January 17, 2008
Dissecting Nevada's Caucus Fracas
UPDATED.
U.S. District Judge James Mahan has ruled in favor of the Nevada Democratic Party in a dispute over the use of casinos along the Las Vegas strip as caucus sites in Saturday's presidential nominating contest. The ruling allows voting to be held at the casinos as planned.
Mahan determined that the Democratic Party had a right to set its own rules, and he said he did not want to set a precedent that could impact other caucuses held across the U.S. AP has details.
Today's decision will likely have a profound impact on Saturday's results in what is shaping up to be a very close three-way race among Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama (the GOP contenders are largely ignoring Nevada in favor of South Carolina).
The reasoning behind using casinos as caucus sites is to make participation more convenient for workers at the city's casinos, hotels and restaurants, who are largely backing Obama. But the sites were challenged by several individuals, as well as the Nevada State Teachers Union, who claimed that the casino environment creates a "preferred class of voters."
Several of the plaintiffs were Clinton supporters, who argued that the sites would give a "disproportionate allocation of delegates" to casino workers, to the disadvantage of voters in other precincts around the state. As many as 700 of the 10,000 delegates to the state's nomination convention could be selected at the casino sites.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal broke down the complicated case thusly: "The lawsuit claims the caucus structure violates the voters' right to 'one man, one vote' because delegates assigned during the at-large caucus will be based on attendance. Delegates at traditional caucuses will be based on the number of registered party members."
"The [Democratic] party blatantly intends to treat one group of party members more favorably than others," the teachers union's lawyer wrote in a brief. But in an analysis, the Las Vegas Sun's David Schwartz contends that the actual impact of these at-large sites is greatly exaggerated.
AP notes that "the rules were unanimously approved by the state Democratic party last March and ratified by the Democratic National Committee in August." Although Clinton has denied any ties to the lawsuit, Obama has pointed out that the challenge sprung to life two days after he was endorsed by the state's Culinary Workers Union. On Wednesday, the DNC petitioned [PDF] to join the suit on the side of the state party, which still supports keeping the sites open and their allocated number of delegates intact.
Former President Bill Clinton drew attention to the controversy on Wednesday when he was asked about the lawsuit and his wife's alleged ties to the plaintiffs. FOX News reports that Clinton got very testy in replying to a San Francisco reporter: "You have asked the question in an accusatory way, so I will ask you back, do you really believe that all the Democrats understood that they had agreed to give people who worked in the casino a vote worth five times as much as people who voted in their own precinct?"
Another major factor in the dispute: A large number of the voters who are expected to caucus at the casino sites are Latino. With the Democratic race already embroiled in debates over race this past week, all the candidates have been making concerted efforts to reach out to Nevada's sizable Latino population. However, Clinton's ties to the lawsuit via her backers could damage her support among Latino voters, not just in Nevada, but as the race moves to Feb. 5 states that also have large Latino populations.
Posted at 3:00 PM
Posted to:
Barack Obama, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, WH 2008
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