Once upon a time — say, way back in 2004 — overwhelming Republican Party support in rural Nevada offset the Democratic advantage in densely-populated Clark County. Swing county Washoe, Nevada’s second most populous, often determined who won statewide campaigns. John Kerry won Clark County in 2004 by a less-than comfortable 5-point margin while George W. Bush won every other county in the state — Washoe by 4 points and rural counties by up to a 4-to-1 margin.

Fast-forward to 2008. Barack Obama lost the rural counties (but had a better showing than Kerry), improved his margins in Clark County, and flipped Washoe. Postgame analysis is far from over in the state, but one early question is emerging: Do the rurals still matter?

Obama fought hard for the rural counties, visiting Elko three times and drawing out the few liberals hiding in the shadows. John McCain, who finished third in Nevada’s Republican caucuses, wasn’t helped by lukewarm support among conservatives in the state, many of whom were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain. Most expected the rurals to play their usual role in helping determine who would win the state’s five electoral votes, but the Las Vegas Sun reports that “even if Obama had not gotten a single vote in the 14 counties outside Clark, Washoe and Carson City, and even if all of his votes had gone to McCain instead, he still would have carried the state.”

“I said in 2004, this may very well be the last statewide election where rurals can leverage the vote,” Elko Republican Party Chairman Reece Keener told the Sun. “We just don’t have the pull that we once did.”

In a close election, every state and every voter matters. Had Kerry won Nevada, he would have won the White House. Given Obama’s electoral vote drubbing of McCain, the Democrat didn’t need to win Nevada (or Colorado or New Mexico.) Similarly, his 12-point victory in Nevada meant he didn’t need the rurals any more than he needed any other specific subset of voters.

But by 2012 (or even the 2010 midterm elections, when the governorship, one Senate seat, and all the House seats are up for grabs), who’s to say Nevada Latinos will vote as overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates or at all? Maybe the slim voter registration edge enjoyed by Democrats in Washoe will reverse itself or turnout in Clark County will fall from the heights seen this year.

If the blue wave continue across Nevada, the rurals likely won’t matter in statewide campaigns as witnessed this year. But on a local level, the gun-loving ranchers and miners in rural communities will continue to dominate and could resist shifting blue themselves. It could all depend on how the new Democrats in power choose to govern.

“When we start to see some of the new programs coming out of Washington, it’s going to really galvanize things for us,” Keener said in the Sun.

Or maybe the blue waters will wash across the rural counties, too.

“When people see we are not radicals who shut down mines and take away their guns and we go out and fix the economy, things switch,” Lance Whitney, chairman of Elko’s Democratic Party told the Sun. “People’s minds switch.”

Reno to Elko

From the Siena Hotel Spa Casino in Reno to the Red Lion Hotel & Casino in Elko.

Distance: 291 miles
Time: 3 hours, 43 mins
Images shot: 1,084

Elko to Las Vegas after the jump

Elko to Las Vegas

From the Red Lion Hotel & Casino in Elko to the Grandview at Las Vegas.

Distance: 480 miles
Time: 7 hours, 5 mins
Images shot: 783
Of note: at 15 secs, stopped for road work; 48 secs, stopped for speeding ticket

*Images shot with Canon PowerShot A710 running CHDK hack, compiled into video using QuickTime Pro.

State Assemblyman Lynn D. Stewart, who represents the 22nd District which includes parts of Henderson, rallied the small crowd of about 15 supporters, saying, “one of the reasons Republicans don’t show up to rallies is because they’re at work.”

In a particularly curious observation — funny no matter your politics — Stewart bemoaned the fact that the good name of Mickey Mouse was besmirched in a bogus voter registration scandal: “Mickey Mouse is not a Democrat, he’s a Republican,” he said.

After the rally, I spoke to one of the tours organizers and speakers, conservative radio host and pundit Mark Williams, about the size of the crowd. “We like the smaller, more enthusiastic crowds,” he said, noting a major goal of the tour is to rally the base to get active in their communities to help counterbalance Obama’s enthusiastic army.

Williams took issue with the “liberal thuggery” of sites like DailyKos, and took particular offence at a posting about one of their previous rallies. He accused the poster of making up quotes and calling the people gathered racists.

