Regional issues set tone of elections
Stance on Yucca may win Nev. vote
LAS VEGAS - Tori, a 37-year-old Las Vegas stripper, is an unlikely person to set national energy policy.
But as a voter in Nevada's Democratic presidential caucuses on Saturday, that's just what she'll help to do when she chooses which candidate to support. The most important issue for her is the US Department of Energy's plan to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, a ridge line about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Senator Hillary Clinton of New York "says she is against it," says Tori, who declines to give her last name, citing her day job working with burn victims at a clinic. "But before she has my vote, I want to know if she means it."
Yucca Mountain is a reminder that local issues in early caucus and primary states might play an outsized role in setting national - and, in Nevada's case, international - policy. Iowa voters extracted presidential pledges on ethanol subsidies. Now most Nevada Democrats require candidates to oppose the Yucca Mountain plan - as all three leading contenders have. Those Vegas vows might be hard to break, even as concerns about global warming have thawed some environmentalists' opposition to nuclear energy.
"There is this ant-nuclear movement here that has international impact far beyond Nevada," said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "Yucca is our ethanol. You have to come here and say you're against it, even if you were for it at one point."
With Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois splitting the spoils in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two are now fighting for Nevada's 33 delegates - three more than in New Hampshire - and the media coverage that comes with being the front-runner. Party officials expect 37,000 to 45,000 Democrats to caucus at 529 polling stations across the state, including nine on the Las Vegas Strip.
Democratic leaders gave Nevada a starring role in vetting the presidential contenders for a reason: Inserting it after Iowa and New Hampshire allows candidates to address Latino issues in a Western state that has a 20 percent Hispanic population - and one that Democrats lost in the 2004 election. Previously, Nevada's caucuses were held later in the campaign schedule and were held at the county level, not in precincts.
The contest also provides the candidates a timely opportunity to talk about their economic plans - Nevada, one of the fastest-growing states, is also among the hardest hit by the housing recession - and to discuss labor issues such as healthcare benefits and wages.
The showdown between Obama and Clinton "really puts Nevada on the political map as it never has been before," says Jill Derby, the state's Democratic Party chairwoman. "Whoever ends up in the White House is going to know something about the West, and that includes Yucca."
Yucca Mountain has been studied since 1978 as a place to house spent nuclear fuel from the nation's 104 operating reactors. The US government has invested $11 billion since 1983 on the site, which was supposed to start accepting waste in 1998.
Technical, legal, and budget problems have delayed the opening until 2017 at the earliest, the Energy Department has said, though many obstacles remain.
Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all oppose using Yucca Mountain as a waste depository, though in 2000, Edwards voted the other way. Obama, whose state has the largest nuclear energy network in the country, has said nuclear power should remain an option.
Clinton told an environmental magazine in August that she is "agnostic" about nuclear energy, while Edwards flatly opposes its expansion. 