Nevada voters play crucial role

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Somewhere between the Western wear outlet and the muffin stand inside the Shoppers Square mall, Xiomara Rodriquez, 52 - a veteran, former small-business owner, and grandmother of two - pumps her fist in the air, dancing like she's already hit the jackpot.

More than two weeks before Nov. 4, she cast her early ballot for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election at the crowded voting booths in one of Reno's oldest malls. And with her were a dozen friends - some of the estimated 1,000 Democrats in Nevada she says she has personally registered to vote over the past two years.

"There hasn't been a door in this town that hasn't been knocked on," said Rodriquez, high-fiving fellow Democrats from the key swing area of Washoe County, which voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and recently flipped to majority Democratic registration after years of GOP rule.

"I want my retirement back. I've lost my business. I want my grandkids to go to college," she said. "We need this country back on track."

With barely a week left in the long 2008 presidential race, a down-to-the-wire political shootout here underscores the issues, the changing landscape and the new clout of a handful of Intermountain West states in the presidential contest.

Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico all went to President Bush in 2004 and were considered likely McCain camps earlier this year. But they are all leaning blue as the election approaches; only Nevada is still considered a toss-up, with recent polls showing Obama leading McCain there by just three percentage points.

Nevada has prided itself on being free of personal, state and corporate income taxes, but it ranks among the worst states on quality-of-life issues, on health care for seniors, and on other critical indicators from "smoking to senior suicides," said banker Matthew Dickson.

Economic woes

With Silver State home foreclosures among the highest per capita in the nation, its casinos laying off employees and tourism hurting because of high gas prices, "Nevada is in a precarious situation, " Dickson said. "This is a very libertarian state - gambling, brothels and liquor are part of the culture. People want to be left alone so the government can do its job. And the government has failed."

Some 450 miles away in a Las Vegas coffee shop, Miriam Mora talks about the same bread-and-butter concerns, but she wants to see a different result.

Mora, 26, a Mexican-born newly naturalized U.S. citizen, is getting ready for another 14-hour day on the campaign trail, knocking on doors and making phone calls to GOP voters, hoping to get them to the polls for the Republican team of Arizona Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In Democratic-leaning Clark County, where she helped gather more than 5,000 enthusiastic Republicans to see Palin last week, Mora recounts the worries of Latino voters like Irma Aguirre, owner of La Madonna Mexican restaurant, who stood next to Palin onstage at the Henderson rally.

"If Irma has to pay higher taxes, she loses her business - and it's 20 people she has to let go," said Mora, the Western regional coalition director for the McCain-Palin campaign. "If we raise taxes on small-business owners ... we lose jobs."

Nevada's changing voter profile tells the tale of the GOP presidential ticket's challenges: Democrats outnumber Republicans among registered voters by more than 111,000 , a yawning gap that could deliver Nevada's five electoral votes to Obama.

Latino voters

Playing a major role in the shift is an army of new Latino voters who have helped push a 4-1 registration advantage by Democrats since the high-energy Nevada caucuses took place in January.

"What you are seeing is the second installment - California being the first - of the impact of the changing Latino vote, the empowering of a changing demographic," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan group concerned with public policy and Latino issues.

In 2008, more than at any time in history, "they're registering, voting and running candidates," Gonzalez said.

Simon Rosenberg, who heads NDN, a moderate Washington, D.C.-based Democratic advocacy group, said the shift reflects how "the Republican brand with Latinos has been severely degraded" by President Bush's leadership on the economy and the war. "And John McCain has not been able to distance himself from it."

But, he added, Democrats carefully laid the groundwork for gains when party leaders like Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker from San Francisco, "added Nevada to the early caucus states and put their national convention in Colorado."

"In 2004, John Kerry didn't know the Southwest existed on the map," he said. "They spent no time and no money there."

Though rural Nevada has always been a GOP stronghold, McCain hasn't had a particularly easy battle here. He was battered by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the Nevada caucuses, and his stand in support of nuclear power - including storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain - has continued to irk many Nevadans.

And on the right, there's still the possibility of some trouble from former GOP Rep. Bob Barr, running as the Libertarian Party candidate for president with vice presidential nominee Wayne Root, a professional Las Vegas handicapper.

Looking to the future

Still, when it comes to the choice between Obama and McCain, some Nevadans - like Republican John Griffin, 41, an employee in Las Vegas' gambling industry - said their choice comes down to the future.

"We have a home, and we watch our budget," Griffin said, standing with his wife, Maria, 38, after Palin's rally in Henderson last week. McCain offers "a combination of things - his economic plan and national security" that will best preserve both, he said. "Obama wants to tax people ... and that's redistribution of wealth."

But Reid, who joined students casting early ballots in Las Vegas last week, said that with the current economic problems, Republicans and Democrats alike in his state "have come to the realization that the government is not the enemy. It's our friend. ... 9/11, Katrina, where do you go?" Reid said. They realize that "when the government is not functioning, we have big problems."

Residents of some of the state's rural areas like Virginia City, which ranked among the world's richest towns during the peak of the Comstock Lode era - said economic concerns are some of their worries, especially because the economy is failing everyday Joes.

In search of tourists

Gold panner Behr Hafner, 55 - whose bedraggled prospector shack sports a hand-written sign that is only partly in jest: "Foreclozed" - said he's an independent voter. But this year, his ballot goes to Obama rather than the Arizona senator, whom he calls "McSame."

"Everybody knows everybody in this town, and most of them depend on tourism," said Hafner as he prepared his Territorial Gold Mine, a "Pan for Gold, $7" business, for what he hoped would be an onslaught of weekend tourists. "But we used to get 1.5 million in a season here ... and now, they're not flying or taking long trips" to the town, which is a National Historic Landmark and the seat of Storey County.

Though polls show Obama leading and volunteers from California are pouring into the overflowing campaign offices, Democrats like Xiomara Rodriquez said they still aren't celebrating, because in the West, fortunes can change as quickly as the sunsets over this vast and unpredictable territory.

"It's not over until the fat lady sings," she said cautiously. "I'm the fat lady in this town ... and I'm not singing yet. ... But on Nov. 4, I'll be hollering."