Since I was at the event in questions, I agree with some of his criticisms of the DailyKos account. With the exception of one or two people, the crowd was quite cordial and not particularly cranky. The reference to “stealing my big-screen TV” seemed to be an attempt by Williams to offer a tangible take on the argument of “I earned it, I should get to keep it.” The nurses have an honest philosophical question to argue here — what’s more important, another TV or universal healthcare — but I didn’t interpret Williams comment as a racist allusion. 

The nurses also claim to have stumbled upon the “Stop Obama” bus, but if that’s the case, did the also just happen to show up to the rally in Henderson this morning as well? And if you’re gonna attack a guy, you could at least spell his name right.

As for the angry McCain supporter who cursed and screamed at people on the bus, per the posting, I didn’t witness it, but I don’t doubt it and know just which man they’re talking about. He’s the same one that told me that, as a reporter, I must be “in the tank” for Obama and became more enraged when he heard I’m from — gasp — southern California.

Before the bus left from Henderson, a local McCain supporter gave tour staffers McCain/Palin signs and bumper stickers to pass out at future stops and stuck around long enough to offer her take on how the campaign is playing out in Clark County.

J. “Sage” Bocook is the founding president of the Las Vegas Pachyderm Club and director of the auxiliary branch of Veterans in Politics International. A recent transplant to North Las Vegas, Bocook said she first became active in Republican politics 42 years ago “working with my dad for a guy named Ron Reagan running for governor of California.”

She acknowledges a lot of conservatives aren’t in love with John McCain, and some of the people working hardest to get him elected are former supporters of Hillary Clinton. In defiance of conventional wisdom and despite Democrat’s significant registration edge, Bocook thinks McCain can win Clark County. She thinks there may be as many people “voting against Obama’s socialist regime as voting for McCain.”

Asked which issues are most important to her, she immediately responded our country’s military strength and the treatment of our servicemen and women. “My family has been involved with the military here since 1775 in the Virginia militia,” she said.

Bocook also told me she believes Obama may be an “Islamic Trojan horse.” I ask if she means: a) His foreign policy wouldn’t be as aggressive as McCain’s and could include making certain concessions to the Muslim world; or, b) That he’s in league with terrorists.

“Our country was attacked [on 9-11] by sleeper cells looking like normal people, Trojan horses. We have to be watchful,” she said.

So does this mean she thinks Obama is Muslim?

“I do see from my reading of Sharia law that if you are lying in the name of Allah, that’s a good thing… he calls himself a Christian now, but I don’t know,” she said.

For our readers, a different perspective from a rural conservative: I asked John Norton in Elko after yesterday’s rally what he thinks of claims Obama is Mulsim. He called those rumors “bogus” and accepted that Obama is a Christian. “He’s not a Muslim, but he’s a liberal,” Norton said. “And that’s why I won’t vote for him.”

Elko residents come out to ‘Stop Obama’

The “Stop Obama Tour” kicked off Wednesday with rallies in Sacremento and Reno. In Elko, speakers questioned Obama’s experience, stoked fears that the Democratic candidate will raise taxes and strip people of their gun rights if elected, criticized the media for its coverage of the campaign, and offered ringing endorsements of McCain and Sarah Palin.

The Our Country Deserves Better political action committee, headed by former California state assemblyman Howard Kaloogian (who launched the successful campaign to recall California’s Democratic governor Gray Davis in 2003), is funding the tour that is scheduled to make close to 40 stops across the country before ending in Washington, D.C. Organizers are calling on average Americans to submit resumes online or at their rallies, and plan on selected the best three to show that ordinary Americans are more qualified to lead this country than Obama.

Conservative columnist and radio host Mark Williams said Barack Hussein Obama, “because that is his full name,” sounded like a late night infomercial spokesman in his stump speeches and debate performances.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do as president, but first send me money,” Williams said in his Obama-as-infomercial-salesman impression. To pay for Obama’s lofty plans will require raising taxes on the hard-earned money of blue collar Americans like those in Elko’s ranching and mining community, he said.

Deborah Johns, who the PAC’s website describes as “one of [Fox News Channel's] favorite military moms,” spent most of her speech emphasizing Obama’s lack of qualifications to head the American military when compared with veteran McCain.

