Anger over nuclear-waste site might sway votes in Nevada
LAS VEGAS -- In a state populated by people as different as showgirls, Mormons, cowboys, and retirees, one issue unites virtually all Nevadans: Yucca Mountain.
Nobody wants it to be a storage facility for radioactive waste.
"Would you want it in your backyard?" asked Maxine Ernst, 79, as she waited to cast an early vote at a local mall. "I don't want a toxic dump," added Louise Boyd, 56, a hotel inspector.
The question of where to put the nation's nuclear waste doesn't come up outside the Silver State, which got saddled with the task after a selection process spanning more than 20 years ended in 2002. But John F. Kerry's campaign hopes the highly emotional local issue could swing critical votes their way. Bush won Nevada in 2000 by 22,000 votes but signed a resolution two years later to put the nuclear waste at Yucca, a site about 100 miles from Las Vegas.
Yucca is one of several local issues in battleground states that could prove decisive. In Florida, for example, a small number of Cuban-Americans are upset about the administration's new, tightened restrictions on family travel to Cuba, and polls show Bush has lost some support among the Cuban-American community.
In Wisconsin, dairy issues may move some farmers. Democrats are escorting Mary the Marathon Cow, a 30-foot inflatable bovine, to taunt Bush on his campaign swings there. The Kerry campaign in the Badger State charges that Bush failed to fight for the extension of the Milk Income Loss Contract program, which provides support to dairy farms.
Bush's campaign, driven more by broader themes, such as terrorism and conservative cultural matters, may weather the localized attacks. The president, for example, still enjoys overwhelming support among Cuban-Americans, who tend to vote Republican, and his antitax message is popular in Nevada. In a year when a small number of votes could swing a state, the Kerry campaign and its sympathizers are hitting the local issues hard.
"Yucca is part of a whole number of ways George Bush has not been good to the State of Nevada," said Anne Sheridan, the Kerry campaign's Nevada director. Kerry, on visits here this month and in August, called the Bush administration's position on nuclear waste "a symbol of the recklessness and arrogance with which they are willing to proceed with respect to the safety issues and concerns of the American people." Kerry has not proposed an alternate site, saying he would have a blue-ribbon panel study the matter.
Republicans counter that Kerry's record is inconsistent about Yucca and say that Nevada, a state with solid economic growth and a strong tradition of voting for Republican presidential candidates, is Bush country. Still, the scheduled appearance here Monday of Vice President Dick Cheney in Reno indicates the GOP campaign is not secure about its chances here.
"We feel good about where we are in the race right now," but "We're not taking anything for granted," said Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign in Nevada.
Former President Bill Clinton, the only Democrat in the last 40 years to take Nevada in the presidential campaign, also rallied voters in Las Vegas yesterday, a sign that Democrats believe they can win an upset here. Recent polls indicate Bush in the lead, but most of the poll results have been within the statistical margin or error.
The poll numbers represent an ironic turnabout in political power for the state. Nevada ended up receiving the Yucca dump in part because it was a state with a small congressional delegation, fighting such other dump candidates as Washington, Texas, New Hampshire, Louisiana, and North Carolina. New Hampshire used its power as the first primary state to be spared from the task. Other states benefited from having congressmen as leaders of the House or of key committees.
Now, Nevada finds itself wooed ardently for its five electoral votes. Kerry has visited the state 11 times; Bush four times. Monday will be Cheney's sixth visit here. Jon Ralston, a political analyst who hosts a television show called "Face to Face," said he has been stunned this year to score on-air interviews with Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman and Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state under Clinton. "That would not happen unless they cared," he said.
Democrats and Bush critics are seizing on comments Bush made in a 2000 letter to Governor Kenny Guinn that he would "veto legislation that would provide for the temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain," a statement some took to mean Bush would spare the state from being the nation's central nuclear dump.
A Moveon.org ad in August accused Bush of breaking his promise on Yucca, a sentiment echoed by some voters here, though Bush did not explicitly pledge he would stop Yucca if "best science" supported it. A Bush television ad on Yucca says Kerry voted seven times for measures supporting the transport of nuclear waste to Nevada. Kerry voted to stop Yucca in key votes in 1987 and 2002.
As he waited in line to vote, Earl Scott, 31, was critical of Bush, saying, "The last thing we need is toxic waste in our community." But he wondered if Kerry would be better. "He said this and that" against Yucca, "but he also has a history of saying the opposite."
