I’ll be on the air with Mike Porcaro in half an hour. I’ll be referring the audience to this web site, in order to access these links:
Sen. Nathan Glaser, R. Elko
There’s a reason Cruz won Elko. This was Sen. Nathan Glaser’s district, and he and other Nevada state legislators led the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 70’s. There are today any number of Nevada state legislators who are passionate about getting the BLM out of Nevada. They feel strongly enough that they would have publicly endorsed Cruz’s position on federal lands transfers. This would have given Cruz the credibility on this issue that he needed. He was trying to sing the song, but doesn’t hear the music.
If Cruz does have a phone conference with the legislative leaders of WY and AK he’ll get the credibility that escaped him in NV. If he doesn’t I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I should just go and plant my garden.
Wyoming and Alaska are not Nevada
There’s a vast difference. WY and AK, unlike NV, are heavily dependent on the oil and gas industry, and they’re suffering. The AK Pipeline is running at 25%, and half of Alaska’s operating budget will be coming from cash reserves. Wyoming will be making a major withdrawal from its cash reserves in order to fund the government.
These people are desperate for hope. Expanded oil and gas development on lands now held by the feds is the only way out of the box they find themselves in.
In Nevada the economic impact of federal land ownership is tiny by comparison. Cruz may have succeeded in getting the message out, but it just may not be very important to most Nevadans.
It’s different in AK and WY.
What’s the matter with Elko?
Cruz won Elko and Lincoln counties with 44 and 45% of the vote. He got crushed everywhere else. Why the disparity? I don’t know Nevada that well, but the results in Elko resemble what I was hoping for in the rest of rural Nevada. Why did it work in Elko and virtually nowhere else? He personally appeared in Elko. His message on public lands got through there, and it worked.
People in Nevada, like everywhere else in this country, don’t believe anything any politician says. But in Elko, Cruz was believed on the public lands issue and he won 44 to Trump’s 24 and Rubio’s 21. He got as many as Trump and Rubio combined. When Cruz talked directly to the people of Elko on this issue, he was believed. Just to the west of Elko is Lander County. Battle Mountain is the only town of any size. It bills itself as “Basecamp to Nevada’s Outback”. They promote a peculiar kind of tourism, one that’s not for the faint of heart. This should be prime country for the public lands message. It went Trump 40, Cruz 36 and Rubio 17. The message almost got through there. There’s no other explanation, at least that I’m aware of, for the disparity between Elko, Lander, and the rest of rural Nevada.
In the rest of the state, his message either didn’t get through or was not believed. I hope to God the Cruz campaign does in Alaska, Colorado, and Wyoming what it should have done in Nevada: have a serious, substantive discussion with the legislative leadership and the Governor on the federal lands transfer. I’ve had such discussions in both states. They need to have a meeting and it has to be publicized. People in Alaska and Wyoming, at least, know enough about their elected officials to know that, when it comes to public lands issues, they are speaking for the state as a whole.
The message that Cruz took to Elko works. For some reason, people there believed him. His campaign in the Far West needs to figure out how to communicate the public lands message. Repetition, repetition, repetition. You have to drive it home. Cruz needs to double down on this message, because, initially at least, he’s not trusted. He’s a fancy pants Harvard lawyer. What does he really know about Wyoming, or Alaska, or rural Nevada?
The message will get through in Alaska. Senate Majority Leader John Coghill is ready, willing and able to put a meeting together for Cruz with the legislative leadership. Wyoming Speaker Brown, Senate President Nicholas, and Governor Mead are expecting Ted Cruz to talk personally to them. All Cruz’s campaign has to do is call Mead’s office, and he’ll set up the meeting.
At this meeting he will not be expected to talk. He just needs to listen. These people know a way lot more than Cruz when it comes to this issue. He’s going to learn a lot, and it’s knowledge that can be put to good use.
Cruz will need to get the message out himself. The media won’t help him. At a Vegas rally Monday night, Trump honestly admitted that, on the public lands issue, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This was not widely reported. Few people are even aware of it. On the issue that Cruz made the centerpiece of his Nevada campaign, Trump had been made a fool of, as he basically acknowledged. But this is not news, because Trump also threatened to punch someone in the face. That’s the story out of that rally. This is deliberate. The entire world of bigfoot journalism dislikes and fears Cruz, and is rooting for Rubio. Some of them hate Cruz so much they’ll promote Donald Trump, of all people. It’s a fact he has to deal with.
Getting crushed as he did almost everywhere in Nevada means his campaign, in general, is malfunctioning. He got rid of his communications director, Rick Tyler, at long last. There’s a perception, which began in Iowa with Carson, that Cruz is a dirty campaigner. The Carson thing was a result of a screw up by Rep. Steve King, who was too important to dump on. But these guys need to get their heads screwed on right. Sneaky campaign tricks aren’t going to cut it.
Whatever value there was in going easy on Trump no longer applies. Republicans across the country are sick of Cruz and Rubio attacking each other, and giving Trump a pass. Cruz needs to forget about Rubio, and go full bore on the Donald. There’s a wealth of material to work with.
It’s either game on, or game over.
You only see what they show you
The media bias against Cruz is a sight to see. Last night at a rally Trump did two things that were interesting. The first, a threat to punch somebody in the face, dominated the news. The second, the confession of ignorance by Trump about federal land transfers, was ignored.
The Cruz ad on this issue clearly got under his skin. He was wild, crazy, calling Cruz the worst liar he’s ever known. And then he says, with reference to public lands, that it’s something he doesn’t know anything about. He knows the statements he made to Field and Stream on land transfers were a mistake, politically. But he can’t take them back, or admit they were a mistake. So he pleads ignorance. That’s his excuse.
This is news, serious news. Public lands issues are a very big deal in Nevada. When 85% of your state is under the control of an absentee pack of environmental activists in D.C. it gets your attention. It’s not just the ranchers like Clive Bundy. It’s snowmobilers, and four wheelers, and dirt bikers, and hunters, and every other kind of manly activity that the guys of Nevada like to do. It’s the same thing in Alaska. You come to hate the federal government. And Trump acknowledges he knows nothing about any of this. In Nevada, for Trump, if it’s not air conditioned, he knows nothing.
Exposure of all this would hurt Trump, but it’s not newsworthy because it would help Cruz. I hope Rush or Levin picked up on this.
All the weisskopfs say Trump wins Nevada big. I’m very glad to hear that. That’s the expectation, a big Trump win, and much speculation about what second and third will mean, and for who.
I think if Cruz pulls in the vast majority of votes in non-Vegas Nevada he should take heart. Losing Vegas is not that big a deal. Vegas is a very weird town, politically, unlike any other in the country. Politically, it’s an outlier. The rest of Nevada is like the rest of the Far West — Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, western Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and the eastern California, Oregon and Washington. In every one of these states or regions the message that Cruz took to Nevada works like a charm. And its repetition will make it stronger. He’ll carry the same message on March 7th to the Idaho panhandle, the most militantly conservative place in the country. There’s a reason these guys are so pissed off. They have to put up with a bunch of panty waists in D.C. who control their land.
These guys are like my son Darren in Montana. He sent me a T shirt, which I wear once in a while. It’s got the emblem of the Forest Service on it, except it reads, “Forest Circus. Department of Uselessness.”
Now maybe you understand what I’m talking about.
reaganproject.blog 