In a state he could win the Republican did not open a full-time office until June, writes Mark Hennessyin Las Vegas
THE CURIOUS thing about John McCain's campaign in Nevada, as Sherlock Holmes might have said if he was in the state this week, is the lack of it.
In Pennsylvania, where he lags badly behind, the Republican presidential candidate is throwing out millions from its war-chest.
In Nevada, however, the two camps are closely matched in the polls. McCain could still win it but yet did not open a full-time office in the state until June. He has not visited since early September, and cancelled a planned trip last week.
By comparison, Barack Obama, who lost out narrowly to Hillary Clinton for Democrats' votes in the primaries, has been in Nevada 19 times already, and is coming back to Reno and Las Vegas on Saturday.
McCain and Nevada, which has five votes in the electoral college that will eventually decide who will be president, have history. In the fight for the Republican nomination, McCain was so far behind his opponent Mitt Romney that he was invisible, getting just 14 per cent of votes from registered party members in the state.
Clark County commissioner, Republican Bruce Woodbury, is worried about McCain's absence and his chances, though he tries hard to put a positive gloss on matters. "Yes, he will visit once or twice before November 4th. He needs to come. Yes, he does need to do so. The Democrats have been out of office for eight years and they are fighting hard for it," he says.
"People wonder where the campaign is," says Chuck Muth, an arch-conservative with a widely read newsletter, who points out that state governor Jim Gibbons was nowhere to be seen this week during vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's swing through the state.
There is, however, no missing the Obama campaign. "We have 4,500 volunteers, 100 paid staff and 15 offices," says local Democratic staffer Paul Kincaid. "We have a lot of folks who are busting a gut and who won't let up until the end. There is no sense of complacency."
Nevada's seats in the Senate - one of which is occupied by Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, are not up for re-election this time. However, the Republican Party is struggling to hold congressional and local seats in the face of a recession that has hit the gambling- dependent state hard.
The fact that Nevada is still in play so close to November 4th is itself a barometer of McCain's fortunes, since it has voted Republican in eight of the last 10 White House races, if narrowly so in the last two.
The state fell Bill Clinton's way in 1992 and 1996 only because Ross Perot was on the ticket and split the Conservative vote, and because Clinton did spectacularly well with Hispanics. Since then, there has been a relentless movement of population, with large migrations from California, Oregon and elsewhere changing the political landscape.
Now Democrats have more voters registered under their flag than Republicans. However, registering Democrat does not oblige one to vote Democrat.
The party's successful registering campaign was helped by Nevada's decision to bring its primary season forward to January. Previously, they have taken place so late they have been irrelevant on the national stage.
Turnout in the Democratic primary this time was unprecedented at 118,000, which was 12 times the number of people who came out four years ago.
Nevada's three congressional seats are being ruthlessly targeted by Democrats, as are those in New Mexico and Colorado, because they will be key to deciding who controls the redrawing of constituencies due in 2010.
"That will be important, and will be the key to politics in the United States for the next 10 years," says David Damore, University of Nevada politics professor. "All the western states will pick up seats because of population changes."
Republicans, who are in charge of the outgoing state Senate, and the governor and lieutenant governor's offices, have been hit hard by the decline in the economy. "All politics is local," says Paul Kincaid, "but the economy has been hit very hard everywhere in the country so this time the national message is the same as the local message. The middle classes have to be revitalised. American jobs have to be kept onshore,"
Meanwhile, the absence of Governor Gibbons from Palin's rally in Henderson on Tuesday was, perhaps, not such a bad thing, as it seems he is either ridiculed or reviled. The governor is blamed for much of the economic woes and faces legal action from a cocktail waitress who claims he propositioned her in a Las Vegas garage during a "good ol' night on the town".
Last spring he was found to have sent more than 800 text messages to "a woman who was not his wife" using a taxpayer- paid mobile. He had to pay the state back $130 when found out.
"The governor suffered a little public embarrassment - which he probably should be used to by now. After all, if shooting yourself in the foot were an Olympic event, Jim Gibbons would be a gold medallist," says Chuck Muth.