Nevada voters play crucial role: "the empowering of a changing demographic"

[DeepModem Mom]

San Francisco Chronicle: Nevada voters play crucial role
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
October 26, 2008

....With barely a week left in the long 2008 presidential race, a down-to-the-wire political shootout here underscores the issues, the changing landscape and the new clout of a handful of Intermountain West states in the presidential contest. Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico all went to President Bush in 2004 and were considered likely McCain camps earlier this year. But they are all leaning blue as the election approaches; only Nevada is still considered a toss-up, with recent polls showing Obama leading McCain there by just three percentage points....

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Nevada's changing voter profile tells the tale of the GOP presidential ticket's challenges: Democrats outnumber Republicans among registered voters by more than 111,000 , a yawning gap that could deliver Nevada's five electoral votes to Obama. Playing a major role in the shift is an army of new Latino voters who have helped push a 4-1 registration advantage by Democrats since the high-energy Nevada caucuses took place in January.

"What you are seeing is the second installment - California being the first - of the impact of the changing Latino vote, the empowering of a changing demographic," said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan group concerned with public policy and Latino issues. In 2008, more than at any time in history, "they're registering, voting and running candidates," Gonzalez said.

Simon Rosenberg, who heads NDN, a moderate Washington, D.C.-based Democratic advocacy group, said the shift reflects how "the Republican brand with Latinos has been severely degraded" by President Bush's leadership on the economy and the war. "And John McCain has not been able to distance himself from it."

But, he added, Democrats carefully laid the groundwork for gains when party leaders like Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker from San Francisco, "added Nevada to the early caucus states and put their national convention in Colorado." "In 2004, John Kerry didn't know the Southwest existed on the map," he said. "They spent no time and no money there."...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/26/MND913N1NC.DTL