Yucca Mountain News Clips - Thursday, November 4, 2004

Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, November 4, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
November 03, 2004

Columnist Jeff German: Nevadans lost sight of Yucca

- Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

It should have been an easy call for Nevadans in the presidential race.

We had a clear choice between a Republican incumbent pushing hard to send 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste here or a Democratic challenger promising to put us out of harm's way and kill the Yucca Mountain Project.

And yet, as of midnight Tuesday, as I sat down to write this, Nevada was one of five states too close to call in an election that was leaning toward President Bush, but still undecided.

When the final Nevada poll results were tallied a couple of hours later, Bush was declared the winner, giving him the state's five electoral votes and moving him closer to the 270 votes he needed to be re-elected.

A Bush victory is the worst possible setback for the Yucca Mountain opposition forces. Some might even call it a message of capitulation from Nevada's voters.

"It takes a lot of the zing out of the issue when the fellow who betrayed us wins Nevada," said former Sen. Richard Bryan, who has been part of the Yucca Mountain fight for all of its 22 years. "What it may do is encourage some folks to say this is an issue the public doesn't care about."

It was obvious that the voters didn't care enough about the dangers of Yucca Mountain to put John Kerry in the White House.

Bryan said the Bush campaign did a good job of making terrorism the main issue in the campaign and that tended to drown out other issues.

We certainly fell for it in Nevada. We let Bush campaign here without explaining why he lied to us four years ago when he promised he wouldn't recommend Yucca Mountain if the science wasn't right.

In the end we forgot what is really important to us -- preserving the future well-being of this state for our children.

And now that Bush has prevailed in Ohio and has won re-election, we have a president with a mandate to ram Yucca Mountain down our throats. And we will have no one but ourselves to blame.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, an ardent Yucca Mountain opponent, summed things up when I spoke to her earlier Tuesday.

"If George Bush is re-elected president of the United States," she said, "we are going to get Yucca Mountain. It's that simple."

I suspect she might regret saying those words in the heat of the battle because our elected officials, including Berkley, aren't ready to give up the fight just yet, however bleak it now looks in the political arena.

We still have the courts to turn to, and we may have a stronger general to lead the fight on Capitol Hill.

The defeat of Sen. Tom Daschle, the Senate's minority leader, in South Dakota leaves Nevada Sen. Harry Reid as the front-runner to assume his leadership duties.

If that happens, Reid will be the most powerful Democrat in Washington and will have more clout to go toe-to-toe with the Bush administration in the Yucca fight.

But it will be an administration ready to fight harder to make us the nation's No. 1 dumping ground.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 04, 2004

Editorial: Voters sound wake-up call

The national Democratic Party consoled itself in 2000 with the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote only after the intercession of the U.S. Supreme Court. The closeness of the race prompted little in the way of an introspective examination. Who are we as a party? What do we really stand for? How could we have lost to a one-term Texas governor with no national experience? How do we get our message across in the South and rural America? These questions seem not to have been asked by Democratic leaders, who concentrated more on the unfairness of the Florida fiasco than the weakening underpinnings of their party.

We can see all of this now, after Tuesday's significant victory by the national Republican Party, which re-elected President Bush and strengthened its hand in Congress. What can the Democrats turn to this time to console themselves? Yes, the electoral votes of a few hotly contested battleground states went to the Kerry/Edwards ticket. And, yes, there were many inspiring moments over the past year -- the Democratic primaries were exciting and the debates went well for Kerry and Edwards.

Yet when the counting was all over on Tuesday, it was the Republicans walking away with the top prize and enough victories in congressional races to begin near-total domination of federal policy. They will set the agenda for the war on terrorism, homeland security, energy, foreign policy, Social Security, spending, education, the environment and all other issues affecting American citizens and the world. The Democrats will have a say, but with both houses of Congress and the presidency now firmly in the hands of conservative Republicans they won't have much clout.

Even Nevadans, who stood to lose major ground in the fight against Yucca Mountain if President Bush won, cast a majority of their votes for the president. How could a state that twice voted for President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and which had so much to lose over Yucca Mountain, vote both in 2000 and 2004 for President Bush?

This question, and variables of this question as it applies to the nation's rural areas and Midwestern and Southern states, now needs to be asked in earnest by Democrats. This time there is no consoling themselves about unfair balloting. The country is obviously pulling away from the Democratic Party. Is it because of a dearth in leadership? Because of the constant droning of right-wing radio talk show hosts repeating their simplistic (and hugely profitable) talking points over and over? Because Democratic candidates are more concerned about their incumbency than their party?

Whatever the answers, the Democratic Party needs to find out and begin once again connecting with its once-stable core of voters. With such Republicans as President Bush's brother Jeb waiting in the wings, we shudder to think about the demise of our competitive two-party system.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 04, 2004

Bush victory keeps light green for Yucca Mountain

Professor: Issue was oversold as election weapon

By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's re-election keeps alive the federal government's effort to bury nuclear waste in Nevada, although the project still faces daunting financial and technical problems, officials said Wednesday.

Critics of the Yucca Mountain Project missed an opportunity to deliver a crushing blow when Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry on Tuesday. Kerry had campaigned in Nevada on a promise to shelve the proposed repository and study alternatives.

Project supporters, including those within the Energy Department, were breathing easier Wednesday, particularly when Bush won Nevada 50 percent to 48 percent on his way to re-election.

"The best outcome was Bush winning, and Bush winning Nevada," said an energy industry executive who said he spoke with DOE officials this week. "At the department, the sword of Damocles was lifted. There had been a cloud of uncertainty and they certainly were expecting the worst."

Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada said Kerry's defeat "clearly is a devastating loss for Nevada because Kerry would have put the whole program on hold and clearly Bush will accelerate it."

Energy Department officials did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment in light of the election results. They have said they want to complete a repository license application by the end of the year, although they also are evaluating their timetables in light of legal and budget setbacks this summer.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said it will be difficult to combat the project when opponents know that Nevada voted for Bush even after he recommended Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste in February 2002 and signed the declaration into law four months later.

"It's becoming increasingly more difficult when the people from the state of Nevada have just handed a mandate to the very person who has vowed to turn the state into a nuclear dump," she said.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's possible ascension to become the Senate's Democratic leader will be Nevada's "ace hole card," with powers to block Yucca legislation, Bryan said.

But an industry executive who asked not to be identified noted Reid already had free rein in the Senate on Yucca matters. "I don't see how much more damage he can do," he said.

Kerry stumped on his Yucca Mountain promise during his seven trips to Nevada, and Reid spotlighted the contender's stance in a television commercial that ran late in the campaign.

Exit polls showed two-thirds of voters considered Yucca Mountain important to their decision making, according to The Associated Press.

But the issue failed to be a silver bullet.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Yucca Mountain helped Kerry to some extent.

"Without this issue, I think Nevada would have gone for Bush by 10 points," Ensign said. "There's no question that a Massachusetts liberal is not going to get within three points in Nevada without this issue."

Ensign said Kerry's pressure also forced Bush to promise he would abide by court rulings and decisions by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the project.

Erik Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Yucca Mountain was oversold as a potent election weapon.

"Bush won the state by 20,000 votes four years ago and he won the state by 20,000 votes this time," Herzik said. Democrats "tried to push (Yucca Mountain) in a big way and it just wasn't there.

"This was as clear a referendum on the issue as you can find, and Yucca lost," Herzik said.

With the dust settling on the election, the Energy Department is in the same position it was in before: striving to develop a repository that is in financial distress on Capitol Hill and lacking a radiation safety standard that was thrown out by a federal court in July, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"I don't think it makes things any easier for DOE," Loux said.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, said key lawmakers supporting Yucca Mountain are working with the Bush administration to solve a funding shortfall that might be passed during the congressional lame duck session later this month.

Hobson, chairman of the House energy and water subcommittee, said lawmakers are focusing on an amount between the $577 million DOE received last year for Yucca Mountain and $880 million the administration has requested for fiscal 2005. He would not disclose the amount.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 04, 2004

Nevada in 2004 looks like old times

Bush margin of victory in state virtually identical to 2000

By Erin Neff
Review-Journal

After a year of constant campaigning, a barrage of television advertising and dozens of visits from candidates, Nevada came down to the same 21,500 votes it did in 2000.

President Bush carried Nevada with 414,939 votes compared to 393,372 for John Kerry, a difference of 21,567 votes. In 2000, Bush beat Al Gore by 21,597 votes.

A strong get-out-the-vote effort by Democrats was considered unparalleled in the state's history, yet Kerry's 5 percentage point win in Clark County ultimately didn't give him enough votes to win Nevada, nor did it meet the party's 7 percent voter registration edge in the county.

"We kind of guestimated that the president couldn't lose Clark by 50,000 votes," said Clark County GOP Chairman Brian Scroggins. "We kept it to less than 30,000 votes and were able to hold on."

Since 70 percent of the state's voters live in Clark County, a Democrat needs to win there by at least 8 percentage points to withstand the expected surge in Republican voters from the state's 15 rural counties and the GOP advantage in Reno's Washoe County.

"The first meeting I had with Bush-Cheney people 18 months ago, they said, `We know we're going to lose Clark,' " Scroggins recalled Wednesday. "I told them, `Let's not talk like that.' And sure enough I don't think anyone did."

Democratic consultant Billy Vassiliadis said he did not think the lower-than-needed support for Kerry in Clark County had any impact on the race.

"I think that in most places, the race is at 4 (percentage) points," Vassiliadis said. "The country is very divided this year."

Vassiliadis actually credited the Democratic Party for a strong statewide showing Tuesday, picking up seats in the Legislature, re-electing Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley by large margins and winning broad support for an initiative to raise the minimum wage.

"If you looked at where we were the Wednesday after the last election, the party was, frankly, in a bit of shambles," Vassiliadis said. "This is the first time I've seen a very well-coordinated effort. You can't just win it all back in one cycle."

