JUST WHEN NEVADA politics couldn't get any weirder -- what with police saying a Republican candidate for treasurer was murdered by her husband -- a woman accused the favorite in the governor's race of assaulting her in a parking garage after cocktails one recent evening.
Nevada has long been the Wild West of U.S. politics. With one industry dominating its economy, a small, collegial political class and an inexpensive media environment, the Silver State has often attracted the unscrupulous, the incompetent or the eccentric politician. No one much cared, though, because Nevada was long considered a place for cheap prime rib, a hand of cards and -- depending on one's taste -- a stopover at a brothel on the way to the Pacific.
Now, however, Nevada will host the Democrats' second presidential caucus in 2008, right behind Iowa and ahead of the New Hampshire primary. Potential candidates have already begun arriving in the state. They're talking about their favorite casino games and showing a newfound interest in the state's parochial issues -- water rights and the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository.
Democrats in New Hampshire and Iowa are furious. They and their media proxies have ridiculed Nevada as a political backwater not deserving of such a prime place on the presidential calendar. The Democratic National Committee, though, believes that it had a strong rationale to make the move.
Iowa and New Hampshire, with their largely white, rural populations, don't represent the Democratic Party or the country any more, party leaders believe. Those states have played an outsized role in selecting the party's presidential nominees, some of whom went on to disastrous defeat in the general election.
Party leaders sought an early caucus state that was Western and diverse, and the finalists were Arizona and Nevada.
The Mountain West is all the rage in Democratic politics, and not without reason. As political scientist Thomas F. Schaller argued in his recent book, "Whistling Past Dixie," once the Democrats surrendered on gun control, they put the West back in play. There are fewer white evangelicals in the West than in the South, and traditional Western libertarians have rejected the Republican culture wars. With Republicans divided, Democrats such as Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer have captured the center.
The West is also growing and changing rapidly with the influx of Mexican and other immigrants.
