Democrats are on a roll in Nevada

Guns are another big issue -- more than 1 in 3 Nevada households contain at least one firearm -- and even though Obama promises to support the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, he didn't help his cause by telling a Pennsylvania crowd this month that he couldn't confiscate anybody's guns "even if I wanted to" because there were insufficient votes in Congress. The McCain campaign has made sure that quote and its qualifier get widely circulated.

Yucca Mountain, a perennial issue in federal races in Nevada, has gotten comparatively little notice. Obama opposes the nuclear waste dump, proposed for a site 90 miles from Las Vegas. McCain has voted in favor. But analysts say most voters are too preoccupied to care much.

Race, however, is a factor in the contest, which some discuss more frankly than others. Andy ("No last name, dear, I have my reasons") is a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton but can't abide Obama.

"He'll do everything -- no offense to the Negroes -- for the Negroes and cut the whites down to nothing," the retired casino worker, 67, said between errands in downtown Reno. She doesn't like McCain any better and may stay home on election day.

But the biggest challenge facing Obama may be connecting with Nevada voters in a way the patrician John F. Kerry and diffident Al Gore never did.

"There's a gut feeling," said Herzik, the professor. "Do I feel this person understands the West, understands Nevada, understands me as a Nevadan?"

Asked about competing against a pair of Westerners, Obama responded with a quip. "I'm Western," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in an interview this month. "I'm from Hawaii. You don't get any more Western than that."

--

mark.barabak@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.