A McCain supporter listens to ‘Marine Mom’ Deborah Johns

“Barack Obama is not even worthy to shine the shoes of John McCain,” Johns said. But she also hit Obama on economic issues, telling the two dozen supporters gathered at the rally that he would be “nothing more than a modern day Robin Hood.”

After the rally, local attorney and small business owner Grant Gerber, whose family has lived in the area for more than 100 years, told me the economy and likelihood of tax increases under an Obama administration have him most concerned, calling Obama’s economic plan a “redistribution of wealth” that smells of socialism.

A Vietnam vet who attained the rank of Captain in the Special Forces, Gerber said he wouldn’t want Obama as his commander in chief.

Gerber conceded that Obama looks to have more local support than George W. Bush, who carried Elko County with 80 percent of the vote in 2004. But he bemoaned some of the national media stories with Elko datelines as inaccurate because they “make it appear that the area is becoming an Obama hot spot.”

John Norton, a Washington, D.C. transplant who’s lived in Elko County for 16 years, thinks Democrats might carry 30 percent of the vote this time around. He attributes the rise in support for Obama in part to biased media coverage. “The press in this country – except for Fox News – is very liberal,” he said.

Gerber concurred, noting that even the local paper, once family-owned and unabashedly conservative, has become increasingly more liberal than the community it serves after being sold to a larger media conglomerate.

Media bias isn’t only limited to liberal leanings, Gerber said, but a pessimistic attitude that only highlights negative or sensationalistic stories. “Reporters only write what they think will get printed,” he said.

The most egregious example he’s found is coverage of the rest of the world’s opinion of America. “The national media is not telling the truth. They say middle easterners hate Americans, but it’s not true,” Gerber said. He recently spent two years on a Latter Day Saints humanitarian mission in Egypt working on water projects and providing medial training and equipment to impoverished communities, and says the vast majority of people he encountered had nothing but good things to say about America.

Norton also criticized Obama as being too much of an internationalist who is “acting like he wants to be president of the world.” Obama is an attractive and gifted speaker, a modern-era John Kennedy, Norton said, but even though “McCain might not be as well spoken, you don’t vote on that.”

A self-proclaimed history buff who studied the subject at BYU, Norton thinks too many voters don’t know their country’s history or give the founding fathers’ ideas their due. He also bemoans the popular opinion that higher education or intelligence must inherently lead to liberal values. “If you voice a conservative point of view, they think you’re ignorant,” he said.

On the issue of experience, Williams said Joe Biden would serve as Obama’s “training wheels.” He rebutted questions of Palin’s experience by suggesting that unlike Obama who would be learning from his lietenent, Palin would have a master hand at the wheel in McCain.

And for many who thought McCain wasn’t conservative enough, it was Palin who shored up their support. A lot of people in Elko didn’t immediately embrace McCain, said Norton. “People were waiting for the McCain/Palin signs before putting up signs,” he said.

Also at the rally, Singer-songwriter Lloyd Marcus performed a song he wrote about Sarah Palin and led the crowd in singing “Proud to Be an American” in honor of the veterans in attendence. “Would this happen at a liberal rally? I don’t think so,” he said.

Lloyde Marcus’ tribute to Sarah Palin, ‘Sarah Smile’

When a pro-Obama bus rolled into the parking lot of the rally, it looks like things could get ugly. The National Nurses Organizing Committee’s “Grade the Candidates” bus looked to be egging on McCain supporters, pulling right up to the “Stop Obama” bus, but it hung around for just a few minutes before driving off.

Pro-Obama nurses egg on the McCain supporters

Some suggest tensions are high in Elko, but Norton thinks most people get along at the end of the day. Though he does admit that “there might be a little more testiness” this time around.

That testiness was on display before the rally began when a man whose cowboy hat was littered with pro-McCain and anti-Obama buttons tried to shoe off an Obama supporter sitting on the far side of the parking lot holding an Obama sign. “Get out of here, you bastard,” he shouted, before turning his attention on me.

“You people [the media] are in the tank for Obama,” he shouted.

Ironically, the Obama supporter was telling me he’s had mostly cordial discussions with coworkers and the pro-Obama signs on his block haven’t been tampered with before the man tried to run him out of the park.

