article bylined “by Yahoo! News” last week. “With the presidential race tight in your states, you’re getting a lot of attention the rest of us don’t see. We want to know what it’s like, and here’s your chance to show us! Share your stories and photos with Yahoo News, and we might feature them in a series we’re doing about 2012 swing states. ... We’re also publishing readers’ photos from the campaign trail, so snap away and share those, too!”

The article did not mention money, so we contacted Yahoo. Its news editor, Laura Davis, responded,“We’re not paying for stories or photos becasue we’re putting everything into a piece in which Colorado and Nevada residents will act as sources, and we can’t pay for sources.”

Of course, paying for photos isn’t—well, never mind.

Tagalog heard in election

GMA Network in the Philippines this week reported that Nevada ballots in Tagalog were being used.

Tagalog is a language used by about a third of the population of the Philippines. A more standard form of Tagalog, called Filipino, is the leading language in that nation.

U.S. Embassy political officer David Sequeira mentioned Nevada in making the point that the votes of U.S. citizens of Philippine descent are becoming more important.

“Right now there are about 700,000 Filipino-American voters [in the U.S.],” he said.“Nevada has 100,000 Fil-Ams living there currently. Certainly a large number of them can vote.”

Efforts to contact Sequeira were unsuccessful.

Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller confirmed the accuracy of the report as far as it goes. But ballots in Tagalog are available only in counties where the population of Tagalog is above 5 percent, which means Clark County, where the Asian vote is a significant bloc.

Sequeire also told GMA (Greater Manila Area), “It is the decision of every state on what they want to do with their ballots, and Nevada made this decision.”

Actually, it is not the states’ decision. The ballots in languages spoken by more than 5 percent of the population are required by the U.S. Voting Rights Act. States have no discretion in the matter, according to Nevada deputy secretary of state for elections Scott Gilles.

“Publishing election materials in multiple languages is not a state or county mandate,” he said in an email message. “The Voting Rights Act mandates the language requirements based on certain thresholds having been met following the 2010 census. Based on the census data, the Department of Justice directs which languages election materials must be made available in for each county. The DOJ directed that Clark County must provide election materials in Spanish and Tagalog.”

Tally sheet

Since it became a state, Nevada has voted for the winner in presidential elections 27 times, for the loser 7 times.

Its longest period as a bellwether began in 1912, when the state voted for Woodrow Wilson over Theodore Roosevelt, Eugene Debs and incumbent William Taft (who came in fourth). It then voted for the winner the next 15 presidential elections. It ended that streak in 1976, when Nevadans chose Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. The state has stayed with the winner since then.

In one election, Nevada voted for a third party candidate. It was the election of 1894, when reaction to the Gilded Age of great wealth and impoverished workers generated support for silver and economic populism. Nevadans voted for James Weaver, the candidate of the People’s Party, over Republican Benjamin Harrison and Democrat Grover Cleveland.

Nevada has voted Republican 20 times, Democratic 16 times.

Recovery?

Obama campaign struggles to keep Nevada in his column

The notion of a smooth running, well oiled Obama machine does not necessarby ily survive a visit to its Reno Dennis Myers headquarters. For one thing, it keeps bankers’ hours. At about 8:45 a.m. on the day of the second presidential debate, there were only two people in the office—a press person who could not talk on the record with the press and a volunteer working the counter, who said, “Most of them come in about 9.”

Latinos and women both show signs of failing Obama

So they did, sort of. Some came in—and out, going for coffee—after 9. The Reno office director was also not allowed to talk to the press. Later the office provided a written statement: “We’ve seen incredible enthusiasm on the ground here in Nevada and across the country to get President Obama reelected. Our volunteers are the heart of our campaign, and as we get closer to November, we’re seeing increasing enthusiasm from supporters across the country who are excited to get involved with the grassroots efforts we have here in Nevada.”

The assumption has been that if Nevada is a swing state, Washoe is the swing county (“Watching Washoe,” RN&R, Aug. 2). But the headquarters is not a bustling office. The word that comes more immediately to mind is sleepy, notwithstanding the “ONLY21 DAYS AWAY” sign on one wall. It’s a sharp contrast to four years ago, when grass roots enthusiasm for Obama was thriving. Today, if this is a nerve center, there is considerable nerve numbness.

It didn’t help that the day started with the front page of USAToday— “Women push Romney into lead,” a piece that reported on a Gallup survey giving Mitt Romney a four point lead over Barack Obama. Women are an essential part of Obama’s vote, certainly in Nevada. In 2008, he received 59 percent of the votes of Nevada women. It’s hard to imagine his winning the state without them.

Since the first debate, the Obama campaign has appeared to be a pile of sand with the tide coming in. Erosion in his support has been steady among various groups.

So far, though, it has not yet reached the Latino community, which makes up about a fourth of Nevada’s population, and has been crucial in several recent races, such as the reelection of Harry Reid to the U.S. Senate. The Latino population of Nevada is 10 percentage points larger than the Latino population of the United States. After non-voters like children are culled from the total, Latinos make up more than 12 percent of eligible Nevada voters.

The greatest danger for Obama with Latino voters is turnout. Last year, the Pew Hispanic Center reported a survey that said 14.9 percent of Latinos believe voting

Obama precinct workers in Sparks distributed flyers door by door over the weekend. The material was left in doorjambs where residents weren’t home. The Joe Biden appearance in Reno advertised on the top sheet was later postponed.

doesn’t count and 25.8 percent said they usually were too busy with work or other conflicts to vote.

Sharp splits in the Nevada Republican Party this year were seen as an advantage for Obama. The state GOPwas taken over by backers of Ron Paul, so Romney’s supporters effectively set up a different Republican Party, called Team Nevada, to support his candidacy.

Political analyst Fred Lokken suspects the Obama campaign was lulled by those events. He said he has been amazed as signs of new effectiveness in the Republican campaign.

“They’re doing a better job of voter registration than they had been,” he said. “There are signs of better organization on the Republican side. This developed quietly and Obama forces were not aware of it.”

Can Obama win Nevada without women?

“I don’t think so,” Lokken said. “No, not at all. … I have tremendous suspicion about the validity of the Gallup poll, but there has been tremendous damage to the Obama campaign. But they do have time to put it back together.”

He said that opinion polling is showing signs of a hidden factor that, so far at least, has favored Democrats—an inability, because of changing technology, to detect some voters.

“You saw it in the polls in the Reid race [in 2010] suggesting one reality, but Reid won a very comfortable margin that had not show up in the polls. … Any polling that is still using land lines is missing 30 percent of the public.”

It is likely that Obama’s national campaign will start to emphasize women’s and family issues in their Nevada efforts—such as education, health care and abortion—to try to move that group back toward him. Nevada, in spite of a high Catholic and the nation’s third highest Mormon population, voted in favor of abortion in 1990.

Alot of attention has been given to volunteers pouring into Nevada from out of state to help Obama. That, however, is mostly a weekend thing. How much precinct territory is being covered by the campaign during the week by local volunteers is not known.

While Obama’s supporters are hoping his debate appearance this week turns things around, Lokken points out that debate audiences have not been all that impressive.