In 2002, Democrats lost all six state constitutional offices, the newly created 3rd Congressional District and seats in the state Senate and Assembly.

Nevada Republican National Committeeman Joe Brown said he was "scared to death" when he saw the number of Democrats voting early statewide and realized turnout would be over 75 percent.

"The Democrats did a great job with their turnout and their grass roots," Brown said. "If they had a better candidate, they'd have won."

Kerry outperformed expectations in Washoe County, trailing Bush by 6,477 votes, or 4 percentage points, despite a Republican voter edge of 7 percent in the county.

Bush took Nevada 50 percent to 47.5 percent.

Both parties said they believed Tuesday's election bodes well for the future of their respective camps.

Vassiliadis said he hopes Democrats can keep their organizational team in place for the statewide offices up in 2006.

Scroggins said his party has to "strike while the iron's hot" to keep focused on those statewide races.

As polling had indicated, the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain did not prove a deciding factor.

State Republican Chairwoman Earlene Forsythe said she believes the race was won largely on the issue of homeland security and an issue that largely flew under the radar for much of the election: moral values.

Forsythe said Bush shares "common sense values" with a majority of Nevadans.

"President Bush's message and personality resonated with Nevadans," she said.

Reid said he didn't want to rehash what went wrong in the election, but was still surprised Yucca Mountain failed to register.

Bush approved the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's nuclear waste repository. Kerry vowed to kill the project if elected.

"The people had a decision to make, and they thought other things were more important," Reid said.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 04, 2004

Steve Sebelius: Mistakes were made

Well, that could have gone better.

The votes having been counted. It turns out that George W. Bush won the popular vote and the Electoral College. For the very first time, I might add. But that means Bush will be president, sans recounts, hanging chads and dramatic trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was close, mind you: 52 percent for Bush, 48 percent for Kerry. Here in Nevada, Bush took 50 percent to Kerry's 47 percent. In fact, Bush won Nevada by almost the same number of raw votes -- 21,567 -- as he did four years ago. Despite its growth, Nevada mirrors the nation in its political split.

You'll search in vain for a mandate in those numbers. A little more than half of all Americans want tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and faith-based programs? And the other half wanted health care for everybody, repeal of tax cuts for the rich and a more sensitive war on terror?

It wasn't Yucca Mountain. That much we can say for sure.

This campaign began and ended with terrorism, from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to the 11th-hour appearance of the author of those attacks. Osama bin Laden may have reminded Americans that they're still in peril in a dangerous world. Polls show that many Americans trusted Bush with defense of the nation more than they did Kerry, and our fellow citizens are reluctant to replace the commander-in-chief in wartime, even if the war is manufactured.

Nevada Democrats, having watched their party lose ground in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, were left to crow only about picking up a few seats in the Legislature (they won back a traditionally Democratic state Senate seat, and had a net gain of three seats in the Assembly). The Republican "Contract With Nevada" was a total flop, said the Democrats.

That's got to be the worst consolation prize in political history.

There were some brighter spots for the Democrats: U.S. Sen. Harry Reid won with his largest margin ever -- 25 points. And Rep. Shelley Berkley rocketed into Jim Gibbons territory with 63.5 percent of the vote. At the end of a chaotic election night in which Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his job, Reid was plotting strategy to take over, which would make him the most powerful Nevada lawmaker ever.

Beyond that, messages were hard to discern.

Voters refused to raise education spending to the national average, which would have entailed a huge tax hike. But they narrowly said yes to an advisory question on raising sales taxes to pay for police.

Voters in Clark County Commission District F responded to a flood of negative campaigning and retained their incumbent, Lynette Boggs McDonald; but voters in District B rejected negative campaigning directed against Assemblyman Tom Collins and tapped him to replace indicted Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey.

Hundreds of new voters flocked to the polls in Nevada's highest-turnout election ever -- statewide, 77 percent of registered voters showed up -- but the only reason the presidential contest wasn't a mirror of 2000 was that independent candidate Ralph Nader got fewer votes.

Good news was found in some far-flung places, as former Assemblyman John Lee retired way-past-his-prime Ray Shaffer in Senate District 1. Ditto for the state Supreme Court, where appointed Justice Michael Douglas turned back a challenge from Independent American Joel Hansen, whom polls showed as competitive. The ever-earnest Mo Denis picked up Vonne Chowning's old Assembly seat, and the best freshman assemblyman to come along in years -- William Horne -- was rewarded by running unopposed.

While they did good at the top of the ticket -- U.S. Rep. Jon Porter easily disposed of Tom Gallagher, who should have done much better -- some Republicans may lose by winning. Assemblyman Rod Sherer took 73 percent on Election Day, facing only token third-party opposition. And because he had the extra time on his hands, Sherer took time out to campaign against Richard Perkins.

Whoops. Perkins won re-election with 55 percent, and will undoubtedly win another term as speaker. You can bet he's at Office Depot right now, buying a special trash can into which he'll toss every bill Sherer even thinks about writing. It's better to be king than would-be kingmaker.

- Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 04, 2004

Jane Ann Morrison: After low of seeing friend Daschle lose, Reid moves to claim prize

Election night for Harry Reid was like a "Survivor" show, with dramatic highs and lows mixed with self-interest.

He enjoyed his easiest election ever, retaining his Senate seat with 60 percent of the vote without bothering to debate his GOP challenger Richard Ziser.

However, his friend, affable U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, was voted off the island by South Dakotans.

Yet that loss makes it possible for Reid to move on up to become the big kahuna of Senate Democrats.

Daschle is Reid's friend. They both were elected to the Senate in 1986, and their stars ascended together. Daschle became Democratic leader in 1995. Reid became assistant majority leader in 1999. In those positions, they both brought home the bacon.

Tuesday night, when Daschle's numbers began dropping and Republican John Thune began to overtake him, Reid was the loyal soldier. While Daschle's fate remained uncertain, he declined to speculate what it might mean to him.

But as Daschle's numbers worsened, Reid had to be listing, in his mind if not on paper, those Senate Democrats likely to support him for the leadership job and thinking about whether anyone else would make a run for the job.

At 3 a.m. Wednesday, Reid spoke to Daschle in what he called "a very difficult conversation." Daschle had become the first Senate leader since 1952 to be rejected by the voters back home. Apparently, senators can't live by pork alone.

At 6 a.m., Reid started calling Democratic senators to line up the votes to take Daschle's job.

At 1 p.m., Reid held a news conference and said that out of the 45 Democratic senators, while he needed only 23 votes to win, he had already snagged 30 senators' votes and had calls out to 10 more.

His message was clear: Potential rivals for the leadership job need not apply.

It worked with one potential rival. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd was a contender in the morning and a noncontender by late afternoon.

The title isn't ceremonial. As minority leader, the man from Searchlight will craft Democratic policy, set the goals and try to reach them. Or at least play defense with the GOP agenda.

Because Republicans control the White House, the House and the Senate, this is no easy assignment, and no Nevadan has ever done it. But Reid, 64, is a master at using Senate rules to his advantage. While he'll never be dubbed Mr. Congeniality, he's effective.

Remember, Reid quietly wooed Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords to leave the Republican party in 2001. Reid's efforts took the 50-50 split and made it 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent, giving him the title of Senate assistant majority leader for 18 months.

Reid knows how to make a deal, how to reward loyalty and how to make things happen.

We'll watch whether Reid can avoid being dubbed an obstructionist like Daschle, one of the reasons the White House targeted Daschle and recruited Thune.

The White House made a similar move in Nevada by pushing GOP Congressman Jim Gibbons to run against Reid this year.

When Gibbons passed, no major Republican had time to raise the money, so Reid cruised to a fourth term with soft TV ads touting his pork and featuring Searchlight pals talking about him fondly. One ad revealed that in Searchlight, Reid was called "Pinky."

(No, it's not a reference to his little finger. When he was born, a cousin said he was pink, and because his dad was named Harry, the family dubbed him Pinky, a trivia tidbit most Nevadans wouldn't know except for the TV ads.)

Pinky Reid. What a moniker.

Perhaps President Bush, with his fondness for nicknames, will pick it up.

Apparently, Bush is confident Reid will be the man he'll be dealing with for the next four years about legislation. In the spirit of good will, the Republican president worked in a friendly five-minute call to the Democratic senator from Nevada on Wednesday.

Presumably, Bush has overcome his annoyance from the times Reid publicly termed the president "a liar" for approving the Yucca Mountain Project.

Reid embraced the spirit of cooperation, saying it is not the time to talk about what went wrong or what went right with the election. "Now is the time for everyone to come together."

- Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 04, 2004

Letter: Time for benefits

Every election, politicians say the Yucca Mountain Project is the No. 1 topic for the people of Nevada. If this is truly the case, how did President Bush win the state when he supports sending nuclear waste here?

When will our politicians accept the facts and start getting something from the federal government? We could have all our freeway upgrades paid for and all the funding for our schools. The people have spoken. Yucca Mountain is not the most important issue in Nevada.

Scott Moore
Las Vegas

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Reno Gazette Journal
November 03, 2004

Four-year comparison helped Bush in Nevada, poll finds

Ken Ritter

A comparatively flush economy in a state in which an exit poll found most Nevada voters described their family financial situation as the same or better than four years ago might have tipped the balance for President Bush in Nevada, an analyst said Wednesday.

“The economy is doing much better in Nevada than the rest of the U.S.,’ said Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “You would expect people would tend to vote for the incumbent. That could well account for the narrow margin in Nevada.’

Bush edged Kerry by 21,567 votes, winning another four years by a percentage of 50-48, according to unofficial final returns from the Nevada secretary of state.

Terrorism, Iraq and moral values mattered most to voters as they picked Bush over Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry, according to an exit poll conducted for the Associated Press in Nevada.

