Speakers play up outlook for GOP

Clark County Republicans held their convention Saturday, drawing a record crowd for a day of pep talks about the party's prospects in November and disputes about what the party should stand for.

"We've got a problem," Clark County GOP Chairman Bernie Zadrowski told the crowd of more than 3,000 at The Orleans on Saturday morning. "Everybody is saying 2008 is going to be the Democrats' year. Are we going to let that happen? No!"

Nevada Democrats have carved out an ever-growing advantage over Republicans in statewide voter registration statistics in recent months. As of the end of February, Democrats had a registration edge of more than 40,000 voters over Republicans in a state that has traditionally been split down the middle.

But speakers at Saturday's convention pointed to the efforts of their counterparts across the aisle as evidence that all is far from lost for Republicans.

More than 10,000 people tried to attend the Clark County Democratic Convention on Feb. 23. But that event had to be stopped and the voting postponed when the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both believed they couldn't get a fair shake because so many people were turned away.

The divisions exposed there will hinder the Democrats, state Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, told the GOP crowd.

"Democrats tend to run a little bit more on emotion than on intellect, and that means they have a very hard time forgiving the other side of a primary," he said, to cheers.

Once Clinton or Obama wins the nomination, half the Democratic electorate will be "too angry to show up in November," Beers predicted. "But that's not all it will take. It will also take all the Mitt Romney and Ron Paul delegates to support John McCain for president." A few stray boos could be heard in the crowd of the main ballroom.

Romney got 51 percent of the vote in the Jan. 19 Republican caucuses, with Paul in second and McCain in third at 13 percent.

Gov. Jim Gibbons, the day's keynote speaker, also emphasized unity, saying, "I'm very pleased now to tell you that I'm 100 percent in support of our Republican nominee, John McCain, for president in 2008."

In an interview, Gibbons acknowledged that in his precinct caucus on Jan. 19, McCain hadn't gotten his vote.

"No, I did not vote for him," Gibbons said. "But he is the most qualified individual that I can support based on his military background, his leadership ability, his understanding of the United States and most importantly, he's a Westerner."

Gibbons has a marked disagreement with McCain on the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, of which McCain was the strongest proponent out of all the major presidential candidates.

"I disagree with him 100 percent on supporting Yucca Mountain. I will never support Yucca Mountain," Gibbons said. "But there have been a number of other officials in the White House the last 20 years who have never stopped it or impeded it. It is up to Nevada to stop it, and we are doing it."

Gibbons said he knows McCain well and last saw him during the meeting last month of the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C. "We had a long, sit-down talk at that point in time talking about issues important to not just governors but individual states," Gibbons said.

Yucca was not among those issues, he said. "I didn't bring up Yucca Mountain to him nor have I heard anybody bringing it up to anybody else," he said.

Prompted by an aide, Gibbons said he certainly would discuss the matter with McCain eventually.

"The issue is getting John McCain elected and then working with him to stop Yucca Mountain," he said.

A public health crisis in Clark County, where numerous health clinics have been found to be using unsanitary methods, has been partly blamed on Gibbons' elimination of 10 health inspector positions from last year's budget.

Gibbons said he was "so very disappointed and so very ashamed" of critics "taking politics over the life and health and welfare of a lot of people that were harmed. This is not something that is caused by the recent budget crisis. That's just a bunch of hooey." He said investigators have found that inspections have been lacking for many years preceding his tenure.

Gibbons also recently has faced rumors about his personal life; he has publicly acknowledged that his marriage is in trouble. He declined to comment on those matters when asked, saying, "It's just a private matter. No decision has been made yet. ... We're still in the process."

Saturday's crowd was seated in three ballrooms, one holding the main stage and two others showing live video of the proceedings to the overflow.

The attendees represented about 60 percent of the precinct delegates elected in January, a remarkable proportion. Most years it is less than 10 percent.

Besides the speeches, the convention featured the earnest if tedious debate over bylaws and platform planks that is a staple of party conventions. In the end, the platform was passed and officers were elected to the county party executive committee.

Gibbons wasn't the only politician Saturday to admit that McCain was his Mr. Right Now, not his Mr. Right Then.

"We need to get behind our candidate," Rep. Dean Heller told the convention. "I'll be the first to say John McCain was not my first choice but he is my first choice today."

Heller challenged the crowd to prove that "conventional wisdom today in Washington, D.C., is wrong. Conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., says we lose the presidency."

Heller got the biggest cheers of the day, a standing ovation, when he called for enforcing existing immigration law.

Sen. John Ensign noted that of 35 U.S. Senate seats up for election this year, 23 are Republican-held, the most ever for one party. Ensign, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has the task of helping those senators keep their seats.

"The Democrats are fired up, they're ready to go, the odds are against us," Ensign said. "That's exactly where I like to be."

He decried Democrats as "a party that says the war is lost, that those sacrifices made by our men and women over there, we can't win that." He didn't refer by name to his delegation partner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who drew controversy last year for using the word "lost."

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., sent a video message but wasn't present at Saturday's convention. According to his staff, Porter spent the weekend at fundraisers in Florida.

Standing in for McCain was Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general of Utah. He noted that Utah also went overwhelmingly for Romney, but reminded them that Romney, in his speech leaving the race, called for the party to come together to defeat the Democrats in the interest of national security.

Shurtleff repeatedly ridiculed the opposition for their personal characteristics. "Barack or Hillary -- my apologies to the Baracks or Hillarys in the audience, but even their names sound liberal," he said.

Referring to a Clinton ad that asks who is best suited to rise to a late-night crisis, Shurtleff said, "When Hillary gets the call at 3 a.m., the call is, 'Do you know where your husband is?'" And he pointedly referred to "Obama's fathers -- one was African, one was Indonesian."

Clark County was allowed to send up to 1,970 delegates to next month's state convention in Reno. Historically, the county's delegation has never been filled because there were never enough people willing to pay their way to be state delegates.

A record number of state delegates volunteered, 895, according to Zadrowski. Since that is less than the number allowed, they were all made delegates without an election.

The next biggest Clark County Republican Convention, in 2004, drew about 500 participants.

State Republican Chairwoman Sue Lowden told the gathering she has invited McCain to the April 26 state convention. But she got big cheers when she said she had also invited Paul.

"I welcome you to join our Republican Party, to stay a part of this engaging conversation which is why we're here," she said to the Paul supporters.

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.