Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Democrats get Head Start in Las Vegas

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe railed against the Bush administration's economic and foreign policies during a stop in Las Vegas on Wednesday and vowed Nevada will go to the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

"When George Bush trumps around on an aircraft carrier in a jumpsuit that the war is over, and we still have a soldier dying every day, the American people are going to realize that there has been no care given to winning the post-combat peace," McAuliffe said. "We are over there alone spending $4 billion a month. Why did we not have a better plan for peace?"

McAuliffe's comments came during a stop at the Nevada Professional Development Center, a partnership between the state and federal government and the local Economic Opportunity Board, which provides Head Start education programs and Welfare to Work training.

The visit, part of a four-city Western tour, was designed to spotlight what the DNC calls the Bush administration's targeted elimination of Head Start and education programs that benefit Hispanics.

Nine Democratic candidates for president will be featured in a televised debate tonight from Albuquerque that -- for the first time ever -- will be simultaneously translated into Spanish.

Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-Texas, who heads the Democratic Hispanic Caucus, joined McAuliffe, and said the debate is an attempt to educate Democrats and Hispanic voters about the economy, education and health care.

"This administration's goal is to dismantle education programs when that is the very thing we should be working to build up," Rodriguez said.

McAuliffe and Rodriguez toured the Head Start facility, visiting with teachers and pre-schoolers who were counting in Spanish the five yellow ducks in a puzzle and others who were making prints on paper with paint-covered hands.

Strict on message, the pair decried Bush at every turn.

"George Bush wants to dismantle Head Start by giving it as a block grant to the states -- the states who are all in a fiscal mess today and who would spend the money on something else," McAuliffe said. "George Bush would give the money to the wealthy for tax cuts, and these children will get nothing."

LaTanya Polk, the director of the Head Start program at the center, said she herself was a Head Start student as a child in Las Vegas and became a teacher's aide and finally director thanks to the program's tuition reimbursement.

"Myself, I don't think the Bush policy is a good idea because where would it leave the working parents?" Polk asked.

Tiffany Perez, a parent whose two children have used Head Start, is now on the board of directors of the Economic Opportunity Board, which serves as the state's parent representative to the region's Head Start advisory board.

Perez was recently divorced, out of school and unemployed when she first entered her 4-year-old son and 9-month-old daughter in Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

Now she is again employed and taking classes. Her daughter at age 2 knows how to count to 20 in two languages, and her son is a fast-reading kindergartner, she said.

"The only thing I know for sure is that Head Start works," Perez said. "It worked for me. It worked for my family. It worked for my children."

Rodriguez conceded that even though the Republicans will outraise and outspend Democrats next year: "Your enemy is your best organization."

"If they do what they're planning to do to these programs, we will have a very active base," Rodriguez said.

McAuliffe said the DNC has already funded the Nevada Democratic Party's campaign request and vows to be active in the state as the presidential race heats up next year.

He said polls showing 43 percent of voters likely to re-elect Bush is helping him when he guarantees victory for the future Democratic nominee, even though another national poll found that 66 percent of Americans could not name even one of the nine recognized Democratic presidential contenders.

"We're going to target Nevada and we're going to put our resources into this state," McAuliffe said. "We need to make sure we get to 270 (electoral votes) and Nevada clearly could help us do that."

Nevada voted for Bush in 2000. The state now has five electoral votes.

McAuliffe also vowed Democrats would win California's 55 electoral votes next year despite the recall election, which he decried.

"Even in Nevada with a Republican governor I do not support a recall effort," McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe said he worried governors would become afraid to make difficult policy decisions in the 17 states that have recall laws.

Mike Slanker, a Republican campaign consultant in Nevada, said "Nevadans will re-elect George Bush."

He said that until Democrats "sort out their cast of characters," it is much too premature to wonder whether a Democratic nominee has any hope of beating Bush in Nevada.

"I think Nevadans are as patriotic as any state in the union and for that reason, the president's numbers are very high," Slanker said. "Nevadans support this president and support the war in Iraq."

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