Nevada Republicans are scrambling to make the state more relevant in the presidential nominating process, with state and national leaders this week conferring on how to arrange a caucus for the state and when to schedule it.

But confusion and disagreement abound as to what options the party has, whether an early GOP contest is a good idea and what effect it would have.

The national Democratic Party has scheduled a Jan. 19 presidential caucus in Nevada, the significance of which became clear last week, when nearly all of the Democratic candidates descended on Carson City for a first-in-the-nation candidates' forum that drew national attention.

"If the Democrats do this unabated, these Democratic campaigns are going to come in, spend money, put teams on the ground, and we run the risk of them building a comparable or even better (get-out-the-vote) operation," Reno-based Republican political consultant Pete Ernaut said Wednesday.

"That could change the dynamic of this state from red to blue in a hurry. ... This is too close of a state to allow something like that to happen without a response."

Nevada Republicans are scheduled to pick a presidential candidate on April 26, when regularly scheduled party precinct meetings are to be held. By that time, the nominee is expected to be a foregone conclusion, with Nevada going through the formality of electing its delegates to the national party convention, scheduled for Sept. 1, 2008, in Minneapolis.

Ernaut is pushing moving Nevada's contest up to mid-February, an idea he said he discussed with U.S. Sen. John Ensign a couple of weeks ago. Ernaut is coordinating a conference call scheduled for Friday to discuss the idea.

Those expected to be in on the call include Ernaut, Ensign, Nevada Republican Reps. Dean Heller and Jon Porter, Gov. Jim Gibbons, acting state Republican Chairman Paul Willis and Republican National Committee representatives.

Gibbons' chief of staff, Mike Dayton, said Tuesday that the Bush administration was encouraging Nevada to push up its caucus. But a White House spokesman denied that assertion Wednesday.

"That's not true," Blair Jones said. "It's the responsibility of the states to set their primary calendars." White House officials have had no input into the states' decisions on when to set their contests, he said.

Ernaut said he hopes to set a date for the Nevada contest that would be between Feb. 5 and Feb. 19.

The national party bylaws say states must hold their contests between Feb. 5 and July 28 or lose delegates to the convention. States holding contests before Feb. 5 would be penalized half of their delegates, according to the bylaws.

"We don't want to have it before Feb. 5 because the RNC would penalize us," Ernaut said. "So we can't have it before Feb. 5, but having it in April is worthless."

The question is whether having a contest after Feb. 5 would be any less worthless. Twenty states are tentatively scheduled to hold Republican nominating contests on or before Feb. 5, including such heavyweights as California and Texas, earning the date the nickname "Giga-Tuesday."

Ernaut said it was easy to imagine that the winner still would not be known after "Giga-Tuesday" and that Nevada would be "in the catbird seat" shortly afterward.

But national pundit Stuart Rothenberg, author of the Washington, D.C.-based Rothenberg Political Report newsletter, said that seemed very unlikely. A nominating contest in mid-February is likely to be about equal in relevance to one in late April, he said.

"Most people watching the process assume now that the nominees will be decided on or before Feb. 5," he said. "Nobody has a crystal ball. It could be that Iowa, New Hampshire and Super Tuesday fall out in such a way that we still don't know who the consensus candidate is. But right now, one year out, that doesn't look likely."

Caucuses in Iowa are scheduled for Jan. 21 for both parties, with a primary in New Hampshire following on Jan. 29. But that is not set in stone. Florida might try to move up its own primary, which New Hampshire has signaled it will respond to by moving even earlier.

The point for Nevada Republicans would be to get the Republican candidates to campaign in Nevada as the Democrats are starting to do, and as all of the candidates typically do in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The early contests in the two states have a history of boosting the states' profiles and local economies. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is among those who argue that such largely white, Northeastern states have a disproportionate voice in the nominating process.

Rothenberg said it will take more than a mid-February nominating caucus to get GOP candidates to spend much time campaigning in Nevada.

"The question is the extent to which an early test is going to get attention, and that's a function of when are the other early tests," he said. "If a smaller state moves up to Feb. 5, great, but now a lot of the big states also want to move up to Feb. 5," and candidates probably will focus their resources there.

"If you really want to be in the mix, you'll do what the Democrats did and put it in the early calendar," he said.

Willis, who is serving as state party chairman until the party can meet to replace the departed Paul Adams, said nothing had been decided yet, but he was not inclined to follow the Democrats' lead.

"I think the Democrat caucus is a gimmick and a scheme and a scam," he said. "It may bring some contenders and pretenders in here, but they're still soft on the issues. It's a lot of hype. If everyone wants to do a (Republican) caucus, then fine. I don't think myself that the Republicans should stoop to the gimmickry that the Democrats are doing."

Willis said Friday's conference call will settle many of the questions about how Nevada Republicans will proceed.

"Right now it's all in the negotiation stage," he said. "Nothing is set in concrete; we're just researching all the options."

Moving up Nevada's caucus, Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola said, "is in the works; that's all the details I have."

Porter spokesman Matt Leffingwell said, "At this point, Congressman Porter is just waiting to see what the consensus is, and he's happy to participate in the discussion."

Republican uber-consultant Sig Rogich said Republicans should be worrying about what's best for the party, not whether the other side thought of it first.

"At the end of the day, nobody's going to care who thought of the idea," he said. "They're just going to see in the papers who's coming here and what they have to say. What Harry Reid did for the Democrats is remarkably good, in terms of what it does for him, the West, Nevada and certainly the party.

"We're such a melting pot of diversity here in Nevada, I think it's the perfect place to have an early caucus," Rogich added. "If the Democrats are doing it, the Republicans have to keep pace."