While Bush drew support from 88 percent of those who cited terrorism, and three of four who called moral values most important, Kerry attracted 78 percent of those who said they were most concerned about Iraq.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts also drew support from those who called health care and education the top issues.

Nevada´s unemployment rate was 3.9 percent in September, compared with 5.4 percent nationally, and Schwer said job growth from September 2003 to September 2004 was 4.6 percent in Nevada, compared with 1.3 percent nationwide.

That led three-fourths of voters polled to describe the state´s economy as good or excellent, and 76 percent to call their family´s financial situation as good or better now than four years ago.

The poll conducted Tuesday for AP and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International questioned 2,189 voters, including 465 absentee voters interviewed by telephone during the past week. Their responses were weighted to represent 21 percent of the total sample — their estimated proportion of the state´s electorate. Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, higher for subgroups.

More than half of those who called Nevada´s economy good and 81 percent of those who called the state economy excellent went for Bush.

One-third of voters described themselves as conservative, and 81 percent of them went for Bush.

Kerry, by comparison, won 55 percent of those who identified themselves as moderates, and did well with voters concerned most about health care, jobs and the economy and education. He also got support from families that make under $50,000 a year, and from those who said they wanted change or those who disapproved of the Iraq war.

Voters were split on the president´s performance. Both candidates held their party bases.

Two-thirds of voters called federal plans for a national nuclear waste repository in Nevada a factor in their decision-making. But 52 percent of those who called it “somewhat’ important, and 75 percent of those who called it “not too’ important went for the president who approved the Yucca Mountain project in 2002.

Bush drew support from married voters and the 90 percent who said religious faith and strong leadership mattered most in a president. Eighty percent of those who said clear stands on issues mattered backed Bush.

Solidly Republican rural Nevada voters went 64 percent for Bush, while Kerry drew more support in the state´s urban areas around Las Vegas and Reno. Clark County went Democratic in the presidential election of 2000, while Reno voted Republican.

About one in seven voters said they were voting in their first election, and one in five said they´d moved to Nevada in the past four years.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid drew 24 percent of the Republicans who voted in his race over underfunded Republican challenger Richard Ziser. Reid was aided by crossover voting from GOP voters in a state where Republicans have a narrow 4,000-voter edge in registration.

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Deseret News
November 4, 2004

Reid poised to take over as Senate minority leader

By Jerry Spangler

WASHINGTON — A senator with deep Utah ties will likely assume one of the most powerful positions in the U.S. Senate.

No, it's not veteran Republican senators Orrin Hatch or the just re-elected Bob Bennett.

It is Harry Reid — Utah educated and an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — who is the second-in-command Senate Democrat from Nevada.

Reid, 64, is poised to take over the top leadership post for the minority party now that Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was an election-day victim of a Republican juggernaut that saw the GOP boost its Senate majority to 55-45.

The nation's capital has been abuzz with speculation the past week that Reid — who faced only minimal opposition in his bid for a fourth term —appeared to be positioning himself for a run at the top Democratic job should Daschle falter.

His only opposition could come from Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who lost his own bid for the top post to Daschle by one vote. But Dodd disavowed any interest in the post Wednesday in an interview with CNN.

And he told Cox News Service, "I really decided that I can better serve my party and my state by staying out of the race," Dodd said.

Dodd's recalcitrance removed the only obvious hurdle. "I have commitments from a majority of my colleagues," Reid said.

President Bush even called Reid to seek "reconciliation" between the warring political parties, Reid said.

"I appreciate the president reaching out, and I look forward to working with him on important issues for Nevada and the nation," Reid said. "At the same time, I will not shirk from my responsibility to stand up and fight for Nevada values and Democratic principles."

Reid was unopposed in his bid for the No. 2 position, and he has spent the past decade cultivating relationships in what Capitol insiders see as laying the groundwork for a bid for the top job.

"I have a great deal of respect for Harry," Hatch said. "He is a tough, smart guy and has been a fighter for his party and his causes as the Democratic whip. And he also knows about the issues Utahns face."

Bennett says "all signs" point to Reid being the new minority leader, and he likes the idea.

"I believe this will change and improve the culture of the Senate," Bennett said. "As Tom Daschle was the architect of the obstructionist tactics, which have bogged down the Senate for so many years, Harry Reid is open to genuine, bipartisan progress."

Reid's office did not return Deseret Morning News calls. Democratic senators will elect their leaders before year's end.

Bespectacled and unassuming, Reid bears a resemblance to former U.S. Rep. Wayne Owens, with whom he shares many of the same politics.

Declared an "enviromental champion" by the League of Conservation Voters, his adamant opposition to nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain has been a thorn in the side of the Utah delegation, which wants Yucca Mountain as the alternative to storing the waste on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County.

Reid uses the same arguments for keeping the waste out of Nevada that Utah officials use for keeping the waste out of the Beehive State — a point Reid has made repeatedly to Utah's elected officials to no avail.

"I am dumbfounded why the governor is not fighting with us," Reid told the Deseret Morning News in 2002. "We fought (alongside Utah) against Skull Valley. And I don't know why the two senators of the state are not helping us."

Reid's rags-to-power rise has been well documented. He was born in 1939 in the tiny Nevada mining town of Searchlight, where his father was a hard-rock miner. He lived in a small cabin without indoor plumbing, and he attended a two-room elementary school.

Since Searchlight had no high school, Harry boarded with local families in Henderson while he attended Basic High School. He later married his high school sweetheart, Landra Gould, with whom he had five children, all of whom attended Brigham Young University.

With the financial aid of families in Henderson, Reid later earned an associate's degree in science from Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University) and then a bachelor of science degree from Utah State University.

He then went to law school at George Washington University, working nights as a police officer on Capitol Hill.

After a term in the Nevada state assembly, he became the youngest lieutenant governor in Nevada history at age 30. He lost his first bid for the Senate in 1974, but in 1983 was elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. House.

He was elected to the Senate in 1986. He won a fourth term Tuesday with 61 percent of the vote and even prominent Nevada Republicans campaigned on his behalf. Among his supporters are a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and even the father of the man Reid beat six years ago, who is now Nevada's other senator.

Reid has won respect from Democrats in the Senate for his deft managerial skills and for leading a marathon filibuster this year that awed his colleagues. And Republicans like his integrity.

"His word's good," former Republican Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma said, as Online News Hour reported. "To me, that's one of the most important things you can say about any senator."

His party loyalty and willingness to take on the grunt work of the minority party has also won him allies among Democrats who will now choose a new leader.

"If some other senator came up and asked, 'Could you take one for the team,' you'd say, 'When did you ever take one for anybody? Give me a break,'" Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., told Congressional Quarterly. "But you look at Harry and say, 'OK, Harry.'"

Not that Reid isn't willing to buck his party, especially on issues like abortion, where he is pro-life.

And he can play politics with the best of them. He is credited for wooing Republican Sen. James Jeffords to leave the Republican Party, swinging control of the Senate to the Democrats for a time.

Reid has dropped enough hints over the years that he wants the Senate leadership job. Two years ago, when it looked like Daschle might retire and run for president, both Reid and Dodd made known their interest in succeeding him.

Even when Daschle changed his mind, Reid appears to have been covering his bases.

Associated Press reported that Reid has donated more than $1 million from his political PAC to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — greasing the wheels for a leadership bid. Dodd's PAC gave only $100,000.

Reid is rushing this Senate leadership choice to quash any potential competition, Eric Herzik, political science professor at the University of Nevada at Reno, told Gannett News Service. But becoming Senate minority leader would push him into the spotlight, he said.

"He's not going to run for president four years from now. He doesn't have those ambitions," Herzik told Gannett. "But he could be a power broker in the party. Harry Reid is as influential as any Democrat in this country."

E-mail: spang@desnews.com

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Salt Lake Tribune
November 04, 2004

Yucca Mountain votes could haunt Utah's senators

By Christopher Smith
The Salt Lake Tribune

For Utah Republican Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, the icing on President Bush's re-election victory Tuesday was the stunning ouster of Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the first incumbent Senate party leader in more than 50 years to be tossed by voters.

"Huge," said Bennett, "just huge." Hatch called the upset by Republican John Thune "a real harsh result for Daschle, who is an old friend, but it is good for Republicans. I think it sends a message to the Democrats that says, 'Hey, you guys lost this election because of your obstructionism.' ’

Republicans are assured of at least 54 seats in the 100-member Senate come January, a gain of three from their current 51-49 edge. The Republican incumbent was also leading in Alaska as ballots were being counted, which would make the GOP margin 55-45, five shy of a filibuster-proof Senate.

The likely successor to Daschle as leader of the Democrats' shrinking numbers is Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who has not hidden his displeasure over the Utah lawmakers' 2002 vote in favor of constructing a permanent nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada.

Hatch and Bennett backed the Nevada dump after getting vague assurances from the Bush administration that it would not support temporary nuclear waste storage on the Goshute Reservation in Utah if the Yucca project moved forward.

Reid has used the clout of his current post as minority whip - second-in-command to Daschle - to curb spending on the Yucca Mountain project, with the House and Senate versions of the 2005 budget at an impasse because they vary by hundreds of millions of dollars. The future of the Yucca dump also has been cast into doubt by a federal court ruling that found the Environmental Protection Agency must design the project to meet safety standards for hundreds of thousands of years rather than just 10,000 years, a requirement most lawmakers believe is impossible to meet.

Hatch and Bennett downplay any grudge or potential payback Reid has toward Utah for failing to join Nevada's fight against a waste dump. But staffers for Utah lawmakers on Capitol Hill say the resentment has come up in negotiations over a stalled proposal to allow the annexation of Wendover, Utah, by West Wendover, Nev., and in discussions to create a wilderness area on the Utah Test and Training Range to block rail access to the Goshute site.

