LYON COUNTY REPUBLICAN CENTRAL COMMITTEE
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Christmas Greetings

12/18/2018

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As we approach the holiday season and Christmas draws nigh, let us share with you some Christmas memories.

Both Ron and James grew up in the same area of the country, albeit at different times.  Ron grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in a small town in Illinois across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. James grew up during the 1970s in a suburban area of the city on the Missouri side of the river.  James’s mother even attended the high school that was the arch-rival to Ron’s in his sports, cross-country and track.
James recalls Christmas trees from floor to ceiling in the vaulted-ceiling living room, and lights being strung by his father all over the 1930s English Tudor-style home where he grew up.  It was a time of family and friends, the “two Christmas dinners” with a Christmas Eve meal at his paternal grandmother’s home, and Christmas dinner at the home of his maternal grandparents.  All including aunts, uncles, cousins, and even great grandparents.

Of course, all this came after Santa left presents for James and his sister on Christmas morning at their home.  And plenty of Christmas music was abound to help set the festive mood.

There was even a supernatural aspect to Christmas in James’s house once upon a time.  Although he doesn’t recall the entire event due to his young age, apparently he woke up everyone in the house sometime in the middle of one Christmas night screaming that he saw someone, a ghost perhaps, putting something down the laundry chute prior to vanishing into thin air. 

Talk about the “Christmas spirit”!

Although James’s family moved from the St. Louis area in the mid-70s, most years his parents, sister and he would return to the St. Louis area during the holiday season to celebrate with family and friends.  Some of his best memories are of the Christmas time period and the time spent with family.

It was always considered home when James was growing up, and both he and Ron still have family who reside in the area.

The Knecht family always gave the main gifts on Christmas Eve and the children’s stockings were filled when they awoke Christmas morning.

Ron recalls getting a double-holster gun belt, two cap pistols and a cowboy hat when he was seven.  His uncle was churlish enough to play quick draw with the kid and beat him every time.

About three years later, Ron and his brother Tom, a year younger, got matching red bicycles, which they later painted green.  Another year, Ron got a transistor radio the size of a cigarette pack, which he proudly stuffed into his shirt pocket.  For a lower middle class family at the time, the bicycles and radio were so expensive that the boys got no other significant presents.  But they were quite happy nonetheless and there was always lots of Christmas music and family.

As time goes on, Ron remembers most fondly what his sainted mother put in their large red stockings each year.  There was always a large juicy thick-rind orange and a succulent apple.  Plus, lots of nuts in the shell: almonds, pecans, filberts (hazelnuts), peanuts and walnuts.  Also, a candy cane and chocolates, especially chocolate-covered cherries.  Maybe a few other things.

Besides loving the chocolate-covered cherries, Ron was torn between the nuts and the large oranges as his favorite items.  He especially liked using the nutcracker to open the nut shells and get the fresh nut meats.
But in the 1975 movie Nashville, there was a scene that touched his soul.  Howard K. Smith plays himself, a TV commentator analyzing the candidacy of Replacement Party Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker.  Smith notes how the campaign started with Walker energizing a group of college students with some odd questions, including: “Does the smell of oranges remind you of Christmas morning?”

Now, when Ron opens a large orange with a thick rind and juicy segments, he is taken back to mid-century Christmas mornings in a small town in the Midwest.  He’s again a little boy with visions of so many things dancing in his head.  And the smell of those oranges does remind him of Christmas morning.
​

Happy Christmas!
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Our Analysis of Nevada’s 2018 General Election

12/6/2018

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We’ve seen analyses of what happened in Nevada’s 2018 general election and heard various claims and characterizations.  Under our leadership, the controller’s office has been known as nerd central because we rely on numbers, facts and quantitative analysis, instead of glittering generalities and snappy narratives.  So, let’s do that for the election results.
In 2014, the Republicans swept all six state executive offices and both houses of the legislature and many folks proclaimed the Big Red Wave.  As beneficiaries of that election, we even said that.  It’s important not to always believe your own press clippings, as we’ll show.
The most telling figures to explain the last two mid-term elections – that is, those between the presidential elections – are the turnout statistics.  According to figures on the secretary of state’s web site, in 2014 the total turnout was 552,326 voters of the 1,212,327 active registrants, or 45.56 percent.
That year the six Republican candidates for executive offices (governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, controller and attorney general) averaged 299,334 votes, while the Democrats averaged 206,310.  Ron’s election was in the mainstream, as he got 282,674 votes to Andrew Martin’s 202,573.  (Controller races tend to collect the most under-votes of any executive office.)  Ron’s total vote was third and closest to the average for the Republicans.
Everyone acknowledged at the time that it was a low turnout and laid that off to a poor showing by the Democrats.  And invented the Big Red Wave.
This year the total turnout was 976,164 voters of 1,561,515 active registrants, or 62.51 percent.  The progressives, Democrats and RINOs (Republicans in name only), plus their amen corner in the mainstream media, immediately alleged a poor Republican showing and sought to blame President Trump – as they do these days about almost everything.
But sober analysis of the actual numbers showed it was a strong, not weak Republican effort because the average Republican vote for the six offices increased by 49 percent from 299,334 votes to 446,739.  Ron’s 445,099 vote total was fourth among the Republicans and closest to the average this time too.
In fact, all six Republican candidates got well more votes this year than any state executive candidate had ever gotten before – even Governor Brian Sandoval in each of his two races.  This was due to increases in active voter registration of 28.8 percent from 2014 to 2018.  However, Sandoval’s 2014 numbers were greatly inflated by the fact he ran against the weakest Democrat gubernatorial candidate in memory, a perennial octogenerian gadfly who even lost to None of These Candidates in his primary.
The problem for Republicans was that Democrats fully recovered from their catatonic showing of 2014 and ran up even bigger totals.  Their six candidates averaged 471,851 votes in 2018, beating the Republicans by 5.6 percent on average and in five of the six races.
But how do the numbers from the last two races compare to previous elections?  Is one or the other an outlier?
It’s difficult to compare the results over a great stretch of history because Nevada has long had the fastest growing population in percentage terms of all the states.  However, we can compare the two most recent mid-term elections to the two before them, in 2006 and 2010.
The 2010 active registration increased by 29.7 percent from that in 2006, while the increase to 2014 was only 8.3 percent before another huge jump to 28.8 percent this year.  The turnout in 2006 was 59.16 percent and in 2010 64.62 percent, compared to the 45.56 percent in 2014 and 62.51 percent this year.
Many folks attribute the 2010 increase in registration and its huge turnout to the fact Harry Reid was on the ballot for the last time.  In that context and comparing 2018 figures to those in 2006, this year’s registration and turnout seem to be in the mainstream of historic results.  Perhaps they show a slightly stronger than usual Democrat gain.  Also the outperformance of women candidates relative to party averages.
So, 2014 was the great outlier year and this year’s results seem generally representative of where Nevada is and has been.  A challenge to Republicans, but one they may be able to overcome next time.
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    *Opinions expressed here may or may not reflect the views of the Lyon County Republican Central Committee. 

    Author

    Ron Knecht has served as Nevada Controller, a higher education regent, legislator and economist. He can be reached at RonKnecht@aol.com.  
     

     

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