Democrats breaking new ground

Many blame Democrats' failure to gain ground in places like Elko for the party's statewide losses. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid has said the Democrats' 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry, would have won the state had he spent more time campaigning outside the urban centers of Reno and Las Vegas. Kerry lost Nevada by 2 percentage points. Source

Democratic candidates for president have started venturing out of Reno and Las Vegas in preparation for Nevada's early caucus currently scheduled for January 19th, five days after Iowa's caucus and three days before New Hampshire's primary.  They're starting to show that they'll go just about anywhere to find Democratic caucus voters.  This bodes well not just for the caucus but for Democratic general election chances in Nevada.

Elko is deep in northeastern Nevada, far closer to Utah and Wyoming than it is to Vegas.  With a population of only 17,000, it's still, according to Wikipedia, the largest city between Reno and Salt Lake City on Interstate Hgwy 80.  Of the 17,000, only 25% are active registered Democrats, though just under 20% of the city's population is Hispanic.  Bush won Elko County in 2004 with 78% of the vote, Gibbons with 67% of the vote in 2006.  Elko also has five legal brothels and at least as many casinos.

Wim Wenders filmed part of his recent movie Don't Come Knocking here and described it this way:

We continued our shoot in Nevada, in an old cowboy town called Elko.  Unlike other Nevada towns, Elko isn't completely eaten up by the gambling business.  You can still feel its tradition as a cattle and sheep town.

It was once populated largely by Bas[que]s, who have a great tradition as sheepherders, and you can still have great Bas[que] food in town.

Once a year hundreds of cowboys from all over the West gather here for the annual "Cowboy Poetry Festival."

It's safe to say that it's a wee bit out of traditional Democratic presidential campaigning territory.  According to the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Elko has long been a favorite stop of Republican candidates for national and state office.

In a last-minute campaign push for U.S. Rep. Dean Heller last year, President Bush, suffering from historically low approval ratings nationally, drew a crowd of 6,000 rural Nevadans. They waited in rain for hours to listen to him speak.

 McCain made Elko a part of his announcement tour, and Romney is scheduled to vist Elko next week.

Candidate Visits to Elko
As Obama's Nevada campaign deputy chair David Cohen put it:

It's a Democratic Caucus...  So if there are only four Democrats in Elko, then those four are the ones we are competing for. As a campaign, we will compete for every single precinct.

Last month, Bill Richardson became the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit Elko in fifty years, drawing a crowd of about a hundred.  The visit paid off, with Richardson yesterday receiving the endorsement of Elko County's Democratic Party Chair and Vice-Chair, who resigned to become paid field directors for the Richardson campaign, as reported by Nevada's My Silver State blog, with the announcement released yesterday -- timed for the same day as Obama's visit to Elko?  Richardson leads with over 25 visits to Nevada as of July 18th, with Edwards at 9 visits and Obama and Clinton each with only 6.

Hillary Clinton has also announced a major "Ready to Lead in the West" tour through Nevada starting August 9th, with several stops planned in both urban and rural Nevada.  Democrats has yet to buy airtime for radio or tv ads in Nevada.

Obama made his first visit to Elko yesterday, as part of his Rural Issues Listening Tour, proving that even deep in rural Nevada he can draw a crowd of 800-900 people.  According to the Elko Daily Free Press :

The crowd gave Obama a warm, but not gushing welcome. Many in the audience said they were undecided, and still testing the waters. Several identified themselves as Republicans.

Interestingly, Obama drew many of the same questions he gets anywhere else in the country about education, health care, and immigration.  Here are some excerpts from the Reno Gazette-Journal's coverage:

He repeatedly asked for people to talk about concerns peculiar to Elko County, eventually drawing a question about hard rock mining.

He said he needs more time to learn about the issue, but explicitly rejected imposing an 8 percent royalty fee on mining federal land. U.S. Sen. John Kerry's support of such a royalty hurt him in 2004.

"We need to make sure the industry continues to thrive in this region, but also make sure the federal government is adequately compensated," he said. "The 8 percent increase in royalties, I haven't signed up for that."

More than 80 percent of Nevada is owned by the federal government. Analysts say an 8 percent royalty fee could cripple the state's competitiveness with other markets.

Early in the conversation, Obama confronted a question about his race, religion and the portrayal of him as a rookie senator who bumbles important foreign policy stances. Obama called it part of the "hazing process of being a presidential candidate."

His biggest applause line actually seems to have been his answer to a question about Pakistan:

But he refused to back away from the comments he made in a foreign policy speech last week that has earned him rebukes from his opponents as well as the U.S. State Department.

"I made a simple proposition that I'd like anybody here to challenge me on," he said. "If the government of Pakistan knows that bin Laden is in their northwestern territory, and those folks who killed 3,000 Americans are training to attack us again, then if we had actionable intelligence in terms of taking them out and we couldn't get the government of Pakistan to act, we should act."

The audience cheered.

"When he's talking about Pakistan, that's the truth," said Gary Stultz of Spring Creek. "That is what we should be doing."[...]
In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal after his talk, Obama said critics who have called for him to be silent on the issue are self-serving.

"I absolutely think this should be part of the debate and I think the Bush administration's statements have been entirely self serving on this front," he said. "If we can't talk about the number one national security threat that we face, then I don't know how the American people are going to make a serious decision about how we move forward."

Here's a reader comment from the Reno Gazette-Journal article:

How cool!      Sun Aug 05, 2007 10:21 pm
Just think about it!

The number two contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, an urban black man at that, comes to Elko Nevada to campaign . . . and draws a crowd of 900! Truly mind blowing! Who woulda thunk it???