"He's a little irritated with the nuclear waste problem, but other than that, Harry and I are really good friends and I believe that will be advantageous to us," said Hatch. "I don't think it's a slam dunk for Harry to be chosen, but I have to think that would benefit Utah because he's from a neighboring state."

Asked what his relationship with Reid is, Bennett replied, "Good." Asked to factor in the Yucca Mountain vote, Bennett said: "Still OK."

"Harry would be a much more effective leader than Daschle," said Bennett. "On our side of the aisle, we trust Harry."

Besides Reid's background with Utah - he went to college in Cedar City and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - the Nevada senator also is friends with the family of Utah governor-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. Although Reid is considered the front runner for the party leadership post, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut may also be a contender. Dodd is married to Utah native Jackie Clegg, who used to work for Sen. Jake Garn of Utah.

"We get along fine with Chris," said Bennett. "There's a rumor that Hillary [Clinton, the New York senator] might come forth also, and I think she would be very foolish if she did. If she wants to be president in 2008, Bob Dole proved you can't do both, but you can never tell."

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Las Vegas SUN
November 03, 2004

Bush wins tight race in battleground Nevada

By Adam Goldman
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - In his bid to win re-election, George W. Bush believed he could carry Nevada a second time, despite Democratic challenger John Kerry's many efforts to win the state.

President Bush carried out his strategy and won a hard-fought duel in battleground Nevada, a victory that could seal this tightly contested presidential race.

In final, unofficial returns from the Nevada secretary of state's office, President Bush received 414,939 votes, or 50 percent. Kerry grabbed 393,372 votes, or 48 percent. Independent Ralph Nader had 1 percent of the votes.

Nevada and its crucial five electoral votes - one more than 2000 since redistricting - were decided by the slimmest of margins early Wednesday and, combined with victories in other battleground states, could ensure Bush's re-election.

To secure Nevada, Kerry had hoped to keep it close in Reno and Washoe County and win in southern Nevada by as much as 10 percent. Seventy percent of the voters live in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County.

But that scenario didn't play out, helping Bush take Nevada and possibly remain in office for a second term and another four years.

At a Republican rally at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino, Gov. Kenny Guinn had said Bush would take Nevada. The Republican governor was right.

"I feel good about the election," Guinn said.

Kerry's strongest support came from heavily Democratic Clark County, anchored by Las Vegas, the only county where he was winning. He held slight leads early Tuesday in GOP-dominated Washoe County and Reno, but Bush moved ahead there, too, as final returns were tabulated.

Washoe County has not backed a Democratic candidate since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964.

Bush enjoyed overwhelming support in rural Nevada, including a 4-1 margin in Elko County, where many registered Democrats crossed over to support his re-election. He led by a 2-1 margin or more in Douglas, Lyon and Pershing counties, and a 3-1 margin in Churchill County.

Like the rest of the country, Nevada was closely divided between the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and President Bush, a Texas Republican.

For many people there was an urgency to vote because of the important issues facing the nation that included security, the economy and perhaps the most critical, the Iraq war.

Christie Vernon, 20, of Henderson, a registered Republican who works in her family's restaurant, said what happened in Iraq cost Bush her vote.

"I don't think he did a good job with Iraq," she said. "A lot of innocent people died and no weapons of mass destruction were found."

Some voters weren't swayed.

Ryan Runia, 31, of Henderson, who owns a financial services business and typically votes Republican, said the economy was the most important issue to him. That's why he voted for Bush.

"It wasn't a hard choice," he said. "Bush favors entrepreneurship and small businesses."

The closest presidential race in Nevada's history was in 1996, when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole. Clinton snatched a narrow victory, winning the state by 4,730 votes, or a 1 percent margin.

Since then, the political landscape has changed dramatically. Four year ago, Nevada was a faint blip on campaign radar and presidential candidates spent little time targeting the state's electoral votes.

But Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by a mere five electoral votes, illustrating the importance of even small swing states like Nevada.

Bush won the state in 2000 by 3.5 percentage points, grabbing 49.5 percent of the vote to Gore's 46 percent after Clinton had won Nevada in 1992 and 1996.

Both candidates campaigned an unprecedented number of times in Nevada, with Kerry visiting seven times and Bush four. Most of those trips were to Las Vegas, where the majority of the state's fast-growing population lives.

Vice presidential candidates, family members and other political supporters, including former President Bill Clinton, have blanketed the state in recent months, hoping to sway voters in what was a tight race for most of the campaign. Bush and Kerry were separated by only a few percentage points, according to statewide polls.

Voter registration reached a record high 1.1 million and was virtually even between Democrats and Republicans after efforts by more than 100 partisan and nonpartisan groups.

During the campaign, Bush and Kerry seized on issues important to the state's voters.

Kerry repeatedly pledged to block the federal proposal to build Yucca Mountain, a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002, angering Nevadans who said the president broke a previous promise to use "sound science" to make the decision.

Kerry hasn't let Nevadan voters forgot about the president's "broken promises" and an anti-Yucca plank was part of the national party's platform.

Bush touted his credentials as commander in chief during wartime and the state's robust economy that has rebounded since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the 10 states where polls showed close races, Nevada was the only one in which the unemployment rate had fallen. Nevada's rate dropped from an already low 4 percent in August to 3.9 percent in September - its lowest rate since mid-2000.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 03, 2004

Reid in line to be new Senate minority leader

By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is expected to swiftly lay the groundwork to try to become the next Senate Democratic leader, following the loss Tuesday of current leader Tom Daschle to former Rep. Tom Thune, R-S.D.

Reid was unavailable for comment today, but was expected to discuss his bid for his party's leadership position at a press conference later today in the Las Vegas Valley. Senate Democrats could choose a new leader as early as December.

Reid and the rest of the party today are still reeling from the loss of Daschle, a long-time Reid ally. Tuesday night, Reid was optimistic until the end that Daschle could win.

"I've talked to him a couple of times tonight, we're confident he'll pull it out at the last minute," Reid said during the Democrats' Las Vegas party at the Rio. "It's going to be very close."

Asked about what would happen if Daschle should lose, Reid said, "not now."

But Reid is now the favorite to be elected by his Democratic peers as minority leader, although it's not clear who might challenge him for the spot.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., along with Reid, considered running for the post when Daschle considered a presidential bid in 2002. Dodd also planned to address the media today, spokeswoman Holly Barnes said.

Reid gave the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee $1 million in September, a move seen as enhancing his position among Democratic peers.

Daschle's defeat and Reid's re-election do not guarantee Nevada's senator the leadership position. It will be up to his fellow Democrats.

"Right now we are full of theories, but it's goes to the psychology of the caucus coming off last night," said Jennifer Duffy, managing editor and a political analyst for The Cook Political Report.

Duffy said Reid has earned the position and has shown he has the votes, but someone could come into the caucus with the idea there needs to be a radical change. The new leader could be selected during new member orientation in December, although a specific date could not be nailed down today.

It was not clear moving up would require Reid to give up his choice seat as the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which controls the Yucca Mountain project budget or his other committee assignments.

Duffy said for Nevada, Reid as minority leader could be a "net plus but a balance."

"In some respects, Reid might run into some of the same problems Daschle did, leading a caucus that is more liberal than the state," Duffy said.

Nevada has never had a Senate party leader since the parties began designating leaders in 1920. Reid, as the No. 2 Senate Democrat, or minority whip, is the highest-ranking Nevadan ever in the chamber.

Reid has spent much of the last few years as Daschle's top lieutenant running the Senate floor for the Democrats. Reid is generally seen by his peers as a skilled back-room deal-maker, observers have said.

Observers Tuesday night already were speculating on what kind of party leader Reid might be.

David Gergen, who served as a White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, said during a television interview that Republicans see Reid as less of an obstructionist than Daschle. Other pundits have suggested that Reid might not be the best public face for the party because his strengths lie in behind-the-scenes negotiating and not in being a telegenic spokesman.

Majority and minority party leaders are mouthpieces for their parties on issues. From the front two desks on the center aisle of the Senate chamber, they control which issues come to the Senate floor for action and keep tabs on Senate committee leaders.

Reid has been the No. 2 Senate Democrat since 1999. Daschle was elected leader Dec. 2, 1994.

Reid joined Daschle in the House when Reid was elected in 1982. Reid and Daschle were both elected to the Senate in 1986.

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Las Vegas SUN
November 03, 2004

Letter: Guinn deserves blame for dump if it ever opens

It is perfectly understandable that President Bush decided to send the nation's nuclear waste to Nevada; he figured he could do the nuclear power industry's bidding and pay very little politically for doing so.

What I can't understand is how Gov. Kenny Guinn could have supported President Bush's re-election campaign when he knew what the president intended to do to Nevada. Administrations will come and go but the threat of the Yucca Mountain dump will be here forever.

Within hours of the 9/11 attacks on the East Coast, thousands of Las Vegas workers were laid off. Can you imagine the effect if Las Vegas and the words "nuclear disaster" ever appear together in headlines around the world? Our governor ignored this threat.

If Yucca Mountain indeed opens as Bush intends, I propose that it be renamed "The George W. Bush/Kenny Guinn National Nuclear Waste Repository."

Edward Mungaray

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 03, 2004

Nevada remains battleground to end

By Erin Neff
Review-Journal

Nevada stayed true to its battleground form, but its close presidential result will not likely determine the victor.

With nearly all the votes tallied statewide early today, President Bush maintained a margin of more than 20,000 votes -- a lead of 50 percent to 47 percent. At midnight, Gov. Kenny Guinn announced to Republican supporters at Mandalay Bay that Bush would carry the Silver State, leading to a huge cheer from the crowd.

But an unknown number of ballots remained to be counted by hand. They were among the more than 50,000 ballots that county election machines were unable to process or which were received via mail Tuesday.

