Nevadan has dinner date with Obama

That’s what a Nevada man learned he won last week. Michael Griffith, a 34-year-old Fernley miner, was one of four Obama supporters selected to break bread with the Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate.

Griffith entered a contest on Obama’s Web site that offered campaign donors of as little as $5 the chance to be considered for the dinner, scheduled for July 10 in Washington, D.C. The campaign will pay for travel and accommodations for Griffith and the three others selected.

“I signed up for his Web site to support him, and when I saw the contest, I thought I’d try it,” Griffith said. “He’s the one I want to win. So I gave him $25, and I won.”

It was Griffith’s second $25 donation to Obama. He also has Obama’s recent book, “The Audacity of Hope,” and attended the candidate’s rally in Reno last month.

“He doesn’t seem to be divisive or playing politics like the other ones are, even on the Democratic side,” Griffith said.

Griffith works as a plant operator for EP Minerals, mining diatomite in Northern Nevada. The substance, essentially fossilized algae, has uses ranging from cleaning up chemical spills to filtering beer.

The Obama campaign wouldn’t say exactly how many people entered the contest, but spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it was “thousands.” The other winners are a food bank worker in the Bronx, a Louisiana nursing student whose husband is serving in Iraq and a Florida paramedic firefighter who used to be a Republican.

“This dinner is about hearing from the everyday experts like Michael on how we can work together to change the problems like our broken health-care system and the need to give a helping hand to the people who need it most,” Obama said in a statement.

A California native, Griffith has a 4-year-old son and a daughter on the way in August. He hopes to tell Obama about the issues his father, a disabled veteran, faces with the Veterans Administration. Griffith said he doesn’t expect to be too intimidated by Obama’s star power.

“I think he’ll put everybody at ease,” Griffith said. “He seems to be able to do that pretty easily.”

GUNNING FOR REID

With national approval ratings as low as 19 percent in one poll, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid probably has plenty of Republicans licking their chops, even though he doesn’t run for re-election until 2010.

University Regent James Dean Leavitt confirmed last week that he is one of those pondering a run against Reid these days.

Leavitt, a Republican, has experience knocking off incumbents. He beat then-Regent Tom Kirkpatrick when he was elected to the Board of Regents in 2004.

Leavitt said he’s far from making up his mind.

“Harry Reid’s done a good job, and he’s a tough candidate, but someone has to do it,” he said.

Leavitt’s day job is as a Las Vegas criminal defense lawyer. He has operated his own law practice since 1994. As a regent, he’s best known for publicly sparring with Chancellor Jim Rogers, including requesting Rogers’ resignation earlier this year.

Rogers resigned, then took it back.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said, “No one has delivered more for Nevada than Senator Reid. Because of him, Yucca Mountain will never be built, taxes have been cut for the middle class, and we just passed an energy policy with Nevada’s working families in mind.

“The election is three years away, and Senator Reid is focusing on building on his accomplishments for Nevada and for the country.”

MABEY, MABEY NOT

Last year, Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, was contemplating running against Harry Reid. Now, he says, that is out of the question. In fact, Mabey said last week, it’s unlikely he’ll run for re-election to the Assembly.

Mabey said the odds are “about 80-20 I won’t run,” although he won’t decide for sure until the end of the summer.

The good-natured gynecologist just completed his first term as leader of the badly outnumbered Assembly Republicans to mixed reviews. Critics said he didn’t keep his caucus together, and the party’s vocal conservative base saw him as too willing to join forces with Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, and the Democrats.

“I think I had a great session. It has nothing to do with that,” Mabey said. “I was able to do the things I wanted to do. But I’ve got my practice. I’m doing clinical research. Taking four months out of it, that’s hard. And my family is tired of me being in Carson City.”

Mabey said his proudest accomplishments in the 2007 session, his third, were securing a $200,000 grant and new licensing rules to operate a free clinic staffed by volunteer and retired physicians, and closing a loophole in the state’s good Samaritan law so that it extends to emergency obstetrical care.

Mabey said he loves the legislative process but isn’t so fond of the vicious, oppositional nature of partisan politics.

“I had a great relationship with everyone up there (in Carson City), give or take a couple. I get along with people. I love people,” he said. “That’s the part that I enjoy about the Legislature.”

But flying back to Las Vegas to see patients every Saturday and go to church every Sunday was exhausting, he said.

“My son, for his birthday present, said, ‘I want a Lego set, and second, please don’t run for any political office for a while.'”

The youngest of Mabey’s five children, Jacob, is 11.

RULING THE WEST

Powerhouse Nevada advertising and government relations firm R&R Partners continues its widening plot for eventual world domination.

R&R announced last week it’s teaming up with two other Western firms to create the WestNet Alliance, which will be based in Washington, D.C., and serve as a one-stop shop with a presence in 10 Western states.

Founded in Las Vegas in 1974, R&R today is best known for the “What happens here, stays here” promotional campaign for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. In addition to Las Vegas, the firm has offices in Reno, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C.

The other two members of the partnership are Denver-based Phase Line Strategies Inc. and the Gallatin Group, which has offices in Seattle and Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Boise, Idaho; and Helena, Mont.

R&R’s Pete Ernaut, who is based in Reno, was in Washington last week to visit R&R’s expanding office there — it now has five people — and help launch WestNet.

The idea behind the alliance, he said, is to “address what we believe was where government affairs and issue management are headed in this country. There’s going to be an increasing emphasis on Western issues as the demographics of the country are beginning in large part to move to the intermountain states.”

With the Rust Belt emptying and the Sunbelt booming, corporations will need help with Western-specific public policy, primarily land-use issues, while political campaigns and parties will have to better understand the independent-minded voters of states that tend to swing between the two parties.

The Eastern elites of the Washington establishment don’t fully grasp the dynamic out here, but they’re increasingly realizing that they’re going to have to, Ernaut said. “It’s an inescapable conclusion now that Western issues will become important over the next decade.”

DASKAS IS INTERESTED

Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas confirmed last week that he’s one of the shifting cast of Democrats thinking about running in 2008 for the 3rd Congressional District seat held by Rep. Jon Porter.

“It’s my home. My wife and I are raising two kids there. I’m affected by the issues of the district,” Daskas said. “I’m certainly looking at it very closely.”

Daskas in 2004 prosecuted the second murder trial of Sandy Murphy, the former stripper who was accused of killing her boyfriend, casino mogul Ted Binion, in 1998. Murphy and her lover, Rick Tabish, were acquitted of the killing.

Daskas now is prosecuting Kelly Ryan and Craig Titus, the bodybuilders accused of killing a former assistant, and is a co-prosecutor in the case of Darren Mack, accused of killing his estranged wife and shooting and injuring the Reno Family Court judge who handled their divorce.

Whether he runs for Congress will depend on timing. “I would have to find sufficient time without abandoning my commitment to the victims of the cases I’m prosecuting,” he said.

Democrats nationally are targeting Porter, who has held the seat since it was created in 2002.

Voter registration is nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans in the district.

Review-Journal writer Lawrence Mower contributed to this report. Contact political reporter Molly Ball at 387-2919 or MBall@reviewjournal.com.