ELKO, Nev. — When Mable Kite decided to get involved in a political campaign for the first time in her life, she jumped right into the deep end. She organized her local caucus, served as an Obama precinct captain, provided room and board for out of town Obama staffers and volunteers since primary season, hosted several debate watching parties, and says she’s “beat on doors and made phone calls ad nauseam.”

“If I didn’t give a damn about anyone else, I might think about being a Republican,” Mable said. “The working person is silly to be a Republican.”

Most of the 14 people gathered in the Kite home to watch the third debate Wednesday offer similar reasons for why they’re Democrats. They like taxes no more than anyone else, but believe that we’re all responsible for paying for the infrastructure of this country. They don’t think it’s fair for huge corporations to take advantage of a tax breaks designed to help small businesses like family farms, and are appalled at the pay gap between executives and average workers. They believe the government should help the working class and poor with tax relief, affordable healthcare, and access to higher education.

“I can’t afford the health insurance [for my employees], but we provide it,” said Duane Jones. He runs a family-owned retail shop in town, and knows first hand the difficulty of being a small business owner in a down economy.

“I took a second job so we could pay for it,” his wife, Delynn, added.

Delynn is a fourth-generation Elko County resident whose entire family is “dyed-in-the-wool Republican.” She said she’s been able to convince her sister to vote for Obama after bringing her to one of his campaign stops in town and is close to winning over her brother. “They talk Democratic values, but they think they have to vote Republican,” she said.

First campaign office by a Democratic presidential nominee in Elko, Nev.

When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson came through town stumping for Obama, he claimed the Illinois senator – who has made three stops in this conservative stronghold since the primaries – was the first Democratic presidential nominee to visit Elko in more than 50 years, Delynn said. And the state Democratic Party chairman was quoted in a local paper saying Obama is the first Democratic nominee to open a field office in Elko ever.

No one thinks Obama will win Elko County – where Bush had his highest level of support in the state, beating John Kerry 4-to-1 in 2004 – but the energy behind the Obama campaign and general dissatisfaction with the current administration has emboldened local Democrats and people leaning in that direction.

“For the first time in my life, the Democrats are willing to claim they’re Democrats,” Delynn said.

“It’s still a tough community for anyone to not be a Republican in,” Duane said. He supports Obama, but has stopped short of posting signs in his store windows for fear of losing business, noting Elko residents can be vindictive.

Pictures of her grandkids line the walls and countertops in the Kite home, and two stuffed Elk heads are mounted on the wall in the family room, evidence of successful hunting trips taken by her husband, Russell. Crosses and religious art abound, and a Catholic study bible sits atop a desk adjacent to the dining room table. Mable said the most flack she’s taken for supporting Obama has probably been from members of her church.

People who once were friendly have become less so after learning of her political leanings. “They think, ‘Oh, she supports Obama, she must be a baby killer,’” Mable imagines, noting that their new priest got in a lot of trouble from parishioners after attending an Obama rally.

Mable believes in the right to choose, and doesn’t think it’s right to force her morality on anyone else. But personally, she would encourage other options for women seeking her advice, and takes offense at the notion that pro-choice equals pro-abortion. She liked when Obama made the distinction in Wednesday’s debate, telling me afterward, “No one is pro-abortion.”

Unlike the Kites and Joneses, Jane Buckovich has not been a lifelong Democrat. Born in Mexico, she first settled in the Unites States in Elko when she was 13, then spent years living in Texas and California. She’s been back in Elko for 8 years, and voted for Bush in 2000 but not 2004.

About a month ago, someone from Obama’s local office contacted her and asked if she’d like to get involved in the campaign. She’s been canvassing and phone banking, mostly to members of the Latino community. “I convince them in Spanish,” she said.

While part of the Obama campaign’s Nevada strategy centers on reducing the Republican margins in rural areas – say by shooting for 2-to-1 losses rather than 4-to-1 – by winning over people like Jane, local Democrats are simply relishing the opportunity to come out from under rocks.

The Kites and Joneses are a perfect example of what it was to be a Democrat before the Obama campaign rolled into town. The former neighbors lived across the street for years, but each family assumed the other had to be Republican. After all, Duane was a business owner and Russell was “an old fart,” Duane said.