As early results came in, the race flipped back and forth between Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry. But late in the evening, Bush overtook Kerry and began expanding his lead in Nevada.

State election officials said final results probably won't be available until 6 a.m. today.

All day Tuesday, an urgency unseen in recent elections filled campaign offices with all available volunteers sent out for a day of door-knocking and driving voters to the polls. Sign-waving supporters stood on street corners, and thousands of phone calls rang through the state.

Kerry conducted an Election Day interview with a Las Vegas television station, retired Gen. Wesley Clark came to the state to get Democratic voters to the polls and former President Bill Clinton phoned in an urgent plea to a black radio station in Las Vegas to get out the vote.

Republicans said they believed they would win Nevada because of a strong grass-roots push by volunteers from other states.

"I still feel it's going to be really tight," Clark County GOP Chairman Brian Scroggins said about 9 p.m. He said Democrats thought the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain was going to be the issue in Nevada, "and it clearly wasn't."

U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., fresh off a re-election victory, implored Democrats gathered at the Rio to "hang in and don't go anywhere."

Berkley took the stage shortly before 11 p.m. and referred to a statement from the Kerry campaign that about 250,000 outstanding votes in Ohio that ultimately may lead to a Democratic victory there.

"We're in for a long night," Berkley said.

Democrats cheered wildly when CBS News projected Kerry the winner in delegate-rich Pennsylvania at 7:50 p.m.

"That's big, that's big, that's big," former Sen. Richard Bryan said, viewing the large television monitors in the ballroom as the crowd cheered.

At the Republican Party celebration at Mandalay Bay, young GOP supporters sat on the floor huddled around a television monitor. When one of the networks projected Bush the winner in Ohio, the room erupted in applause and chants of "Four more years."

Bush voters offered a variety of reasons for casting their support to the president.

"It came down to voting my party," said Paula Hilt, an accountant who voted at the Summerlin Community Baptist Church. "I was really torn, so much that I went out on my lunch hour today and tried to research a couple more issues. There's a lot of good about both men, and bad about both. I couldn't decide 'til I was forced to, and that's why you see me here at the last minute."

Republican Jeff Reed said he supported Bush because he views him as a "man of principle."

"He made decisions, said, 'This is why I did it,' and he stood by those decisions," Reed said.

Those supporting Kerry included disenchanted Republicans and first-time voters.

Retiree Barbara Christensen had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1948, but voted for Kerry on Tuesday.

"I supported Bush, but I became disillusioned after the 2000 election because I don't think he won fair and square," said Christensen, 76. "And anyone who takes that much vacation will lose my support."

Gloria Jackson, 60, also voted for Kerry.

"I think things have gotten worse since Bush has been in," said Jackson, a 40-year Las Vegas resident. "Clinton turned things around after the first Bush, so maybe the senator can straighten things out after this Bush."

The Democratic campaign strategy in Nevada was to win populous Clark County by a large enough margin to withstand the expected onslaught of the 14 rural counties, which overwhelmingly support Bush. At midnight, Kerry held a 6 percentage point lead over Bush in Clark County.

With turnout expected to be greater than 70 percent, the election was expected to surpass recent voter activity in presidential races, but not hit the historic 1960 mark of 85 percent.

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Adriana Martinez said late Tuesday she still hoped to see a surprise in Nevada.

"It's going to be the new voters, the young voters, who put it over the top," Martinez said.

Although both parties stressed grass-roots canvassing, Nevada found itself as one of the most targeted states in the nation for campaign ads.

The Bush campaign spent an estimated $15 million in Nevada, and Kerry countered with more than $9 million of his own ads.

"It's amazing that we got paid so much attention," Scroggins said. "It will help us in the future. When you get a chance to make a connection with politicians on the national level, it's a positive thing."

Bush won Nevada in 2000 by 3.5 percent, or 21,597 votes.

The closely watched presidential race this year included independent candidate Ralph Nader, who was pulling 1 percent of the vote, and Libertarian Michael Badnarik, who advertised on television in Nevada in recent days hoping to pull votes away from Bush.

- Review-Journal writers Omar Sofradzija, J.M. Kalil, A.D. Hopkins and Henry Brean contributed to this report.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 03, 2004

Reid coasts to fourth term

Member of Democratic leadership in Senate sweeps past GOP's Ziser

By Dave Berns and Omar Sofradzija
Review-Journal

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was overwhelmingly re-elected Tuesday to a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, crushing his little-known Republican opponent Richard Ziser.

Throughout the evening, the victorious Reid closely watched the results of the tight South Dakota Senate race pitting Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle against ex-Rep. John Thune, a Republican. Results early today showed that Thune defeated Daschle.

Reid could be elected by his Democratic Senate colleagues to fill Daschle's leadership post.

Reid was leading easily with 60 percent of the vote to Ziser's 35 percent, according to early results.

The 64-year-old Searchlight native entered a celebratory ballroom at the Rio, where the crowd chanted, "Harry, Harry, Harry" for the man who is admittedly uncomfortable walking at the front of parades or sitting at the head table for large gatherings.

"Some have said I've waited six years for this. There are so many people in this room and outside this room that I'll be grateful for the rest of my life," Reid said. "I wanted to make sure everyone understands -- Democrats, independents and Republicans -- that I'm grateful for their support. I want to hit the ground running; there's so much we need to do."

Reid declined to offer many thoughts about the neck-and-neck race between Daschle and Thune, though he acknowledged he had talked to Daschle "a couple of times" throughout the evening. "I'm nervous about it. He's a good friend of mine. He's like a brother to me."

Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan said Tuesday night that while Daschle's loss would be "bad news for the country," it also would be "great news for Nevada."

"No Nevadan has ever been the leader of his party, and that would be a major coup for Nevada," Bryan said. "Clearly he becomes the go-to person for everything, the major appropriation battles and national policies."

Ziser, an evangelical Christian who led the late-1990s fight to amend the Nevada Constitution to ban gay marriage, lacked statewide name recognition and major political and financial support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other potential donors.

"Naturally you're disappointed when you don't win when you know you had a good chance of winning," Ziser said. "Harry Reid was very, very vulnerable. I'm still convinced of that.

"As we knew, it was a matter of getting the message out to enough people. We got our message out to as many people as we possibly could."

Reid ran a relatively limited race in which he aired commercials that primarily touted his small-town roots and his legislative efforts to defeat the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Reid won his last race in 1998 against then-Rep. John Ensign by a margin of 428 votes. He rose to the post of assistant Senate minority leader as an effective vote counter who has mastered the body's parliamentary process.

In his race against Ziser, Reid claimed the support of some of the state's most visible Republicans, including Gov. Kenny Guinn, political consultant Sig Rogich and casino industry executives Terry Lanni and Mike Ensign, the father of John, who is now a U.S. senator. But Ziser said throughout the race that there were well-known Republicans who supported him privately but would not admit to it publicly out of fear of invoking the political wrath of Reid, a claim Reid minimized.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 03, 2004

Bush wins tight race in Nevada

LAS VEGAS — In his bid to win re-election, George W. Bush believed he could carry Nevada a second time, despite Democratic challenger John Kerry´s many efforts to win the state.

President Bush carried out his strategy and won a hard-fought duel in battleground Nevada, a victory that could seal this tightly contested presidential race.

With 1,795 of 1,802 precincts reporting, President Bush received 388,963 votes, or 51 percent. Kerry grabbed 368,458 votes, or 48 percent. Independent Ralph Nader had 1 percent of the votes.

Nevada and its crucial five electoral votes — one more than 2000 since redistricting — were decided by the slimmest of margins early Wednesday and, combined with victories in other battleground states, could ensure Bush´s re-election.

But that scenario didn´t play out, helping Bush take Nevada and possibly remain in office for a second term and another four years.

At a Republican rally at the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino, Gov. Kenny Guinn had said Bush would take Nevada. The Republican governor was right.

“I feel good about the election,’ Guinn said.

Kerry´s strongest support came from heavily Democratic Clark County, anchored by Las Vegas, the only county where he was winning. He held slight leads early Tuesday in GOP-dominated Washoe County and Reno, but Bush moved ahead there, too, as final returns were tabulated.

Washoe County has not backed a Democratic candidate since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964.

Like the rest of the country, Nevada was closely divided between the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and President Bush, a Texas Republican.

For many people there was an urgency to vote because of the important issues facing the nation that included security, the economy and perhaps the most critical, the Iraq war.

Christie Vernon, 20, of Henderson, a registered Republican who works in her family´s restaurant, said what happened in Iraq cost Bush her vote.

“I don´t think he did a good job with Iraq,’ she said. “A lot of innocent people died and no weapons of mass destruction were found.’

Some voters weren´t swayed.

Ryan Runia, 31, of Henderson, who owns a financial services business and typically votes Republican, said the economy was the most important issue to him. That´s why he voted for Bush.

“It wasn´t a hard choice,’ he said. “Bush favors entrepreneurship and small businesses.’

The closest presidential race in Nevada´s history was in 1996, when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole. Clinton snatched a narrow victory, winning the state by 4,730 votes, or a 1 percent margin.

But Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by a mere five electoral votes, illustrating the importance of even small swing states like Nevada.

Bush won the state in 2000 by 3.5 percentage points, grabbing 49.5 percent of the vote to Gore´s 46 percent after Clinton had won Nevada in 1992 and 1996.

Voter registration reached a record high 1.1 million and was virtually even between Democrats and Republicans after efforts by more than 100 partisan and nonpartisan groups.

During the campaign, Bush and Kerry seized on issues important to the state´s voters.

Kerry repeatedly pledged to block the federal proposal to build Yucca Mountain, a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002, angering Nevadans who said the president broke a previous promise to use “sound science’ to make the decision.

Kerry hasn´t let Nevadan voters forgot about the president´s “broken promises’ and an anti-Yucca plank was part of the national party´s platform.

