Las Vegas Sun: "Reid Caught in the Middle of Strip-voting Suit"

Reid caught in middle of Strip-voting suit

By Lisa Mascaro

Tue, Jan 15, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday continued to stay out of the debate over the 11th-hour legal challenge to the Democratic presidential caucus in Nevada, frustrating some and raising questions about where he stands.

Reid, the person most responsible for bringing the early caucus to Nevada, has not stood up for the state party that arranged the voter precincts now being challenged as unfair days before the election.

If a federal court shuts down the nine casino caucus sites, the party’s nominating efforts in Nevada could end in turmoil.

The head of the union that represents the workers who would caucus at the Strip casinos, D. Taylor, said over the weekend that the campaigns and Democratic officials should condemn the effort to dismantle the “at-large” precincts.

“Anything short of that will clearly be a sign that they obviously think it’s OK to disenfranchise voters,” he said.

But that failed to lure Reid into the debate. He says it’s for the court to decide.

Billy Vassiliadis, a state Democratic strategist and adviser to the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, said Reid “is obviously feeling like he’s caught in the middle.”

In Nevada and Washington, many see the suit as little more than a power grab by the supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton to disrupt the voting system that might favor Obama in the tiebreaking Nevada contest. Obama won the Iowa caucus and Clinton won the New Hampshire primary.

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http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/15/reid/

The institutional plaintiff is the Nevada State Education Association. It has committed to not formally endorse any candidate, but its high level members have endorsed Clinton. The NSEA's deputy executive director--Debbie Cahill--formed Clinton's Nevada Women’s Leadership Council. Her husband, John Cahill is an individual plaintiff in the suit.

The rules for the at-large locations were agreed to unanimously by the delegates to the Nevada Democratic Party on 3/31/2007. Four of the six named plaintiffs (Vicki Birkland, John Birkland, Dwayne Chesnut and John Cahill) attended that meeting and voted for the plan. The suit was filed only two days after the Culinary Union endorsed Obama.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/01/politics-as-usu.html