GOP Contenders Visit Rural Nevada

(NewsCore) - In Nevada, sparsely populated counties collectively called "the rurals" often help decide close races. That has sent Republican presidential aspirants hopscotching around the state this past week ahead of Saturday's caucuses.

The reason these outposts -- dotting hundreds of miles of desert and often including fewer than 10,000 residents -- are so important is that rural Nevadans tend to turn out for elections in droves, political observers say.

"They tend to be more involved in their local government than many people in the cities, because policies for ranching, mining and tourism affect them directly," said Wes Rice, chairman of the rural caucus for the Nevada Republican Party.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whom polls show in the lead for Saturday's caucuses, has courted the rurals by enlisting lawmakers from across Nevada, while deploying surrogates -- including his son Josh -- to attend events in Elko and elsewhere.

"There has to be a rural strategy" in Nevada, said Ryan Erwin, a senior Romney adviser. "The truth is, caucus voters are such a small group, you have to target them much more individually."

The other Republican candidates have rural strategies, too. On Thursday, Texas Rep. Ron Paul said at a rally in Elko that he opposed federal intervention to control wild-horse populations, a contentious issue among local ranchers. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum held a news conference in Fallon, east of Reno. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich canceled a planned Wednesday stop in Carson City amid what aides called a hectic travel schedule.

The rurals vote overwhelmingly Republican. In 2004, President George W. Bush's narrow victory over Sen. John Kerry in Nevada was determined by small-town voters. The president trailed Kerry by 6,704 votes in the state's two urban counties, Las Vegas' Clark County and Reno's Washoe County, but the 15 rural counties gave him a lead of 19,726 votes, according to state tallies.

The rurals occasionally help Democrats, too. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won re-election in 1998 by just 401 votes after one of the counties, Mineral, cast almost that many more votes for the Democrat than for his Republican challenger.

Other states have important rural constituencies that candidates court. But few are logistically as challenging as Nevada's. At 110,567 square miles, the state is almost twice the size of Iowa. About 13 percent of Nevada's population lives in rural areas.