Bush touted his credentials as commander in chief during wartime and the state´s robust economy that has rebounded since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In the 10 states where polls showed close races, Nevada was the only one in which the unemployment rate had fallen. Nevada´s rate dropped from an already low 4 percent in August to 3.9 percent in September — its lowest rate since mid-2000.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
November 03, 2004

Las Vegas SUN - Bush wins tight race in battleground

Reid trounces rivals in Senate race

Anjeanette Damon

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., sailed to an easy fourth term Tuesday night against a conservative Republican challenger and three third-party candidates.

Reid had 60 percent of the vote over Republican opponent Richard Ziser.

As the Senate´s minority whip, Reid is in line to succeed Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who was defeated Tuesday by Republican John Thune — which would give Nevada´s senior senator even greater political clout on the national stage.

Reid´s re-election bid was in stark contrast to his 1998 campaign, which he won by a mere 428 votes. This year, he maintained a double-digit lead in the polls and built a campaign war chest large enough to help fund the Democratic Party´s effort to take over the Senate.

In fact, the final weeks of his campaign was devoted mostly to stumping for U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

“I´m happy,’ Reid said by phone from Las Vegas. “I wanted this election to be as good as my election six years ago was bad. I´m grateful to everybody. And I am so focused on Washoe County. I worked hard there and we got 62 percent.’

Born in Searchlight, Reid, 64, has built a lifelong political career, also serving as a state assemblyman, lieutenant governor and congressman.

He has been a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. He´s favored by conservationists and the mining industry and has been instrumental in settling disagreements over how the Truckee River´s water is used.

Ziser, a Las Vegas investor, had tried to paint Reid as a liberal more concerned with helping his party than Nevadans.

Ziser, 51, who spearheaded the effort to ban gay marriage in the state in 2000 and 2002, ran on a strictly conservative platform.

He continued to oppose gay marriage rights and advocated for a flat income tax.

Despite Ziser´s efforts to align his opponent with national Democrats, Reid enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the state.

Reid also held a sizable lead over Independent American David Schumann of Minden, Libertarian Thomas Hurst of Las Vegas and Natural Law Party candidate Gary Marinch.

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Hartford Courant
November 03, 2004

Security High At Yankee Nuclear Graveyard

Gary Libow
Courant Staff Writer

HADDAM -- Amid a forest ablaze with autumn color, rows of 16-foot-tall concrete casks entomb hundreds of spent uranium-laden fuel rods.

Heavily armed security and intrusion control devices guard Connecticut's only outdoor nuclear graveyard around-the-clock.

The Yankee Atomic Power Co. has transported just over half of its 1,019 highly radioactive fuel rods about a mile to a $31.6 million dry cask storage facility.

The encased uranium pellets and nuclear reactor metals provided 110 billion kilowatt hours of electricity over 28 years at the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant, which was permanently shut down in 1996.

It may be decades until the federal government removes the nuclear waste from Haddam Neck to Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert or another highly regulated repository.

Until then, Yankee Atomic is forced to store the uranium and highly radioactive metals in 43 steel-reinforced concrete casks, each weighing 126 tons. The casks rest on a three-foot thick concrete pad, 48 feet wide and 160 feet long.

Rural Haddam Neck is just one of three dry cask nuclear storage sites in New England, one of 28 scattered across the country. There are 12 being planned, including at Millstone in Waterford.

Mike Marston supervises the painstaking transfer of each 1,230-pound spent fuel assembly from an indoor pool to the concrete village.

"We are about halfway done now," Marston said, noting the first storage casks were transported in April. "It's been going well overall. ... It's a 24/7 operation."

The cask design life is 50 years, but Marston thinks the containers can safely store the Connecticut Yankee radioactive waste longer, if needed.

"It's not supposed to be a long-term solution. It's an interim solution," said Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman Kelley Smith. The casks also are designed for easy transport, she stressed.

Marston, a Maine resident who transplanted to Connecticut for the job, said uncooperative weather has caused minor delays. Early on, the project was delayed when flaking was discovered on the three-foot-thick concrete storage pad, but testing found the problem was cosmetic. There also was a two-week delay when the 35-ton cask transport vehicle broke down from wear and tear.

Marie Miller, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission senior health physicist in the decommissioning branch, reports no health and safety concerns have arisen during Connecticut Yankee's transport and storage activities. In mid-November, she said, NRC staff will send inspectors to the site for a full evaluation.

During a series of trial runs before the fuel was moved, the NRC cited Connecticut Yankee in a Sept. 20 report for three minor procedural breaches, which were quickly corrected, Miller said.

The threat of terrorism resonates at nuclear power plants, even decommissioned facilities housing spent uranium such as Connecticut Yankee.

The government has imposed a code yellow alert at all nuclear plants. The alert was heightened to code orange twice.

Connecticut Yankee workers are tight-lipped when it comes to security at both the indoor spent fuel pool and the outdoor cask complex. While staffers acknowledged both locations are manned around the clock, they politely decline requests for more details.

A large gated fence manned by security guards blocks the roadway to the storage site. During a recent visit by The Courant, the gate was opened after security reviewed clearances for a reporter and two plant employees.

Another armed security officer was encountered at a guard booth, where access was halted by a large metal blockade.

When all was deemed safe, the SUV was permitted around the bend to the cask storage site, located three-quarters of a mile from the plant.

Two lines of fencing topped by barbed wire surrounded the 20-plus loaded casks sitting on the pad. The inner ring of fencing is wired, but Marston and Smith would not say if it's electrified. Warning signs and radiation measurement devices are also attached to the fencing.

Several anti-intrusion devices hover at multiple-angles above the compound, security features Connecticut Yankee does not want photographed.

Connecticut Yankee calls the dry, airtight casks "robust," designed to withstand such severe weather as "an earthquake greater than any experienced in Hadam Neck."

NAC International, the Georgia-based-company that designed and licensed the fuel storage casks, evaluated potential terrorist attacks involving a 747-sized aircraft and missile assaults, including anti-tank missiles.

During a 2003 presentation in Massachusetts, NAC senior vice president Charles W. Pennington stated the casks would withstand a 500-mile-per-hour impact with a 747. The cask would likely tip over but not spill radioactivity into the atmosphere, he said.

Fire caused by the crashed plane's fuel was estimated to heat to 1,500 degrees, markedly lower than the 2,600 degrees that would melt the stainless steel fuel canisters, the NAC report concluded.

Although the town is paid $1 million annually to store its spent fuel under a pact scheduled to end in six years, First Selectman Tony Bondi would prefer having the uranium gone.

"Haddam will be better served by having the fuel removed as soon as possible," Bondi said Friday.

Bondi, who visited the plant a month ago, said he is comfortable with the security in place and need for confidentiality.

"We're living in the age of terrorism," he said. "The wrong people might consume that information."

Bondi voiced concern that Connecticut Yankee security remains heightened and vigilant year after year.

Old Turnpike Road resident Sal Mangiagli, a local nuclear activist with the Citizens Awareness Network, also believes Haddam remains a potential target for terrorism.

Sophisticated terrorists, Mangiagli argues, could easily fly an explosive-laden small plane into a spent nuclear fuel pool at Connecticut Yankee. He considers the Haddam Neck plant extremely vulnerable.

"That's a poor man's cruise missile," Mangiagli said recently. "The spent fuel pools at reactor sites are lightly guarded, especially from the air."

The governor has not supported institution of no-fly zones over the Millstone and Connecticut Yankee plants.

Mangiagli charges the government tries to create a facade pointing to very robust and well-protected nuclear power plant sites. He is troubled the federal NRC no longer publicly reports on security gaps and subsequent actions taken against plant operators.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan counters the security blackout is justified because terrorists "could capitalize on that information."

Sheehan points out the NRC has never received any "credible threats" targeting any nuclear power plant sites.

Since the NRC licensed its first dry cask nuclear waste storage facility in Virginia in 1986, Sheehan said, his agency considers dry cask storage "acceptable" and safe.

"These dry cask storage facilities are in use at more than two dozen sites across the nation," Sheehan said. "To date, there have been no issues involving leakage or the integrity of these canisters."

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Las Vegas SUN
November 02, 2004

Candidates hoping Nevada helps tip the presidential election

By Adam Goldman
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) - An expectation of a close race Tuesday after the narrow outcome of 2000 has led to predictions that voters in battleground Nevada could play a key role in whether George W. Bush is re-elected or John Kerry becomes the 44th president of the United States.

With voter turnout at a record pace, the tightly contested race for Nevada and its crucial five electoral votes - one more than 2000 since redistricting - could be decided by the slimmest of margins after an intense campaign.

Like the rest of the country, Nevada was closely divided between the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and President Bush, a Texas Republican.

The political landscape changed dramatically in the four years since Nevada was a faint blip on campaign radar and presidential candidates spent little time targeting the state's electoral votes.

Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by a mere five electoral votes, illustrating the importance of even small swing states like Nevada.

Bush won the state in 2000 by 3.5 percentage points, grabbing 49.5 percent of the vote to Gore's 46 percent after Clinton had won Nevada in 1992 and 1996.

Voter registration reached a record high 1.1 million and was virtually even between Democrats and Republicans after efforts by more than 100 partisan and nonpartisan groups.

During the campaign, Bush and Kerry seized on issues important to the state's voters.

Kerry repeatedly pledged to block the federal proposal to build Yucca Mountain, a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002, angering Nevadans who said the president broke a previous promise to use "sound science" to make the decision.

Kerry hasn't let Nevadan voters forgot about the president's "broken promises" and an anti-Yucca plank was part of the national party's platform.

Bush touted his credentials as commander in chief during wartime and the state's robust economy that has rebounded since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Elko Daily Free Press

Free Press, Review-Journal supporting President Bush

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Like the nation, Nevada newspapers are closely divided when it comes to choosing either George W. Bush or Democratic challenger John Kerry for president.

