Not satisfied with the Nevada Democratic Party's attempts to placate them, online activists say they won't rest until the party's partnership with Fox News is severed.

The state party and the cable channel have agreed to co-sponsor a debate between Democratic presidential candidates scheduled in Reno in August. But the liberal "net-roots" have cried foul and reject the party's attempt to offer a compromise.

The activists' protest will continue "as long as Fox is involved," said Adam Green, spokesman for MoveOn.org Civic Action.

Partly because of Fox's sponsorship, one of the top-tier Democratic candidates, former Sen. John Edwards, announced earlier this week that he wouldn't attend. Green called on the other Democratic candidates to follow Edwards' lead.

"There should be no Fox debate, period," he said. "Other presidential candidates should definitely stand behind that principle."

The continuing controversy underscores the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party that MoveOn and its allies see themselves as waging, a battle that was highlighted last year when Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont won the Democratic primary over Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Lamont accused Lieberman of betraying Democratic ideals by supporting the Iraq war, and he became a cause celebre for online activists across the nation. However, he lost to Lieberman when the senator ran as an independent in the November general election.

Now similar divisions are being exposed in Nevada, with a national spotlight trained on the state because of its new status as host to the second-in-the-nation Democratic presidential contest, scheduled for Jan. 19.

The party says it is taking the activists seriously.

"They expressed concerns to us, and we tried to address them," state party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said. "We're trying, whether or not they accept the specific things we've done."

Searer said ditching Fox wasn't being considered.

"We have no intent to sever that relationship at this point," she said.

The party's stance is that working with Fox News is a way to reach potential new voters, while the activists contend that Fox News is a right-wing organ that shouldn't be treated as a legitimate news operation.

The party's compromise offer involved making space on the debate panel for an unspecified "local progressive voice" and allowing the debate to be simultaneously Webcast for those who didn't want to watch Fox News.

But MoveOn on Thursday called that a "fake compromise."

State Democratic Chairman Tom Collins, Green said, "did not address the main point, which is that the Democratic Party should not be presenting Fox as a legitimate source of news. They're part of the right-wing smear machine."

The Web site to which the state party had offered the simulcast rejected the idea. PoliticsTV.com CEO Dan Manatt said in a statement that Fox's conditions for the Webcast were "egregiously unfair and unbalanced."

Air America Radio President Mark Green said the network wasn't interested in serving on the debate panel. "Fox has said that it would consider having one AAR person on a panel with three Fox people," he said. "I would be interested in co-sponsoring a debate among the Democrats running for president, but not in a way that AAR would be outweighed as tokens in a largely Fox line-up."

The Carson City Democratic committee passed a resolution opposing the Fox partnership. On the other hand, the chairs of seven other county parties, including Clark County Democratic Chairwoman Liz Foley and several state party executive board members, signed a letter supporting the debate.

Also siding with the state party have been the state's major labor unions. Last week, the Nevada AFL-CIO, the Culinary Workers Union and the Professional Fire Fighters of Nevada issued statements supporting the debate on Fox News.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, once the darling of online liberals, also continues to support the state party's partnership with Fox, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said. Dean is no fan of Fox News, she said, but "it does provide an unfiltered opportunity for people to hear from our candidates. As Governor Dean has said, the focus of this discussion really should be reaching people."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was the one who urged the party to make changes in the debate format, but he still believes a compromise can be reached and getting rid of Fox entirely won't be necessary, his spokesman, Jon Summers, said Thursday.

"Senator Reid shares some of the concerns that have been raised about Fox News. That's why he spoke to the party and asked them to look at the parameters of the debate and see what kind of compromise can be forged," Summers said.

One online voice who has criticized the Nevada Democrats is Hugh Jackson, the blogger behind the Las Vegas Gleaner political Web site. He said the uprising over the debate, which the party apparently didn't anticipate, was important in showing leaders like Reid what the grass roots thought.

"People like Harry Reid and Tom Collins probably are not in touch with rank and file Democrats, who have been pretty mad about the lack of spine in the party for about 20 years," he said. "The Democratic Party has been rolling over for Republicans for ages."