Election energizes club in Nye County

PAHRUMP - The Old Farts Club in this land of liberty 60 miles west of Las Vegas meets every Friday at 7 a.m. for breakfast at the Pahrump Nugget to talk politics over plates of scrambled eggs, pork sausage and spicy language.

In recent weeks, the all-male gatherings have had a couple of frequent guests: Danny Tarkanian and Kiran Hill. They are two of nine Republicans competing in the June 12 primary for Nevada's new congressional district, a sprawling expanse that covers nearly half the state at 51,226 square miles.

Ron Deanne, retired from the Navy and a self-described "conservative old fart," said the early morning discussions often include passionate debate as the group of 60 members trade salty jabs.

"We don't allow women, not because we don't like 'em, but because of our language," said Deanne who volunteered he's a Tarkanian supporter after getting to know him .

Ken Searles, a retired pharmacist and member of the club, likes Tarkanian, but is leaning toward Hill who, like him, supports libertarian-minded GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul.

"From a constitutional conservative point of view, Kiran Hill is the man," Searles said.

Pahrump is Paul Country, a place where folks can sometimes be seen wearing guns on their hips and carrying copies of the U.S. Constitution in their pockets, handy for making a point.

Here, the strength of a candidate's support for gun rights, states' rights and the Bill of Rights as well as freedom from too many taxes and too much government will sway the GOP electorate. Nye County has 10,652 of the district's 89,857 registered Republicans.

The same could be said for much of the rest of the 4th Congressional District, which incorporates GOP-leaning Nye, White Pine, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties as well as part of Lyon County. It also includes Democratic-leaning Mineral County and urban North Las Vegas in Clark County.

For three decades, these half-dozen sparsely populated rural counties where cactus, critters and coyotes far out­number people have been represented by a Northern Nevadan congressman whose district covered all but one of the state's 17 counties and included a bit of Clark County too.

Redistricting last year and the state's population growth to 2.7 million residents changed that. Nevada won a fourth House seat, which means rural counties in the lower half of the state will get their own representative in Washington starting in 2013 when the next Congress convenes.

Searles and Deanne say the chance to have a stronger conservative voice in Congress with the 2012 election has generated excitement in Pahrump, a hotbed of activism. Voter turnout here could be high compared to the rest of Nevada. That's why the Republican candidates have been coming around a lot - including attending breakfasts, lunches, dinners and weekly meetings full of Paul supporters.

Last week, the GOP contenders had a lively debate at an RV resort, a first for the county.

"We think that by having a close relation­ship with your representative, it will make it easier to hold their feet to the fire once they get to Washington," Searles said, adding most politicians say one thing and do another. "We want less government. We're for individual liberty and individual responsibility."

THE STRATEGIES

As early voting began Saturday, Tarkanian remained the man to beat because of his high name recognition and previous three campaigns for public office. Although he failed to win the GOP primary in the U.S. Senate race in 2010, his campaign helped the Las Vegas businessman build a base of support that he hopes will carry him to victory in the most competitive primary on the June 12 ballot.

Most of the vote will still come from populous Clark County, where Tarkanian is well known and 71,463 of the district's Republicans live, or eight out of every 10 registered GOP voters.

Tarkanian's main GOP competitors are state Sen. Barbara Cegavske of Las Vegas, businessman Dan Schwartz, Gulf War veteran Ken Wegner and Hill, a political newcomer like Schwartz.

Voter turnout is expected to be 15 percent to 20 percent of the GOP electorate, which means the victor among the splintered Republican field could win with as few as 7,000 to 8,000 votes.

"It's too early to tell how this thing is going to break," said Billy Rogers, a veteran political operative working with Cegavske. He believes the smaller pool of primary voters will decide late. "It's all about identifying your voters and getting them out. I think Barbara will finish strong and win."

Rogers is carefully targeting Republicans in a ground game that includes knocking on more than 10,000 doors to promote Cegavske. The better-funded Tarkanian and Schwartz are engaged in a costly air war with competing TV commercials, something the state senator can't afford.

Tarkanian has spent at least $100,000 on his TV campaign with more to come, according to a GOP insider who tracks ad buys. The source said Schwartz has spent at least $250,000 so far, which includes more than $200,000 he loaned his campaign.

The campaigns were holding their endgame strategies close, but Tarkanian's wife, Amy, said he's ready to unleash ads and mailers to hit any competitor that gets too close.

"If it looks like someone's on your tail, you do something," she said.

THE CANDIDATES

Tarkanian argues he's the man with the solutions for what ails Southern Nevada and the state, including record un­employment and home foreclosures. He's pushing proposals to offer homeowners a "credit holiday" so they can get new home loans despite bad credit, for example. And he's courting tea party conservatives who have helped him gain votes in his previous campaigns.

