Archive for the ‘Nevada’ Category

Voices of the West: Seems like there’s more Republicans in Nevada this time (VIDEO)

Friday, November 2, 2012 by:jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com (Joe Garofoli)
Comment
Comments

|
|

Sparks, NV – Nevada is one swing state that is still very much in play. Look at the polls. Both tickets have passed through there in recent days and will continue stopping by Reno and Vegas through Tuesday.

While we recently were catting around in the all-important Washoe County — home of Reno and Sparks — we met Jim Laudrisen. The Sparks resident is a 63-year-old retired janitor.

He’s an Obama supporter — like he was four years ago. But in the past few months, he’s discovered that a lot of his close pals are voting for Mitt Romney.

Democrats (and privately, some Republicans) talk about how powerful The Reid Machine is in getting out votes in Nevada. The Senate Majority Leader, backed by organized labor, is indeed formidable there.. And Reid’s pollster, Mark Mellman, just released a memo saying Obama is up six points there.

Mellman did accurately predict Reid’s 2010 Senate race. But that sounds ambitious. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment (12 percent) rates and number of foreclosures in the country. There is no deep well of support for Obama there like there is for Fightin’ Harry.

Just ask Jim Laudrisen. Here is yet another chapter of our vaunted series of Voices of the West video blogs, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hands Productions:

Voices of the West: Getting out Latino voters in Nevada (VIDEO)

Friday, October 19, 2012 by:jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com (Joe Garofoli)
Comment
Comments

|
|

Sparks, NV – As Mitt Romney’s campaign pulls its cash out of North Carolina — confident of a victory there with polls showing a 5-point lead — the attention of both candidates focuses tighter on the eight remaining swing states.

In Nevada, where President Obama is up 3 points, the Latino vote will be key — as we explained here. Latinos comprise 13 percent of the electorate there and 19 percent of Latinos are voting Republican, says the Latino Decisions poll.

Team Obama has upped its ground game in the all-important Reno/Sparks area. They’re canvassing churches, Latino markets, clubs where young people hang out — any place to turn up more voters.

Here’s one I met while in Sparks a while back. Naomi Bermudez Hopkins is a single mom who raised her kids — while going back to school to become an electrician. She’s never been active in politics before, but got upset by the endless drone of political TV ads there, some of which she felt were disparaging Obama.

As part of our Voices of the West series of video blogs, here courtesy of The San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hand Productions is our chat with Naomi:

Voices of the West: How unions keep Obama up in Nevada

Thursday, October 18, 2012 by:jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com (Joe Garofoli)
Comment
Comments

|
|

Reno – Democrats like to say that demographics — i.e., a booming Latino population — is going to push President Obama over the line in Nevada, where the RealClearPolitics.com average has him up by 3 points, even after Mitt Romney’s recent surge.

Demographics help, but demos don’t mean anything without ground troops. And as we told you in our story about swing state Nevada, Nevada’s union members — strong in Vegas, less so in Reno — have spent weeks going door-to-door and leafletting workplaces in support of Obama.

Over the past 18 months, the AFL-CIO has registered 450,000 new voters nationwide, including 10,000 in Nevada.

Spent some time canvassing door-to-door in some of Reno’s working class neighborhoods with Mickey Grizzle and Randy Groves, union letter-carriers. That was after we got kicked out of the energy company plant where they were leafletting — private property and all.

Here, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com’s Shaky Hand Productions video crew, are Mickey and Randy talking about how union canvassing has changed in Nevada: