Nevada GOP’s Caucus Fuster-Cluck Just Got Worse

(Chuck Muth) – The damage from the Nevada Republican Party’s decision to hold a presidential “caucus” two days after the official presidential primary in Nevada has begun.

NBC News reported today that the super-PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is redirecting its resources for paid door-to-door campaigning out of Nevada and into the three other early-voting states…Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

The PAC is keeping its paid staff in the state and will continue on-the-ground operations with volunteers rather than paid walkers.

Why?

“(S)uper PAC officials,” NBC reports, “said the decisions to pull out of Nevada…were driven by what they see as pro-Trump efforts to tilt the primary rules in his favor and make it less likely that a rival could knock him off.”

NBC notes that Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for the Never Back Down PAC, “blasted Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald as a ‘Trump puppet’ who is ‘conducting that caucus/primary, primary/caucus routine that he’s doing.’”

“When you have that kind of uncertainty about how the election’s going to be conducted,” Perrine said, “that becomes a pretty unstable environment to be investing the kind of resources that we’re investing.”

She added that without a “fair process” in place, “we decided to make [the paid door-knockers] kind of refocus into the first three.”

McDonald responded that Perrine is “just someone who doesn’t know the situation in Nevada.”

Well, I do. And Perrine nailed it.

The Nevada GOP’s foolish “primary/caucus routine” is an impending political disaster of epic proportions.  The DeSantis campaign’s decision to redirect some resources out of Nevada and into the other three early states is surely only the first shoe to drop.

As it is, DeSantis and Trump are the only two presidential candidates to campaign in Nevada.  No other candidates have been here.  After all, if you’re playing against a stacked deck, why waste your time and money, right?

And the long-term ramifications could be just as serious.

If presidential campaigns are gonna treat Nevada like a red-headed stepchild thanks to the shenanigans of the party’s leadership, why should it continue to be “first in the west”?

Members of the Nevada Republican Central Committee could still avoid this PR nightmare and impending political disaster at its meeting on September 24 in Winnemucca by voting to ditch the caucus.

Don’t bet the farm on it. Stupid is as stupid does.

Gorelow Ethics Complaint Filed

Today I filed a formal complaint with the Nevada Commission on Ethics over Assemblywoman Michelle Gorelow’s apparent quid pro quo vote to give a non-profit organization $250,000 of public tax dollars which it used days later to hire her as their executive director.

You can read the complaint by clicking here

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“If voting to give hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds to an organization right before they hire you doesn’t meet the ‘standard for a disqualifying conflict of interest,’ what does?” – Assembly District 37 candidate David Brog

“We reached out to Assemblywoman Gorelow via email and she has not responded yet.” – 2News.com and pretty much every other media outlet in the state

“Why hasn’t (Democrat Assembly Speaker) @SteveYeagerNV said a word about one of his Assembly members using her office for personal profit?  Does he condone @MIchelleGorelow’s actions?  This story has been dominating Nevada politics for a week and he hasn’t even tried to explain this.” – Better Nevada PAC

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com.  You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com.  His views are his own.