He also is promoting the idea of developing Yucca Mountain into a nuclear reprocessing facility, or some sort of military or data storage operation to create jobs. It's a popular idea in the rural counties hit hard by the economic recession and willing to even accept the nation's nuclear waste, despite widespread opposition in Clark County and among nearly every elected official in the state.

"I will fight for you," Tarkanian said Tuesday night at the end of a debate in North Las Vegas at Aliante Station, saying he has the best chance to win the seat in the Nov. 6 election too.

Cegavske made the same case. She noted she has beaten her opponents every time although her state Senate district leans Democratic. She's also been at the opposite ends of key tax votes with Nevada Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, the only Democrat in the race. He faces no primary.

Cegavske's running on her record in the Nevada Legislature. She voted against record tax packages in 2003 and 2009 and in 2011 voted no on extending $620 million in taxes, although GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval and other Republicans approved the extra funding to balance the budget.

"I'm the only candidate on the stage who's a proven conservative," Cegavske said Tuesday at the debate in North Las Vegas. "As a state senator, I've made the tough votes."

Schwartz, who moved to Nevada last year, is promoting his success as an international businessman who knows how to create jobs and rebuild the economy. He said it's time to change the way business is done in Washington to trim the size of government, cut taxes and spending.

"I believe we have a culture that needs to change in Washington," Schwartz said at the Aliante debate. "I can bring that culture to Washington."

Wegner is appealing mostly to his core military supporters, who backed him three times when he was the GOP nominee and lost to Democratic U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. He wants to close U.S. military bases in Europe to save money and bring American troops home. He also refuses to take "dirty" lobbyist money and promised to serve only two terms.

"It's time we put an American in office that's just going to do the right thing and leave," he said.

The other four Republicans in the race - Sid Zeller, Mike Delarosa, Diana Ander­son and Robert X. Leeds - haven't made much of an impression .

The wild card in the race is Hill, a virtual unknown who has come on strong in the past month.

Hill, a former Marine who has worked with the State Department on security in Iraq and elsewhere, is reaching out to members of the tea party movement and like-minded Paul backers, particularly in Pahrump where his campaign posters are attached to Paul's signs.

The Texas congressman won Nye County in the Feb. 4 GOP presidential caucuses while presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney swept the rest of Nevada.

CAMPAIGN STOPS

At a debate Wednesday in Pahrump, Hill criticized Tarkanian for missing the last face-off of four debates among the GOP contenders. Hill accused Tarkanian of skipping the event because he didn't want to face tough questions from the libertarian crowd that favored Hill.

"They're a very involved citizenry and they didn't like that he didn't show," Hill said after the debate.

Tarkanian missed the Pahrump debate because he was in Washington, D.C., speaking to a Latino group and meeting with fundraisers and others who might help him in a general election campaign. His wife, Amy, told the crowd the debate was scheduled too late for him to change his plans.

Still, such slights could cost Tarkanian precious votes in a hotly fought contest.

A straw poll taken at the Pahrump debate showed Hill on top with 61 percent of the 85 ballots cast. Tarkanian was second with 15 percent, followed by Cegavske at 12 percent, Wegner at 7 percent, and Schwartz and Sid Zeller at about 2 percent each.

Tarkanian won a straw poll taken at the North Las Vegas debate among 139 audience members who voted. Tarkanian got 33 percent followed by Hill with 25 percent, Wegner 22 percent, Cegavske 13 percent and Schwartz 3 percent. Another 4 percent wrote in candidates.

But straw polls of activists and campaign backers at debates can't predict how well the Republicans will do in the primary.

Tarkanian's supporters have been the most aggressive in walking the district and calling voters. And Tarkanian has rarely missed a GOP meeting, Lincoln Day dinner or parade in any of the counties he would represent if he won.

On May 19, several of the GOP candidates, including Tarkanian, with his wife and their children, attended the Armed Forces Day Parade in Hawthorne, the seat of Mineral County.

Horsford also was at the parade, a must-stop event for politicians. That evening, he attended a Democratic Party dinner in Lyon County with former Nevada Assembly Speaker Joe Dini. Half the room was filled with Republicans, according to Horsford's campaign manager Geoff Mackler.

While Republicans have been battling for votes, Horsford has had the luxury of traveling to every county in the district to get to know rural residents who might see him as a city slicker. He even entered the eye of the current political storm, Nye County, to attend the Democratic Party Convention on April 14. The county includes more than 7,700 Democrats, votes he'll need come November.

"Several Republican local elected (officials) even showed up to get to know Steven," Mackler said.

Members of the Old Farts Club weren't among the welcomers.

"Who?" Searles said when asked whether he knew Horsford. "I have never met him and don't know him as far as I know. But I pretty much just hang out with Republicans."

Contact Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Follow @lmyerslvrj on Twitter.