EmailTwo days after a key Nevada union of casino employees endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, allies of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, filed a lawsuit to block the special "at-large" casino precincts set up months ago for those very casino employees.
With the stated purpose of ensuring voting participation by casino employees in the Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses, the Nevada Democratic Party created nine at-large precincts designed for the "4,000 or more shift workers per site who could not otherwise take the time off to go to their home precincts."
The sites will be located at the Bellagio, Luxor, the Mirage, the Rio, Caesar’s Palace, the Paris, the Flamingo, Wynn Las Vegas, and New York, New York casinos.
But the lawsuit, filed by six Nevada Democrats and the Nevada State Education Association teachers’ union — whose deputy executive director, Debbie Cahill, is a member of Clinton’s Nevada Women’s Leadership Council — seeks to prevent those At-Large Districts from meeting in next Saturday’s caucuses.
"The Democratic Party of Nevada has violated the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ by creating at-large precincts for certain caucus participants, based solely on the employment of such participants," charges the lawsuit — posted HERE by Vegas pundit and reporter Jon Ralston.
The lawsuit was filed by the firm Kummer, Kaempfer, Bonner, Renshaw, and Ferrario. Senior partners Michael Bonner and Christian Kaempfer have donated money to Clinton in the past, and Clinton ally and former Rep. James H. Bilbray, D-Nev., is an attorney at that firm.
The state party approved the at-large precincts at its Nevada State Democratic Party’s State Central Committee meeting on March 31, 2007.
According to those minutes and attendance records of the obtained by ABC News (Click HERE), four plaintiffs now suing the state party to stop these "at-large" precincts from convening were in attendance: Clark Party Second Vice Chair Vicki Birkland and John Birkland, Party Third Vice Chair Dwayne Chesnut and Clark County Public Administrator John Cahill.
The "Delegation Selection Plan Review and Approval" including these "at-large" precincts was, according to minutes of the meeting reviewed by ABC News, "Passed unanimously." The plan was submitted to the Democratic National Committee for approval in August.
The lawsuit charges that changes were made to the agreement since then, however, and that the at-large precincts now unfairly give the casino precincts more weight — "disingenuously" allocating delegates based on participation instead of based on registered voters, for example — creating a "grossly amplified number of delegates" thus "treating each precinct as if it were a separate county." (Italics theirs.)
In a statement, Nevada Democratic Party deputy executive director Kirsten Searer says, "We have taken unprecedented steps to include as many Nevadans as possible in this historic caucus day. The ‘at-large’ precincts were included to increase participation in the highest concentration of shift workers — many of whom are minorities."
Culinary union secretary-treasurer D. Taylor told the Associated Press that the plaintiffs were using "Floridian Republican tactics to suppress cooks, housekeepers, people of color and women."
The move by the Nevada State Education Association — NSEA president Lynn Warne is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit — is widely seen within Nevada political circles as a hardball effort by Clinton allies to block votes from the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which endorsed Obama on January 9, an hotly-contested endorsement.
The Obama campaign has publicly opposed the lawsuit. "We believe as a party, and a country, we should be looking for ways to include working men and women in the electoral process, not disenfranchise them," said David Cohen, the Obama campaign’s Nevada State Director.
For her part, Clinton’s position on the lawsuit has been difficult to ascertain. After the Iowa caucuses, she expressed concerned that the drawn-out caucus process causes "disenfranchisement" of working men and women who don’t have the time to participate.
"You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard," Clinton said after her Iowa caucus loss, per ABC News’ Eloise Harper. "That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time — they’re disenfranchised. People who can’t be in the state or who are in the military, like the son of the woman who was here who is serving in the Air Force, they cannot be present."
But her allies are responsible for the lawsuit and her response this evening was to say, “I know about the lawsuit that has been filed and I hope that it can be resolved by the courts and by the state party because obviously we want as many people as possible to be able to participate that is the whole idea.”
Clinton’s state chairman is Rory Reid, a well-connected Clark County Commissioner whose father is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, the latter of whom somewhat unusually declined to comment on the lawsuit filed against the state party for the caucus he has worked so hard to bring to his state.
– jpt