Ignoring the script

One thing I like about Nevada is it often doesn't follow the crowd.

Nevada was the first state to legalize casino gambling, the trailblazer in liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, and the lone wolf in allowing brothels to operate in its rural communities. Nevada turned atomic testing into a tourist attraction, and permitted organized crime bosses to become honored civic leaders. Interest in supposed UFO activity at the secret Area 51 air base prompted officials to name State Route 375 the "Extraterrestrial Highway."

This is a state likely to zig when everyone else zags.

In more recent years, with the massive influx of residents from other states, Nevada seemed to have lost some of its iconoclastic energy. Economic opportunities such as legalizing gay marriage have been rejected by a more traditionally minded population. But Tuesday's election results reflect, at least in part, Nevada's reluctance to jump on bandwagons.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decisive victory over Republican challenger Sharron Angle can be analyzed many different ways. But it's clear that Nevadans weren't ready to throw out their most valuable political commodity simply because Sarah Palin told them to.

The tea party movement, wildly successful in electing Republicans in some other states, made little headway in Nevada. All of Nevada's incumbent constitutional officers below the governor were re-elected -- four Democrats and one Republican. Both houses of the Nevada Legislature maintained Democratic majorities. And while the new governor, Brian Sandoval, is a Republican, he is not of the tea party persuasion.

The only result that reflected the national trend was in the 3rd Congressional District, where Republican Joe Heck oh-so-narrowly defeated incumbent Democrat Dina Titus. By all reasonable accounts, Titus did a respectable job in her first term, but her support for the president's major initiatives put her in a precarious position.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that Nevada possesses a libertarian mind-set ripe for a tea party takeover. But Nevada is more appropriately described as independent than libertarian. You can say a lot of things about Nevada -- some of them not very nice -- but the state should take pride in the fact that it is instinctively skeptical of outside trends and interests.

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For years, the hardrock mining industry has had no bigger or more effective advocate in Washington than Harry Reid. Reid has fended off many attempts to increase taxation and regulation of mining, which still operates under laws passed in the 19th century.

For this reason, the Elko Daily Free Press, an otherwise conservative voice, endorsed Reid's re-election, writing that Reid "is the only candidate who can assure that any reform of the 1872 Mining Law will be reasonable and not result in driving away the very industry that is the lifeblood of northeastern Nevada."

The Free Press acknowledged that some readers would be "shocked and dismayed" that it was not supporting the conservative Senate candidate. But according to the paper, "Reid's value to the many communities that depend on a fair revision of the mining law is the overriding factor in this Senate race. Anyone who makes a living from the mines -- directly or indirectly -- needs Harry Reid to fight on their side."

Alas, voters in Nevada's mining country ignored the Free Press' pragmatic perspective. Reid got 18 percent of the vote in Eureka County, 22 percent in White Pine County, 25 percent in Elko County, 26 percent in Lander County, 32 percent in Humboldt County and 37 percent in Nye County. I guess the Nevada mining industry's average salary of $70,000 is taken for granted these days. I don't know if Reid is the vindictive type, but if his usual enthusiasm for protecting mining wanes a bit over the next six years, it would be difficult to blame him.

To their credit, the voters of Mineral County -- home of the Hawthorne Army Depot -- are not such hypocrites. Reid won Mineral County with 45 percent of the vote, a case of people recognizing the person primarily responsible for keeping their No. 1 employer in operation.

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The results of Tuesday's midterm elections suggest that gridlock will be the buzz word in national politics for at least the next two years. The Republicans now control the House, and the Democrats still control the White House and Senate, so neither party has clear sailing to advance its agenda. It's possible, then, that intransigence on either side could mean nothing of note will get done until the political winds change direction once again, as they inevitably will.

That's how things look right now. But I don't think it's how they're going to play out. This nation has a long and storied history of compromise, starting with the founders, who had to compromise greatly to reach consensus on many of the building blocks of the republic. The political challenges in Washington today seem immense, but we have faced down far greater trials in the past.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is the Review-Journal's director of community publications. His column appears Friday.