More signs are popping up supporting Democratic candidates (though they often don’t last long before being stolen, Obama supporters claim) and local gatherings like this debate watching party are giving the black sheep of Elko their own political community.

During the debate, some of the loudest cheers and applause came when Obama went on the defensive. The guests thought he addressed the Ayers and ACORN questions with grace and laughed when he said, “Even Fox News disputes it,” when McCain alleged Obama raised taxes on people making $40,000 a year. They like that their candidate is sticking up for himself, and are taking the opportunity to defend their own right to be Democrats in a sea of Republicans.

Before he leaves, I ask Duane if he’d prefer I not use his name when writing about their gathering since he repeatedly made reference to fears of losing business for his political views.

Duane thinks about it for a split second, then says it’s okay, telling me, “I’m not hiding anymore.”

A cutout of Barack Obama at a Mexican Independence Day celebration in Denver last month (Getty Images)

New Mexico took center stage over the weekend on a 20-minute segment — New Voters in the New West — on NOW in PBS. Reporter Maria Hinojosa calls New Mexico “the battleground of battleground states” as she follows both campaigns’ efforts in the state. The report focuses on young voters and Latinos.

In 2004, Republicans won the state by just shy of 6,000 votes. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who campaigned for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and is trying to deliver the state in November for Sen. Barack Obama told Hinojosa, “Senator Kerry is still mad at me.”

Obama has 39 field offices in the state compared to 10 for McCain and 6 for Kerry last cycle. The PBS report tries to run against conventional wisdom, following around a group of college-aged McCain supporters and highlighting lingering concerns among the usually Democratic-leaning Latino community.

“It’s risky for Obama’s campaign to assume that we’re going to vote Democrat just because we’re registered Democrat,” community activisit Arturo Uribe said. Uribe, who is seen encouraging community members to register to vote but not backing a candidate in the report, said race, religion, and other factors mean Obama can’t take the Latino community for granted. He also said some Latinos worry that with an African-American president, blacks would become the “preferred minority.”

“I’d rather go with the old man,” one middle aged Latino man told a group of Obama canvassers. “He’s got the experience.”

In a poll of New Mexico voters conducted last week for the Albuquerque Journal, “62 percent of Hispanics surveyed favored Obama, while 17 percent backed McCain and 21 percent were undecided.” Brian Sanderoff, president of the firm that conducted the poll, estimated that Bush carried up to 38 percent of the Latino vote in the state in 2004. Among all likely voters polled,Obama is ahead of McCain 45 to 40 percent.

In Colorado, where Latinos are expected to account for more than 10 percent of voters for the first time and could thus determine who carries the state, a recent poll has Obama ahead of McCain among Latino voters 68 to 26 percent.

The Obama campaign’s registration and get out the vote efforts are bolstered by nonprofit groups that target low income communities, including many that are predominately Latino. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a coalition of groups targeting low income families, announced today that it exceeded goals in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico in its voter registration efforts with Project Vote.

A subset of Latinos being courted are new citizens. Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, told the AP, “In places where the election is very close, they make all the difference in the world,” New citizens, like other first time voters, are excited to cast their first ballot and tend to be good ambassadors in their communities, either for particular candidates or simply to promote the importance of civic engagement.

“We can make the difference in these elections,” Arturo Munoz, a Salvadoran native who became a U.S. citizen in August, told the AP through a translator. “If more Hispanics vote, the future president will have to address topics important to them.”

VP Debate Editorials and Columns in the Battle for the West

Denver Post: “Palin had fun. But her frequent dependence on cheerful phrases like ‘darn it’ or ‘doggone it’ and her avoidance of specifics and entire lines of questions will no doubt keep her critics on the attack… Palin’s biggest task is convincing undecided voters that she could lead should she have to, and it’s hard to see whether her performance, as clean as it was, held enough substance to sway them.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Gov. Palin actually looked like she was enjoying herself, especially as the evening wore on, whereas Sen. Biden, as the evening progressed, looked more like a scowling sourpuss…if Americans are looking for a fresh new face, someone who can connect with ‘Main Street,’ Gov. Palin’s performance — perhaps she ‘lost on points’ — might help push the Republican ticket toward victory.”