Two newspapers, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Elko Daily Free Press, endorsed President Bush for a second term. Three others - the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Las Vegas Sun and the Nevada Appeal of Carson City - endorsed Kerry.

Editorial writers at the Reno and Carson City newspapers said the decision to pick Kerry over Bush wasn't easy.

"It was really a close call," said Steve Falcone, opinion editor for the Gazette-Journal. "To a large extent, it was the need for change, the thought that Kerry better reflects the country's values."

Barry Smith, editor of the Nevada Appeal, said the vote for Kerry rested with Yucca Mountain, the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"I think the bottom line for us was Yucca Mountain," Smith said. "There were strong opinions on both sides on the major issues of the war in Iraq and domestic policy. But we were unanimous that we agreed with Kerry's stance on Yucca Mountain."

Rhonda Zuraff, publisher of the Elko Daily Free Press, said the decision to go with Bush was not difficult.

"We have a real strong sense of the strength of his leadership, his consistent message and his common sense approach to managing natural resources," she said.

John Kerr, editorial page editor for the Review-Journal, also said the decision to support Bush's re-election was not close.

"We have generally favored the Republican-oriented market economic policy for more than a decade here," he said. "We felt he was a more resolute commander in chief on the war on terror."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 02, 2004

Cheney stops in Henderson, Reno in breakneck finale

Vice President Dick Cheney criticized John Kerry's record Monday and urged Republicans to help President Bush carry Nevada.

"As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on the pig, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig," Cheney said to a ticketed crowd of at least 600 supporters at Green Valley High School.

In visits to Henderson and Sparks on Monday, Cheney capped his whirlwind final days on the campaign trail with hopes that his seventh trip to the Silver State this year would be lucky for his boss. Cheney campaigned in Colorado before his Nevada stops and attended a final rally in Wyoming, his home state. Today he plans a stop in Wisconsin, another battleground state, on his way back to Washington.

Both major parties and outside groups canvassed voters and rallied their bases Monday, with Democrats relying on famous actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, and Republicans sticking with well-known political leaders like Cheney and Ariz. Sen. John McCain.

Each of the events stressed how tight the election is and how every vote matters. Still, Democrats and Republicans alike predicted their candidate would win Nevada's five electoral votes.

Cheney criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's recent statement that he wished to return to a time when terrorism was considered a nuisance along the lines of illegal gambling or prostitution.

The crowd, estimated by the campaign at 1,300, booed and Cheney asked: "When was terrorism only a nuisance?"

He then listed a series of terrorist attacks, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

"There never was a time when terror was just a nuisance," Cheney said. "Our goal isn't to reduce terror to an acceptable level, our goal is to defeat terror, and with George Bush as president, that's exactly what we'll do."

Cheney was interrupted by a protester inside the event just as he was about to introduce his wife and three granddaughters. The protester was taken out of the gym and arrested as the crowd chanted "Four more years."

"He's still got 24 hours to change his mind," Cheney said.

Outside the high school about two dozen Kerry supporters held signs and chanted "One more day." They brought a giant pink slip that read: "Fire Bush."

Two miles away at the painter's union headquarters, Sen. Harry Reid introduced DiCaprio and mentioned his favorite DiCaprio movie: "Catch Me if You Can."

Reid then cited several national polls that show the race deadlocked, or Kerry with a 1-point advantage.

"We have, today, finally caught them," Reid said.

Reid then questioned recent polls by the Review-Journal that showed Bush up 10 points or six points in Nevada.

"In spite of all they've tried to do editorially to skew the numbers, we're not only going to have John Kerry elected president of the United States, we're going to have John Kerry carry Nevada," Reid said.

DiCaprio spoke briefly, wearing jeans and a Kerry-Edwards T-shirt, before flying to appearances in New Mexico. He held large manila index cards with type-written notes pasted on them. His comments were boilerplate anti-Yucca Mountain.

"George Bush has made it crystal clear to Nevadans he wants to make Nevada a nuclear dumping ground," DiCaprio said. "I believe John Kerry's the only one who could solve this problem."

At the Cheney event, Secretary of State Dean Heller promised Bush would carry Nevada.

"I guarantee you that in my office, in December, we'll cast our five electoral votes for George Bush," Heller said.

McCain joked that he had several reasons for a return campaign trip to Nevada.

"I came here to get our money back, to get our water back and to re-elect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney," McCain said.

Heller and Republican Congressman Jon Porter each stressed the importance of every vote.

"There is no doubt that the race is close," Porter said. "Nevada can make the difference."

In Sparks later in the day, Cheney repeated his message that Bush is the best choice to lead the nation in an age of terror.

"With only a matter of hours remaining in the campaign, the choice facing the American people could not be more clear," Cheney said in his 25-minute speech to about 750 Bush-Cheney supporters at Sparks High School.

"This is no ordinary time for America," he said. "We have all seen the tape of Osama Bin Laden now. It is a reminder that we're engaged in a global war on terror. This is a conflict we did not choose but it is one that we will win."

The only unscripted event occurred when Cheney was discussing Iraq. Someone in the audience shouted, 'Why didn't we find any weapons of mass destruction?"

After the heckler was escorted out, Cheney repeated the joke he made in Las Vegas.

"Now he has 24 hours to change his mind."

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Las Vegas Review-Journal
November 02, 2004

John L. Smith: Today's the day when opinion polls get put to the reality test

Call it the last debate of the campaign.

It takes place not in a convention hall, but around the company coffee pot or water cooler.

Without filibuster or fanfare, let the debate begin with two intriguing survey results.

There's good news in Clark County for U.S. Sen. John Kerry, according to the latest Magellan Research presidential poll.

The bad news is, Nevada doesn't end at the Clark County line.

Kerry has vowed to stop the Yucca Mountain project, but he might be better off if he persuaded a few northern counties from voting. Kerry leads President Bush 49.5 percent to 45.8 percent in Clark County, according to Magellan polling guru Marvin Longabaugh. The advantage was anticipated given the county's traditional Democratic voter registration edge, but is a smaller percentage than Al Gore led Bush by in 2000, when he lost the state by less than 4 percent.

Will Kerry's advantage in Southern Nevada be enough to offset a rough road through the rurals?

Barring major computer glitches, we'll probably find out late tonight. With early voting gaining in popularity, voter registration at an all-time high, and a record turnout expected, the horse-race element of the campaign is more entertaining than ever before. Polls and pollsters occasionally butt heads and produce conflicting numbers sure to leave at least one expert red-faced come morning.

Magellan on Friday and Saturday sampled 600 regular Clark County voters in a two-question survey balanced by gender and political affiliation with consideration given to first-timers.

The first question: "If the General Election were held today, who would be most likely to receive your vote for President?"

Although Kerry carved a 3.7 percent advantage over Bush overall, Bush won the likely voters in the 45-to-54 age group by an impressive 51.5 percent to 43.6 percent. Of course, Kerry's supporters will probably say members of that age group voted for Bush because they were too old for the draft.

Women favor Kerry, 52.8 to 43.1 percent, according to the poll, and men favor Bush 48.9 to 45.8 percent.

The over-65 crowd likes Kerry best, 51.4 percent to 44 percent, perhaps because he has more gray hair. And 18-to-24 voters in Clark County are wild about the Massachusetts Democrat, favoring him 59.1 percent to 31.8 percent. The difference between the two groups is, the former traditionally votes far more reliably than the latter.

That's where voter turnout will be the big story of Campaign 2004. In a day, we'll all know just how effective the millions spent on voter registration really was.

Longabaugh says Kerry's relatively low advantage, "I think, probably bodes well for the president statewide." But he hedges his bet with two wild cards: the hard-to-track young and Hispanic voters. If they turn out in big numbers, Kerry could pull off an upset.

Not many years ago, the Magellan poll's second question would have been a no-brainer:

"Question 9 on the ballot asks that voters approve a small increase in sales taxes to provide 2,500 more police officers throughout Clark County. How do you plan to vote on this proposal?"

The increase is a quarter cent in 2005 with another quarter-cent kicker in 2009. Public safety is worth an extra half cent, right?

More recently, however, an under-organized police drive was defeated in Henderson. Adding intrigue this campaign season are conflicting Review-Journal surveys by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research of Washington, D.C., which have appeared to show support for the police issue tumbling fast. In September, Mason-Dixon gave the police question a comfortable 54-40 advantage, but last week the same experts showed support had slipped to 49-48.

Not so, according to Magellan.

Longabaugh's outfit shows the police measure winning in a blowout, 56.7 percent to 36.8 percent. And, remember, Magellan took a larger polling sample that Mason-Dixon, 600 to 385. Magellan was retained by Kent Oram, head of the well-funded More Cops group.

"It seems solid to me," Longabaugh says, but he adds that a "general fear of taxation" could make it close.

He's an expert, but at the water cooler on Election Day, so is everyone else.

- John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.

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Nevada Appeal
November 2, 2004

Cheney hits both ends of Nevada in election-eve bid for GOP votes

Scott Sonner

SPARKS - Vice President Dick Cheney capped Nevada's extraordinary campaign season Monday with an election-eve appeal to GOP faithful on both ends of the battleground state to repeat the tireless effort that helped President Bush win in 2000.

Democrats said Cheney's third trip to Republican-dominated Washoe County this year was a sign Democratic Sen. John Kerry had made significant inroads in traditional GOP strongholds like northern Nevada.

"This looks like Bush-Cheney country," Cheney told a packed gymnasium at Sparks High School Monday night, his seventh visit to Nevada and last stop on the way home to Wyoming for Tuesday's election.

"We have a great feeling about Nevada. With your help tomorrow, we're going to carry Nevada," he told the cheering crowd of more than 700.

