The two Democrats at the top of the ticket spent the primary season emptying their coffers and eviscerating each other.

The Republican nominee was relatively unknown and didn’t seem to know much about issues.

But after spending the general election dodging difficult questions, the GOP contender won by offsetting a substantial loss in Clark County with landslides in rural Nevada and a win in Washoe County.

The year was 1982; the race was for U.S. Senate. The victorious Republican was Chic Hecht; the loser was Democratic Sen. Howard Cannon, who had been battered in the primary by Rep Jim Santini.

It’s not apples to apples 36 years later, despite the similarities between Hecht, once dubbed a “human gaffe machine” by The Wall Street Journal, and Adam Laxalt, who appears to know little about the state he moved to just before running for attorney general four years ago but whose strength in rural Nevada is immense.

Democrats should be wondering, as they did of a wounded Cannon decades ago, just how damaged gubernatorial nominee Steve Sisolak is by the pummeling he took in the primary from Chris Giunchigliani and her allies, with her themes echoed in the first general election attack from Laxalt and his campaign manager immediately calling Sisolak a “corrupt career politician.”

As we leave the primary behind and look ahead to the general, the governor’s race will lead the way in the only state where female candidates are excited about making history (they actually have a good chance to do so in the Assembly, very little in the state Senate) during the same election where a brothel kingpin has been nominated and major Republicans are acting like Louis Renault as they scurry away from him. Nevada also will have national eyes upon us and many cable anchors mispronouncing our fair state’s name as the Republicans, trying to save the House and Senate, have two chances to flip congressional seats while the Dean Heller-Jacky Rosen U.S. Senate contest could be the key to upper house control.

During the year of #MeToo and one in which female turnout was large in the Democratic primary and could be in November, Laxalt already made a Hecht-like gaffe (Or was it a Kinsley gaffe?) within hours of his victory by telling veteran KOLO reporter Terri Russell that he would look into changing the state’s abortion rights statute, which forced his campaign manager to “clarify” and then risibly claim his comments (on video) were taken out of context. This from the same campaign whose candidate cannot keep his state budget figures straight and who said he followed local law enforcement’s recommendation when he was the sole vote against pardoning an innocent man -- an argument that makes no sense because he initially tried to abstain.

Team Laxalt might want to find some old Hecht hands to advise where his favorite rural hiding places were.

For their part, the Democrats talked a good game about how wonderful primary night was for them in a memo with the gushing headline: “PRIMARY RESULTS SHOW NEVADA DEMOCRATS’ STRENGTH HEADING INTO 2018 GENERAL ELECTION.”

The memo, amid the hyperventilating rhetoric, boasted of how much better turnout was than in 2014 and how many more ballots were cast early by Democrats than Republicans. Let me tell you what this means for November: Nothing.

2014 was a singularly disastrous year for the Democrats in Nevada, as they lost all of the constitutional office races and were on the wrong end of two of the biggest upsets in state history (Laxalt over Ross Miller for attorney general and Cresent Hardy over Steven Horsford for Congress).

None of that carnage could have been forecast from the primary, except that “none of the above” won the governor’s race on the Democratic side, a calculated concession to Brian Sandoval instead of putting up a real candidate who might have, Democratic strategists feared, activated more Republicans to turn out in November. That worked well.

2018 may not be 1982, but it’s also unlikely to be 2014, either.

The Democrats have taken Santayana’s dictum to heart. But despite Sisolak’s impressive, double-digit victory, he needs to reload and Laxalt spent relatively little and has essentially unlimited funds for the general and in-kind contributions from Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper.

The truth is that outside money is going to be more of a factor in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, and there will be more heat than light, just as the money will be more dark than light.

Even though primaries rarely are harbingers for November – the electorate will be twice as large at least – there are some things that became clear Tuesday. To wit:

---The top of the GOP ticket will be filled by two men who are not close and whose campaigns are very different operations. Heller wanted to be where Laxalt is now – he longed to come home to run for governor. But Laxalt refused to step aside, forcing Heller to rethink his homecoming. Their chemistry will be fun to watch. The top of the Democratic ticket is filled with two candidates who, unlike the GOP side, have never run for statewide office. Sisolak and Rosen are not that well known and will face onslaughts from their GOP foes to try to define them before they can define themselves to a general electorate.

---Heavily Democratic and populous Clark County had lower turnout, as it usually does, than the rest of the state. In the 2014 general (41 percent), it was dramatically less than anywhere else – Washoe was 52 percent and the larger rural counties were above 60 percent. The smaller share Clark has of the overall vote in November, the better the Republicans running statewide could do, which is why the Laxalt-Heller-Michael Roberson ticket is emphasizing “sanctuary cities” and demonizing California to drive up the white and rural vote. And it’s why Democrats have reinvigorated their registration machine in Clark County to drive up that advantage.

---Democratic enthusiasm will be a key factor, but perhaps not as much as it would have been, or was in 1982 after a bloody primary. Sisolak’s candidacy does not excite the base as Giunchigliani’s did. But you know what does energize Democrats? The prospect of stopping Laxalt and winning the governorship for the first time in 20 years.

---The Democrats may be excited about high female turnout, but if any campaign truism was proven by the primaries, it is this one: Candidates and campaigns matter. Women won a lot of primaries for the Legislature and down the ballot. But they also lost in races for governor and Congress. Identity politics can only go so far if there is not a lot of money and/or a quality candidate, too.

---President Donald Trump will be a factor. He mindlessly endorsed Laxalt on Election Day, which makes no strategic sense, especially since the GOP nominee had managed not to tether himself as closely to the president as Heller has. Even lieutenant governor hopeful Roberson is now a Trump guy after being evasive since 2016. If the president’s numbers stabilize, his albatross weight may not be so great; but if he is very unpopular come November, he could be a heavy problem for Republicans, at least in the urban centers.

---One part of that breathless Democratic memo was resonant: “Roughly one-third of all 2018 Democratic in-person early voters did not cast a ballot in any of the last three primary elections.” This may or may not be a harbinger of November enthusiasm and the creation of new voters. But data indicates that the primary turnout showed that many of these new voters are not as liberal as you might think, perhaps indicating a moderation within the party that helped Sisolak last week and may again in November.

---What may be the most important factor in November wasn’t even measurable in major races last week: Those not registered with a major party, who will be close to 30 percent of registered voters by November. They are already almost even with Republicans in Clark County. If they begin to like Trump a little more, that bodes well for Republicans; if they are sour on the president come Nov. 6, the GOP will be feeling very….blue.

---Three things to watch during the next five months: How much the Democrats extend their registration lead; how much scenery brothel boss Dennis Hof chews and how much he makes Republicans squirm; and how active Ryan Bundy, who could hurt Laxalt as an independent candidate, campaigns.

In the end, everything in Nevada politics is circular:

1982 was not just a year in which a savage Democratic primary cost the party a Senate seat. It was also the year in which Richard Bryan defeated Bob List, now Laxalt’s political mentor, to become governor. And it was the year Harry Reid won his seat in the House, four years before he would run for another guy’s open Senate seat, the same guy who helped elevate Hecht’s career but could not, even with the help of the president of the United States, save his protege from losing re-election in 1988 to….Bryan.

That man was Paul Laxalt.

Disclosure: Steve Sisolak and Chris Giunchigliani have donated to The Nevada Independent. You can see a full list of donors here.

Jon Ralston is the editor of The Nevada Independent. He has been covering Nevada politics for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] On Twitter: @ralstonreports