Las Vegas Review-Journal Endorses Obama

Nevada to test Clinton’s Hispanic lead

By Edward Luce in Las Vegas

Published: January 17 2008 18:17 | Last updated: January 17 2008 18:17

“Si, se puede [Yes, we can],” chants Barack Obama. “La voz de los que no tienen voz [The voice of the voiceless],” says a voiceover for Hillary Clinton on a Spanish language television advertisement.

On Saturday the state of Nevada will provide the first real test of Mrs Clinton’s claim to have a clear lead over her rivals among Hispanic voters in the race for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.

Accounting for at least a fifth of Nevada’s population – and its fastest growing segment – Hispanics have polled in favour of Mrs Clinton nationally by 20-30 percentage point margins.

But in Nevada, where up to 100,000 people are expected to attend tomorrow’s caucuses, Hispanic loyalties towards her may be counteracted by a series of strong union endorsements for Mr Obama.

Hispanics account for nearly half of the powerful Culinary Workers’ Union, whose 60,000 members work in Las Vegas’s casinos and hotels and which endorsed Mr Obama last week.

Because caucuses are open events in which participants choose their preference in full view of others, the Clinton camp fears the union will be able to impose discipline on members’ choices.

That concern has been deepened by the fact that the Nevada Democratic party has allowed nine caucus events to take place inside the Las Vegas casinos in order to facilitate participation.

The caucuses, which last for at least an hour, begin at 11am on Saturday – a time when many of the casino employees will be at work. Those from other professions do not share the convenience of being able to vote at their workplace. The teachers’ union has petitioned a Nevada court to disallow the holding of caucuses inside casinos.

Many are suspicious that the teachers’ union, which leans towards Mrs Clinton, only filed its petition last week, 10 months after the caucus sites were made public but just one day after the culinary workers chose to back Mr Obama rather than the former First Lady.

On Wednesday Bill Clinton, who was speaking on behalf of his wife at an event in San Francisco, angrily rejected claims that the petition originated in the Clinton camp. “We had nothing to do with that lawsuit – I read about it in the newspaper,” he said.

Opinion polls suggest that the outcome in Nevada may be as subject to last-minute change as the vote in New Hampshire last week, in which Mrs Clinton recorded a surprise victory.

The latest polls show a tight race between the two leading contenders and John Edwards, who hopes to draw on the national endorsements of 28,000 local union members, including steelworkers.

Mr Obama is polling with significant leads in South Carolina, which holds its primary vote on January 26. A win there will give him momentum for the critically important Super Tuesday on February 5, when 22 states vote. The Clinton camp desperately needs to counteract this with a win on Saturday.

“A defeat for Mrs Clinton in Nevada and then in South Carolina would begin to stack the cards against her going into Super Tuesday,” says a Democratic party official. “You could see the whole Obamamania thing take off again.”

Many believe that Mrs Clinton boosted her chances on Tuesday night in a televised debate in which she hammered home a detailed plan to assist people facing the prospect of foreclosure on their homes. Nevada is the state worst affected in the nation by the subprime mortgage crisis.

However, Mr Obama has recalibrated his campaign stump speech to provide a greater focus on economic issues, including healthcare, Social Security and the housing crisis. He also reminds his audiences of Mrs Clinton’s “closed door” meetings that led to the failed 1993 “Hillarycare” health plan, and promises to avoid that route.

“Here’s the thing,” he said on Wednesday to a crowd of likely caucus-goers in Henderson City, Nevada. “I promise to do it all on C-Span [public access television].”

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, is battling a familiar refrain in her campaign to hold Nevada – a state her husband won in both the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, but which George W. Bush also won twice.

In an editorial endorsing Mr Obama this week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s widest circulation newspaper, wrote: “Imagine Senator Clinton and ‘co-president’ Bill Clinton invited on to a This is your Life show where they are joined by Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky.”

However, the Clinton camp took consolation from the endorsement it received from El Mundo, Nevada’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper.

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