"There's a great deal at stake in this election and I want to ask for your vote just as sincerely as I can," he said.

Earlier Monday, Cheney and his wife, Lynne, made a similar plea to about 1,000 backers at Green Valley High School in Henderson, part of what she said was the final leg of a 10,000 mile-trek over 24 hours to Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada and Wyoming.

The final stop in Nevada underscored the importance both parties were putting on the Western swing state's five electoral votes.

Kerry also made seven trips and President Bush four this year to Nevada, which has sided with the winner in all but one presidential election since 1912 - when President Ford carried Nevada but lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Former President Bill Clinton, who won Nevada twice, ex-presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark and former Texas Gov. Ann Richards were among the high profile Democrats who campaigned for Kerry over the weekend in Nevada.

Both major parties - each with about 40 percent of Nevada's 1.1 registered voters - were focussing attention Monday on a last-minute effort to get out the vote.

Nick Shapiro, western regional spokesman for the Democratic National Committee who has spent the past week in Reno, predicted Kerry would enjoy significant support from Republicans in Nevada.

"We are neck and neck in Republican territory," Shapiro said Monday night.

"The reason they are spending so much time here is the Bush campaign is figuring out that even in the traditionally Republican-stronghold of northern Nevada, the people are agreeing with John Kerry and John Edwards," he said.

"The people of Nevada understand that John Kerry is a leader who can provide them health care, can win the peace in Iraq and will not let Yucca Mountain happen," he said.

Outside Sparks High School Monday night, about 100 protesters carried signs that mostly focussed on the Bush administration's support for building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The national attention in the presidential race was helping fuel projections of record turnout Tuesday at the polls, where incumbents Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Reps. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jon Porter, R-Nev., all were favored to win re-election.

Gibbons, seeking a fifth term, rallied with Cheney at the high school Gibbons attended in the a blue-collar section of Sparks that began as a railroad town at the turn of the century. He introduced Cheney as "a Westerner just like us" and predicted Bush would carry Nevada again.

"Tomorrow, we are going to prove that we were right all along," said Gibbons, whose vast district covers all of Nevada except parts of Las Vegas and Clark County in the south.

Two women carried signs that read "Cowgirls for Bush-Cheney" and a country western band, the Comstock Cowboys, warmed the crowd up with tunes like "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "El Paso."

Cheney delivered much of his stock stump speech but also touched on some Western themes, pointing to his staunch support for gun rights and the Bush administration's defense for Nevada's mining industry operating primarily on federal lands.

He ridiculed what he said were attempts by Kerry to portray himself as a bold leader in the attack on terror, strong backer of the military and champion of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.

"As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on that pig, but at the end of the day, it's still a pig," Cheney said to loud cheers.

"That's my favorite line. You want to hear it again?" he asked the enthusiastic backers. They did, and he obliged.

He also made fun of the camouflage hunting jacket Kerry wore recently while hunting geese in Ohio.

"My personal opinion is his camo jacket was just an October surprise," Cheney said, part of an effort to "hide the fact he votes against gun owners every chance he gets."

"If you want my opinion, John Kerry's goose is cooked," he said.

The vice president's nearly half-hour speech in Sparks was interrupted so many times by screams and slogans from energetic backers that at one point he said, "Look, the election is tomorrow. We've got to get through this speech."

The only dissenting voice came from a critic who interrupted when Cheney was talking about the U.S. success in the war in Iraq, shouting, "Why didn't we find any weapons of mass destruction?"

Security escorted the man from the gym as Cheney said to cheers: "Treat him gently. He has 24 hours to change his mind."

Later, as the crowd chanted "Four More Years, one man shouted to Cheney, "I love you."

"Control yourselves," Cheney answered to laughs. He had to pause again near the end of his speech when the crowd's approval grew louder as he ticked off the sharp differences between Kerry and Bush on a host of issues.

"I'm almost through, but I could give the whole speech again," he said, as the crowd cheered. "That's a joke. I've got to get home tonight."

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Inyo Register
November 2, 2004

Yucca Mtn. issues mounting for Inyo

County concern over transportation, bad science grows as DOE presses for permit to store nuclear waste

By Jon Klusmire
The Inyo Register Staff

For a man talking about how to safely store the most dangerous, radioactive material on Earth, Dr. Russ Dyer was rather glib when he presented a quick overview of the progress being made on the Yucca Mountain Project.

While Dyer was outlining what appeared to be smooth sailing ahead for the high-level nuclear waste repository, Inyo County staff members and supervisors started looking a little seasick when it came to parts of the Yucca Mountain project that would directly affect Inyo County.

Yucca Mountain is located on the Nevada Test Site, about 15 miles east from Death Valley and Inyo County, which makes the county California's only 'Affected Unit of Government' eligible for federal funds to study and monitor the Yucca Mountain effort.

Dyer, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which is in charge of building the Yucca Mountain project, presented the rosy scenario for the project, while Inyo County officials are taking a tad darker view of the project's progress and brought to light several issues for which there don't seem to be ready answers.

Skimming over the first 20 years of controversy and court action concerning Yucca Mountain, Dyer said the DOE was still confident it could open the 'state-of-the-art' nuclear repository by 2010.

That assumption was based on getting a license for the facility from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and DOE is pressing ahead with submitting the license application by the end of 2004, Dyer said. That application 'only starts the process,' he noted, and it could be 2007 before final regulatory approval is achieved, if all goes well on the 'aggressive schedule' proposed by DOE.

Meanwhile, at the site, work is continuing. Dyer said seven miles of underground tunnels have been completed. Eventually, about 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods from the nation's nuclear power plants and military reactors will be stored in the tunnel system at Yucca Mountain, he said.

As for the long-term monitoring program for the nuclear waste, those decisions will be 'made by future generations' in the next 100 years or so, Dyer said.

'Transportation concerns me a bit,' noted Fourth District Supervisor Butch Hambleton, 'because it seems separate from the project.'

That is actually true, said Dyer, since, 'until you have a destination, there is no transportation project.' However, in anticipation of DOE being granted a license to store waste at Yucca Mountain, the agency has decided that about 95 percent of the nuclear waste slated for the site, which will come from nuclear power plants and facilities from across the nation, will be carried by rail. The Caliente Rail Corridor will be a new rail line running from Caliente, Nev., west and north around the Test Site, then cutting south to reach Yucca Mountain, Dyer pointed out.

That rail line doesn't appear to address Inyo County' s concerns that nuclear waste from California reactors and other states in the Southwest will have to be trucked to Yucca Mountain through Inyo County on State Route 127. 'That concerns me a lot,' said Hambleton. 'Who's going to build that road the state or DOE?' he asked.

Dyer said that decision is something Inyo County and the State of California will have to grapple with, since DOE will give transportation funding to the state, not individual counties.

'That sounds pretty bureaucratic,' commented Fifth District Supervisor Michael Dorame, adding, 'Inyo County will have to cut through the state bureaucracy to get any money' for either road improvements or training and equipment for first responders such as fire departments and the sheriff's department who patrol that stretch of the county.

While he remained silent during Dyer's presentation to the supervisors, Inyo County Yucca Mountain Project Assessment Coordinator Andrew Remus said afterward that, like most comments coming from the DOE on Yucca Mountain, Dyer's presentation was 'a generalized and happy affair' that left out the 'hard issues' faced by the Energy Department concerning the project.

Starting at the beginning, Remus said a recent court ruling tossed out DOE's design standards that were geared to creating a repository that was safe for 10,000 years. Thus, with those guidelines in question and possibly not usable, 'DOE has no standard to design around.' While that might be disconcerting to other agencies involved, DOE considers the court ruling 'not a big deal,' Remus noted.

But the NRC might think it's a big deal when that agency starts reviewing the Yucca Mountain license application. The NRC, at the least, will be in 'an awkward position' since it will be hard to judge the application against accepted design guidelines, said Remus.

The NRC is already concerned about the pending application, having found initial submittals are 'not up to snuff,' and has sent scientific reports and data back to DOE for additional clarification, he added. 'I'm not sure it's possible' to get that new information compiled and re-submitted by the Dec. 4 deadline, Remus said, since it represents years of study and scientific analysis.

There are also several 'big issues for Inyo County' that Dyer didn't get around to mentioning.

On the technical side, there are no guidelines in place regarding the possible corrosion standards for the nuclear storage canisters, said Remus. If water corrosion takes place, it could impact aquifers that reach into Death Valley. That the DOE is being allowed to go ahead with the license application without that critical component fully studied and documented, 'is a little disturbing,' he noted.

Another critical issue is how the county can spend its Yucca Mountain federal 'oversight funds.' It appears the DOE 'is not exactly sure what their recently issued guidelines actually mean,' wrote Remus and Planning Director Leslie Klusmire in a memo to the county Board of Supervisors concerning Yucca Mountain. It appears the county cannot use the federal funds to make comments or objections during the licensing process, the memo notes.

Of more concern is the DOE's claim that the oversight funds might not be able to be used for 'transportation-related activities.' That decision neglects how transportation studies and mitigation measures are 'intrinsic to the oversight function and supported by case law,' the memo notes.

Back on the ground, Remus pointed out there won't be a rail option working until 2015, but if Yucca Mountain opens as scheduled in 2010, there could be at least five years of truck shipments of nuclear waste though Inyo County, and possibly 10, if not longer, he said.

Plus, the state, not DOE, has to designate the highways and roads that will be used for waste shipments, something the state has yet to do, Remus said. Shifting the truck transportation issue to the state, 'lets DOE off the hook' concerning all the issues Inyo County could face if S.R. 127 is eventually designated as an alternate truck route to Yucca Mountain, he added.

Grants from DOE currently cover all of the county's current Yucca Mountain work, including Remus' salary and expenses and costs to other departments working on Yucca Mountain issues.

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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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