Monday, June 14, 2004 | 11:10 a.m.
The presidential race in Nevada will not come down to the state's feelings on the Yucca Mountain issue, a top presidential adviser said this weekend.
Instead, Karl Rove, the president's lead strategist, said Nevadans will base their decision on what he believes are the same factors that most Americans will -- the war on terrorism, the state of the economy and the "values" of each presidential candidate.
President Bush, he said, did not lie to Nevadans when he said he would wait for "sound science" to determine the fate of the site, which now is scheduled to be the final resting spot of the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
"He's been pretty consistent all along that he's going to base it on sound science," Rove said, later adding, "but he's not going to play politics with this. He didn't four years ago when he ran. He said he would make a decision based on science and he did."
Rove, who was in Nevada this weekend for a string of fund-raisers, has been creditied for much of Bush's political successes, including his win in 2000 and the strong Republican showing in the 2002 mid-term elections.
Rove also criticized presidential candidate John Kerry's pledge to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository if he is elected.
"I think Nevadans are smart enough to know it's one thing to make a rash pledge that it's not coming here," he said. "It's another thing to be able to operate on it when you have so many states that have material in their states and for so long have been told that eventually there will be a place to put it.
"You have to explain what you're going to do with the stuff that's now lying around," he said.
Kerry spokesman Sean Smith responded that Kerry is committed to stopping the Yucca Mountain project, though where it goes instead "will be determined on a later date."
"John Kerry has promised the people of Nevada that Yucca Mountain will not be a nuclear waste respository and he means it," Smith said. "And if I were the Republicans, I would try to change the subject, too, because George Bush's failure on Yucca Mountain is the biggest broken promise in the history of presidential politics as far as Nevadans are concerned."
Rove was greeted by protestors in both Las Vegas and in Reno on Saturday, including someone dressed in a nuclear hazard suit in Las Vegas.
Mark Benoit, the Nevada spokesman for America Coming Together, a national group that pushes progressive candidates, said it could backfire on Republicans if they continue to "duck" the issue of Yucca Mountain.
"This is an issue that comes up strong in most polling," he said. "When people list their worries, Yucca Mountain is always in the top three or four for Nevadans. You can't say it's a nonissue."
Bush's promise to rely on "sound science" came in the 2000 presidential campaign, when Nevada was closely divided between Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.
Before the election, Bush issued a statement saying: "I believe sound science, and not politics, must prevail in the designation of any high-level nuclear waste respository.
"As president, I would not sign legislation that would send nuclear waste to any proposed site unless it's been deemed scientifically safe."
Bush later allowed Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to push forward with Yucca Mountain, even as some scientific reviews were showing potential problems with the site.
However, Rove said, Yucca Mountain isn't a sure thing. He pointed to Nevada's legal battle against the site and the ongoing license application that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing.
"Nevada has exercized its legitimate rights to take this to court, and this is probably going to be one of the better ways to resolve the question of was sound science used in the preparation of the decision or not," Rove said.
Rove, who lived in Sparks from 1960 to 1966, said he still has family in Nevada and understands that people have concerns with the Yucca Mountain site. "That's why Congress, and I'm not certain who the wise man was, set up a slow-moving and a very in-depth process some 20 years ago," he said.
Rove's visit was yet another from a high-level Republican this election year. President Bush is scheduled to be in Reno this weekend, though he is not scheduled to stop in Southern Nevada.
Rove said he expected Bush to visit Southern Nevada before the presidential election. When asked if Bush would answer questions from the local media about the promises he made about Yucca Mountain, Rove laughed and said, "Oh yeah. Might be, might be."
Rove, who first worked with Bush when he was governor in Texas, said that Bush still holds values that Westerners can appreciate.
"He's a person of great optimism, of great clarity," Rove said. "He does what he believes, he does what he says. People know he's got convictions that are not going to change with fad or fashion, and they know he's somebody who's a conservative. And the state of Nevada is generally conservative.
"It's going to be a hard-fought state," he said. "I feel good about it at the end of the day, though, because the state is a conservative state. It's not a state that warms to high taxes and soft on defense and sort of the left-wing values."
He said Bush's work on the Healthy Forest Initiative to clear out forests and prevent forest fires should appeal to Nevadans. Bush also fought for Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Colorado to receive the allotment of water from the Colorado River that the states deserve under government compacts, he said.
Bush is also fighting for Congress to send more Homeland Security money to places with a high security threat, such as Las Vegas, instead of distributing the money on a per capita basis as some congressional members have tried to do, Rove said.
He criticized MoveOn.org, a group that has run a blitz of anti-Bush ads in Nevada. He said the group called for a nonviolent response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"They didn't want us to take out Osama bin Laden and the killers," he said. "They just wanted us to sit down and offer up therapy and a platter of cookies and lemonade."
Rove raised about $50,000 for Rep. Jon Porter's re-election campaign. Fund-raising totals from Northern Nevada were still being totaled today, officials said.
archive
