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.