How does Romney not win Nevada?

Mitt Romney should be winning Nevada in Secretariat fashion. But he's not.

He's popular in the conservative rural counties, for sure. And he has an edge in the Reno area.

But, if the election were held today, he'd get shellacked in Las Vegas and lose the state to President Barack Obama.

I find that scenario both likely and amazing.

If any city has a right to fear four more years of Barack Obama, it is Las Vegas.

First, the recession of the last three years has been nothing short of brutal for this city. Double-digit unemployment doesn't begin to describe the pain.

The MGM's massive City Center project limped to the finish line - one casino short - just as the economic storm hit. The Echelon and Fontainebleau projects didn't make it, leaving their carcasses on the Vegas skyline for all to see. So the same with a big regional mall adjacent to the Red Rock casino.

Las Vegas' private construction industry - once a mighty feature of the economy with cranes everywhere - dried up and blew away. The housing market collapsed. Every homeowner in Las Vegas lost value. No recovery in sight.

Then the ripple effect began. Consumer-driven businesses began to disappear.

As an example, take a ride down the once busy thoroughfare of Sahara Avenue. Strip mall after strip mall struggles for business. Empty car lots, closed restaurants, vacated big box stores.

Some parts of Sahara look like one of those fake towns erected at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s to show the effect of a nuclear bomb.

In a city of wild growth where once anyone could throw a dart at a business and thrive, Las Vegas has become a Darwinian retail jungle. Only the fittest survive.

To add to the city's misery, President Obama twice in three years stepped on the neck of the Las Vegas economy. Right after his election he complained that companies which received federal bailout money should not schedule events in Las Vegas or at the Super Bowl.

He said he was misunderstood.

Then later he repeated a variation of the slam saying: "When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas ..."

Of course, those statements didn't cause the depression in Las Vegas. But when you're already down on one knee as a community, who needs trash talk like that from the president. Is he friend or foe?

Onto that fertile stage steps Mitt Romney. Not only is he not Barack Obama, Romney knows business and the economic rules of success.

He's also a highly respected member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He's a Mormon in a state with a significant Mormon population.

How does he not win Las Vegas and, by extension, Nevada?

That's the question political "experts" have been trying to answer all year as polls routinely show that Romney is struggling.

It's the Hispanic vote, some say. It's the union dollars, others whisper. Changing demographics, they cry.

Hell, for all the witch doctor experts know, it may as well be the changing tides.

I know this: If Romney expects to win my home state, he better get here early and often to figure out why he's running so poorly. This is the hardest- hit state in the nation under the Obama presidency. Obama said he'd get us out of it. He didn't. To boot, he made fun of Las Vegas.

The sight of Obama's headlights on the horizon ought to make Las Vegans scatter like rabbits. Yet if the election were held today, I am telling you Romney gets his head handed to him. How does that happen?

If he can figure that out, maybe he'll find the key to winning other swing states and the presidency.

Sherman Frederick is a columnist for Stephens Media. His column appears Sunday in the Opinion section of the Review-Journal.