Republican presidential candidates are leaving behind the bright lights of Las Vegas in the wake of the first-in-the West caucuses, but Nevada will retain the political limelight as a major cog in President Obama’s path to re-election.
Obama’s grip on the White House will run through the Silver State where widespread home foreclosures and devastating unemployment have dimmed the specter of a once-booming tourist haven.
Yet, Obama’s campaign team sees Nevada as Exhibit A in their case for government intervention, offering a sharp contrast to the Republican mantra of limited Washington inference in markets that looked foolproof during boon times but less so during the state’s tough slog to economic recovery.
Obama also faces significant headwinds in Nevada, a state he carried by 12 percentage points in 2008. Most glaringly, his approval rating has plummeted to roughly 40 percent — all the more alarming for Democrats considering voters there have picked the presidential winner in every election since 1976.
“I’m not crazy about the Republicans, but I couldn’t vote for Obama,” said Liddy Barnes, a retail worker from Henderson. “If he hasn’t turned things around by now, why should I have any confidence that he will later?”
Still, Barnes said she’s concerned Republicans are espousing a “somewhat cold message” in which individuals hard-hit by the recession would be left to “fend for themselves.”
One such message came from Republican front-runner Mitt Romney who said the government should “not try and stop the foreclosure process, let it run its course and hit the bottom.” Democrats are betting that philosophy won’t resonate in a state that maintains a more centrist character than other early-voting states.
Previewing his message to Nevadans, Obama said recently, “It is wrong for anyone to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom. I refuse to accept that, and so do the American people.”
Although Obama maintains favorable ratings among blacks and Hispanics — one in four Silver State residents are Hispanic — white voters and a large swath of independents have soured on his presidency.
Obama won nearly eight in 10 Hispanic voters in Nevada in 2008, but Republicans see cracks in that support, pointing to soaring unemployment and the recent election of Hispanic Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.
Nevada polls show Obama running even with Romney in a state where pockets of Mormon voters could tilt the election in the favor of the former Massachusetts governor.
But some analysts say Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, needs to recalibrate his message to beat Obama in Nevada. Democrats now enjoy an edge of roughly 100,000 more registered voters than Republicans in Nevada, but conservatives contend that many of those are disillusioned and will either switch parties this time around or not vote at all.
“The Republicans need to come up with something other than ‘cut taxes and Obama’s a failure,'” said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada at Reno. “We tried all that in Nevada. If all that’s going to work, why is Nevada the worst-off state in the nation?”
