Political Caucuses

D. Taylor is anxious, pacing irritably as the rabble-rousing continues. About 150 workers have gathered at the Culinary Union headquarters here to rally and make signs for a Friday night caravan. Their plan is to clog traffic outside the big casinos to protest lagging contract talks. Many are just off the day shift, small children in tow. Taylor, head of the union local, fidgets as Culinary organizers fire up the crowd.

The Nevada Republican Party hasn't had a very good run of luck lately. In January, state Chairman Paul Adams was ousted after taking sides in a nasty congressional primary fight that ended up in court. He was replaced temporarily by Vice Chairman Paul Willis, who in turn was savaged by bloggers and party activists over his close ties to a Pahrump, Nev., brothel owner facing federal wire-fraud charges. Then news reports surfaced that newly elected Republican Gov.

The state's Republicans gave final approval to a plan to push up their presidential caucuses to Jan. 19, the same day Democrats will vote for their candidates. The GOP state central committee's action follows the Democratic National Committee's decision last summer to give Nevada the second 2008 presidential caucuses in the nation -- just five days after the Iowa caucuses and before New Hampshire's primary.

What happens in Vegas begins in Iowa -- at least for the state's Democrats. Wary of a repeat of the 2004 Democratic caucuses, in which unprepared organizers were overwhelmed by a record turnout, the Nevada Democratic Party is drafting veterans of Iowa's famous caucuses to direct its Jan. 19 nominating campaign -- including building a new precinct-level organization and adapting a computerized tabulation system initially designed for Iowa.

Nevada Republicans agreed Friday afternoon to move the state's GOP caucuses to Jan. 19, joining Democrats in deciding to vote second in the nation on the 2008 presidential candidates. The agreement came in a conference call among about 15 members of the state Republican Party's executive committee, and in defiance of a Republican National Committee rule that bars states from selecting presidential delegates before Feb. 5. It will require a change in state law.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a White House hopeful, said Thursday that the existence of the Congressional Black Caucus and other race-based groups of lawmakers amounted to segregation and should be abolished. "It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a colorblind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based on race," said Tancredo, who is most widely known as a vocal critic of illegal immigration.

They have poured in by the thousands from across the United States, from Mexico, Russia, Ethiopia. They change sheets in hotels, flip pancakes for 3 a.m. buffets and carry highballs to the blackjack tables. To visitors, they are quickly forgotten. Suddenly, many political analysts believe, these faceless low-wage workers are about to play a pivotal role in selecting the next Democratic nominee for president.

The powerful one-two punch wielded by Iowa and New Hampshire in picking the nation's president would lose some of its clout under a recommendation made Saturday by a panel of Democrats to involve more states in the early voting. The recommendation, motivated in part by a desire to get more minority voters involved early, would add one or two caucuses after Iowa's but before New Hampshire's leadoff primary.

It's more than two years before the next Iowa caucuses, but the first meaningful votes in the 2008 Democratic presidential race will be cast this week. On Saturday, a Democratic commission will decide whether to challenge the dominant role that Iowa and New Hampshire play in determining the party's presidential nominee.

Kathy Wilson, whose frustrations as a woman in the 1970s-era workplace fueled her rise to leadership of the National Women's Political Caucus, died of a heart attack Sept. 1 in Rehoboth Beach, Del. She was 54. After working briefly just out of college as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines, Wilson took a job in sales for a Kansas City, Mo., hotel. She rapidly became the company's leading salesperson and was so successful that the company asked her to train two new men.