Las Vegas Sun: “[Palin] smiled a lot and certainly was folksy, peppering her comments with phrases such as ‘I’ll betcha’ and ‘heck of a lot.’ There is nothing wrong with a down-to-earth demeanor — we wish more politicians were like that. At the same time, however, folksiness can’t substitute for substance. The Bush presidency is a case in point.”

Pueblo Colorado Chieftan columnist Chuck Green: “Palin showed… she could stand toe-to-toe with one of the Senate’s best. But she didn’t display an impressive grasp of issues and didn’t display a great sense of confidence. Biden projected confidence and a wide range of knowledge on several issues, but he misstated the facts or outright lied about the historical record at least six times during the 90-minute production. He might look like a statesmanlike U.S. senator and exude confidence, but Americans still can’t believe what comes out of his mouth.”

Reno Gazette-Journal: “Can we please bring back the final ‘g’ in words ending in ‘-ing’? Palin seems to drop it — as in ‘I was talkin’ to some soccer moms’ — to show that she’s one of the folks, but Sen. Barack Obama does it, too, and so does seemingly every TV newscaster in Reno. That may be OK in casual talk among friends, but it has no place in formal speechmaking… Just as we expect candidates to pronounce the name of our state right, we should expect them to pronounce ‘-ing’ right. It may not be folksy, but it is presidential.”

Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin: “In any case, even if Biden won in the instant-polls, Palin did well enough in memorizing talking points and occasionally winking that the McCain campaign is sending her immediately to Colorado… McCain probably can’t lose Colorado – where he’s trailing in the polls – and win the election.”

Santa Fe New Mexican columnist Bill Stewart: “[Palin] was folksy and friendly, deflecting questions for which she was unprepared… Palin connects on a personal level. It is probably her greatest political strength. It is one of Biden’s strengths as well. He teared up when talking about the challenge of being a single father following the tragic deaths of his first wife and his daughter.”

Civil War Over Political Relevance in NV

“If we are not careful, the North may become the center of Nevada’s political universe,” warns the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston in an appeal to his fellow southern Nevadans. “Washoe County may go Democratic and Reno already has, perhaps making the North decisive. This cannot stand. The South must rise again!”

Ralston points to the recent stories in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times with Washoe County datelines as evidence for the shift in influence. The little swing county that could may be the sexier story for national media, but Las Vegas’s Clark County still accounts for more than two-thirds of all registered voters in the state.

Perhaps that’s why eight of Sen. Barack Obama’s 16 field offices in the state are in Clark County. For comparison, Sen. John McCain’s campaign has nine locations — some of them shared space with local GOP offices — and 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry maintained two offices four years ago, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Clearly, Obama had a head start on building grass-roots support,” Reno-based Republican consultant and lobbyist Pete Ernaut told the Review-Journal. “McCain’s campaign has been playing catch-up.”

Observations

On Saturday, the New York Times offered snapshot portraits of five cities being heavily courted by both campaigns; three are in Battle for the West states. They turned to local reporters or columnists, not Times staff writers, to file the reports.

Pueblo, Colorado

“Pueblo is traditionally a Democratic town, though conservative Democrat… McCain is looking for those disenchanted independents, he’s looking for those Hillary voters, he’s looking for Hispanic voters. Everyone is aware of the long-held tensions between African-Americans and Hispanics; he’s looking for whatever Hispanics he can pick up.” – Peter Roper, political reporter, The Pueblo Chieftain

Elko, Nevada

“George Bush might not be our president if not for Elko, which proves beyond a shadow of any doubt that every vote truly does count. But this election could be Elko’s last hurrah… Clearly, Elko County with its huge conservative base will carry the day for McCain-Palin, but by how much? Enough to offset Obama’s doubtless victory in Clark County, home to Las Vegas where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 100,000? I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on that one.” – Doug McMurdo, associate editor, Elko Daily Free Press

Las Cruces, New Mexico

“Las Cruces has always been a Democratic-leaning community, but socially conservative on values like guns and religion… I have read media accounts of Hispanic voters being reluctant to vote forObama, or any black candidate. If that sentiment exists, I haven’t seen it.” – Walt Rubell, managing editor, Las Cruces Sun-News