Category: Politics

It has apparently been lost on President Obama that Nevada may have gone blue for him, but it is not consistently a blue state.  Perhaps he forgot that fact right before he tried to trash the state’s tourism industry.

Sin City’s mayor wants President Barack Obama to apologize for saying companies shouldn’t visit Las Vegas on the taxpayer’s dime.

Oscar Goodman spoke after a regular scheduled meeting with tourism officials where he expressed concern that federal lawmakers might be discouraging travel to the city.

Don’t say that offhand remarks can’t have consequences:

Late Monday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it had moved a three-day conference from the Las Vegas Strip to San Francisco amid what the bank called a broad review of its activities. Goldman Sachs has accepted $10 billion in federal bailout funds.

Vegas is one of the cheapest cities that companies could travel to when they need to cut event costs.  Instead, now choosing meeting cities is a matter of politics instead of smart money management.  (Consider where Goldman Sachs moved their meeting to after the remarks.)

This site argues that the time to start backing challengers in the 2010 election is now:

Early funding also has a snowball effect — since people usually don’t want to throw their money away, they’ll generally only support a candidate who seems to have a chance to win. Before insurgent candidates can get much outside attention, they have to hit a threshold of support that indicates that they’re a serious contender. They have to have enough of SOMETHING — money, polling numbers or on-the-ground organization — to convince outsiders to get involved. And without resources and expertise available early, many candidates who might actually have a shot if given a chance never quite hit the mark. A handful of paid staff, or even just ONE paid staffer, can create the relationships and the organization that a campaign needs to prove viability, while also getting the structure in place to actually take real advantage of any money that floods in at the last minute.

I agree with this completely.  Read the whole thing.  Unfortunately, I don’t get the impression the GOP in my district is floating a challenger to Murphy yet.  Hopefully they won’t wait until it’s too late.