PHOTOS/DENNIS MYERS
Bernie Sanders greeted a crowd of Nevadans at a UNR gathering of activists.
Deputies, guards back gun checks An organization of police, prison guards, and other law enforcement officers have endorsed a ballot measure requiring criminal background checks for private gun sales, except in the cases of transfers among family members or temporary loans of weapons for hunting or self defense. “The bottom line is criminals must be prevented from acquiring guns in simple, ‘no questions asked’ transactions,” said Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers Executive Director Richard McCann in a prepared statement. “While not an absolute answer to this crisis, this initiative is a further step that must be taken to counter gun violence in this state and in our nation.” The initiative is one of a dozen state initiative petitions funded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It qualified for the Nevada ballot with 242 percent of the needed 102,000 signatures.
Delicate flower offended With any luck, Elon Musk’s cars have thicker skins than he does. After he paid a $5,000 deposit on a Tesla Model X, Californian Stewart Alsop wrote an open letter of complaint about the shoddy launch event for the car. Alsop said the event began just under two hours late, was overcrowded with 3,000 people, and oversold the safety features to an audience of people who had already ordered the cars. “[I]t would still be nice if you showed some class and apologised to the people who believe in this product,” Alsop wrote. So Musk cancelled Alsop’s order—for a car that is now three years overdue. When the story hit the headlines, the super-rude exec posted, “Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention.” Alsop: “When I wrote a blog post about my BMW X1 called ‘My Car Makes Me Feel Stoopid’, the CEO of BMW didn’t take the car back.”
Bundy jailed Scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy last week was arrested on an array of charges stemming from the April/May 2014 standoff at Bundy’s Clark County ranch. Bundy, 69, was arrested at Portland International Airport after deplaning on his way to visit his jailed son Ammon, arrested in a separate dispute. The elder Bundy is charged with assault on a federal officer, weapon use an possession, extortion to interfere with commerce and aiding and abetting, obstruction and conspiracy, which carry the possibility of 40 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines. The 2014 standoff came after Bundy had grazed his cattle on the public’s lands without pay fees for two decades, running up a bill of unpaid fees of more than a million dollars. No current figure is available for how much he now owes. The Bureau of Land Management, which had failed to act to halt the illegal grazing all those years, finally started a roundup of the cattle that were being grazed illegally. Anti-government activists, many arms, turned the dispute into a convention and traveled to the site where it turned into a long standoff. The BLM finally withdrew to avoid violence.
Crunch time Democrats run hard in West as GOP candidates mostly stay East With Nevada and six Southern presidential nominating contests approaching, Hillary Clinton and Bernie by Sanders shifted after Iowa and New Dennis Myers Hampshire to targeting minorities, which were in small numbers in the first two contests. In Nevada, besides a large Latino bloc, there is also the high jobless rate of 6.5 percent and enduring foreclosures. On the Republican side, the caucuses were down in the grass on the radar screen as a result of the state GOP’s decision to push its date back from Feb. 20 (third in the nation) to Feb. 23 (fifth in the nation).
Some reporters were at a loss without polls.
Family Feud II On Dec. 22, Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison filed a lawsuit seeking expedited court review of lawsuits that sought to stop a new state program that pays parents to take their children out of public schools. His fellow Republicans—State Treasurer Dan Schwartz, who administers the program, and Attorney General Adam Laxalt— threw fits over what they considered Hutchison’s interference. Laxalt called Hutchison ethically challenged and went to court to quash his suit. Schwartz said he was “baffled” by Hutchison’s “side trip to nowhere.” This month, after the program was enjoined, Laxalt and Schwartz demanded expedited court review of the case. The Nevada Supreme Court granted it.
—Dennis Myers 8 | RN&R |
FEBRUARY 18, 2016
For information on the Democratic caucuses go to http://NvDems.com/ caucus/express/ For information on the Republican caucuses go to www. NevadaGOPCaucus.org
For the second time, Clinton was scrambling to hold together a presidential campaign that she had entered as frontrunner but then had seen unravel. She kept increasing her time in Nevada. This week she canceled a trip to Florida to stay and campaign in Reno, Elko and elsewhere. She naturally spent most of her time in Clark County, where votes are packed. To keep up with Sanders, who was outspending her
two to one, she started tapping a political action committee fund that was supposed to be reserved for her general election campaign. Clinton seemed to be feeling the heat of Sanders’s dogged pursuit and attempted to preempt his issues, in part by trying to outdo him in populist rhetoric in the state which suffered the highest foreclosure rate in the nation: “I’ve taken on Wall Street before and I’ll do it again.” Clinton’s claim to the women’s vote was undercut by National Nurses United—the nursing profession is 91 percent female, according to census figures—which backed up its endorsement of Sanders with mailings in Nevada, canvassings in several communities, and a Las Vegas rally. In fact, Sanders’s union support came in for criticism from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, now under Sheldon Adelson management: “Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is very fond of telling voters that he is the only Democratic candidate for president who doesn’t have a super PAC, and that he’s ‘going to prove the experts wrong’ by winning the election without one. But Sen. Sanders is not counting contributions from labor unions. ... SEIU, NEA, Communications Workers of America, National League of Postmasters, National Nurses United and many other unions among his biggest supporters.” Well, not many others—most union support still goes to Clinton.
Reporters and political volunteers poured into the state as it became clear Sanders was making a serious run at Clinton in what has been called a stronghold for her. For Sanders, there was nothing to lose by spending his entire campaign treasury in Nevada if necessary, because there was nothing ahead after Nevada but rough waters, including five Southern or border states on March 1. His best chance for a win after New Hampshire was Nevada. It was also the best place to keep his momentum going. For every six television spots Clinton ran, Sanders ran ten. Republican spots trailed by comparison. The Democratic caucuses were an economic bonanza for the state, as the airwaves filled up with millions of dollars worth of broadcast commercials. The Republican caucuses were less so. By pushing their caucuses back three days, Nevada Republicans not only reduced the state’s influence in the presidential race, they also reduced the bump the state’s economy received. It made South Carolina the first post-New Hampshire GOP contest, giving that state 11 days of media buys. The original date would have made Nevada a higher priority. The full force of Republican advertising will come only after South Carolina, giving Nevada the full benefit of only two days of buys. There was one journalism benefit in Nevada. There were no polls during most of the final surge, freeing reporters to cover more productive topics. That lack seemed to confound some national reporters. Huffington Post: “Nevada’s Democratic caucuses are only a week away, but it’s really unclear who has an advantage ... given how little polling has been done in the state.” Business Insider: “But with about a week to go before the crucial Nevada caucuses—seen by some Clinton allies as the first of her ‘firewall’ states that could stop Sanders’ surge—there’s almost no recent public information gauging how the last four months of the race have affected Nevada voters.” One poll came out, but it was commissioned by Washington Free Beacon and done by TargetPoint. Both entities are far right and so were deemphasized by most news coverage. The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill reported, “The Free Beacon is a conservative publication seen as antagonistic toward Clinton. And TargetPoint is ‘a conservative firm stocked with Republican operatives,’
