GOP Nevada caucus

Nevada caucus calamity worries GOP

The last two Republican caucuses didn't go so well in Nevada. The next one could be rocky, too. 

By Elena Schneider

Nevada Republican party staffers have been hosting caucus training sessions for months. Republican campaign volunteers have been knocking on doors and calling voters since last summer. The candidates themselves have been collecting endorsements and holding events across the state since last spring.

Yet on the eve of Tuesday evening’s GOP caucus, no one has a firm sense of who’s winning here. And worse, there’s an undercurrent of nervousness about the prospect of a caucus calamity.

"It’s true, the smartest people just don’t know what’s going to happen here,” said Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant who is unaffiliated with a presidential campaign. “Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. Nevada loves to be independent, but that can also get in the way of being organized and coalesced around an important event, so it doesn’t surprise me at all."

Republican campaigns and state operatives point to a number of factors creating the cloud of confusion: a cash-poor state party in disarray, a public unaccustomed to the caucus process and a state that’s notoriously difficult to poll. Nevada doesn’t have a lot of experience running caucuses – the state picked up its first-in-the-West status in 2008, but it has yet to run smoothly and some campaigns are bracing for possible chaos again.

“I think all campaigns have some concerns. The caucus process is messy and there will inevitably be problems,” said a Republican presidential operative working in Nevada who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But the RNC is helping, and I think the state and county parties are much better organized than they have been previously. [But] I don’t think anyone thinks this will go off without some problems at some level. It is the nature of a caucus, but we all expect this to go more smoothly than it has previously.”

The Nevada GOP hasn’t exactly instilled confidence in its ability to execute: Several presidential campaigns confirmed that the state party kept no complete list of the 2012 caucus-goers, forcing campaigns to start from scratch in identifying potential voters.

“We understand that there’s not a statewide list from 2012, and really, we’re having to build out through our own efforts and grassroots,” said Robert Uithoven, a Nevada consultant who’s working for Ted Cruz in the state.

The GOP state party chairman did not return requests for comment.

Despite concerns about the smooth functioning of the caucuses, the Republican campaigns are reluctant to go public with any criticism for fear of alienating local officials and voters.

“I think you could make a legitimate claim, if you were the state party that it’s the county party’s responsibility, but at the county, you could say it’s the state responsibility,” said a Republican consultant working with a presidential campaign in the state. “So when it’s no one’s responsibility, it doesn’t get done.”

The state GOP is only beginning to regain its footing after a period of turmoil. In 2008, grassroots conservatives supporting Ron Paul captured the reins; they overran the state Republican convention, shouting down party officials and forcing the convention chairman to delay selection of national delegates. In 2012, there were more complications: It took state officials three days to release a final tally on votes. At the state convention, Paul backers revolted again, refusing to vote for Romney, even though he had handily won the caucus.

“There’s always a potential for things to be chaotic,” said Nick Phillips, the former political director of the Clark County GOP. “If we had a party that was up advertising and up on TV, telling people how to caucus, then we might not have as many problems and might see more turnout, but that’s not happening.”

In an effort to control rogue factions in the party, the state legislature considered a bill last year that would make it a primary contest, instead of a caucus, but it failed to reach the floor for a vote.

Turnout is another wild card. In 2012, only 33,000 voted, about eight percent of Republican voters in the state. But Jimmy Stracner, who works for Ben Carson in the state, said he “expects it to be higher than in 2012, and possibly more than in 2008.”

“We tracked a big surge of Republican registrations in the last two days before the registration deadline for the GOP caucuses on Feb. 13,” said Jack St. Martin, president of Engage Nevada, a non-partisan voter registration group.

But some operatives are doubtful turnout will increase by much at all. In some rural areas in the northern part of the state, caucus-goers may have to drive as far as several hours to reach their polling place. Mitt Romney’s absence from the ballot might also have an effect – he significantly drove up participation among Mormon voters, a small yet politically active percentage of the population. Mormons made up roughly a quarter of caucus voters, according to 2012 entrance polls.

The campaigns have their own issues to deal with in the immediate run-up -- they have just two days to reset after the hard-fought South Carolina primary. The caucuses, usually held all day on a Saturday, will be Tuesday evening this year.

Hanging over the entire event is the pervasive fear that Nevada may lose its early state status after back-to-back debacles and low turnout in previous cycles.

“If we can’t boost our turnout more than we did in 2008 and 2012, then we’re at a serious risk of losing our early state status,” said Uithoven. “Selfishly, I hope we can have a high enough turnout so we can maintain our spot in the calendar because there’s a lot of speculation that we’re going to lose it.”