The population of the Las Vegas metropolitan area is 1.7 million and climbing daily --  and to look at all the high-rise hotels that have sprung up in the middle of the desert, it meets the definition of a big city. But it’s also grown so fast there are still remnants of a small town: A town where everyone involved in politics knows everyone else.  And a place where political activists are happy to lean against the prevailing winds.

Case in point: Republican Tibi Ellis and Democrat Richard “Tick” Segerblom.

Segerblom told me it would take too long to explain where “Tick” came from.  The 59-year-old Nevada state assemblyman, a Democrat who represents a chunk of downtown Las Vegas and part of “The Strip,” actually District nine in Clark County, is a third generation Nevadan with a family history steeped in politics.  His great grandfather served in a western state legislature and voted against giving women the right to vote in the early part of the 20th century.  Segerblom says his ancestor was repaid for that mistake because both his daughter, Segerblom’s grandmother, and his granddaughter, Segerblom’s mother, served in the Nevada Legislature.

Continuing the tradition, Segerblom is an attorney who specializes in employment discrimination cases. And – to bury the lead, as we say in the news business – he’s the chair of John Edwards’ presidential campaign here in Nevada.  “I’m a liberal; I want someone who will get in there and shake things up,” the first-term assemblyman says.  “I’m tired of the status quo, cutting deals; I want change.”  He’s one of several state legislators working to see that the former North Carolina senator wins the Democratic caucuses here on Jan. 19.

Segerblom concedes if his man doesn’t make it, he could support either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for the nomination, but says Edwards brings the ideas and the energy that the country needs.

It’s too early, of course, to know what will happen in the Nevada caucuses, which will inevitably be impacted by the results of earlier voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. In addition, Democrats are waiting to see which candidate the influential Culinary Workers Union endorses. It has 60,000 members who are the backbone of the gambling industry: the card dealers, cooks and other service employees who keep Las Vegas humming 24 hours a day.  Significantly, 43 percent of its members are Hispanic. And with the Hispanic vote coveted by all the Democrats running for president, the Culinary endorsement has high value.

The majority of the Hispanic vote here in 2008 is expected to go Democratic, reversing gains the GOP had made nationally among Latino voters.  This is largely due to Republican-driven attacks over the past couple of years on illegal immigration.  Many Hispanics say they interpret the crackdown that Republican candidates advocate on undocumented aliens to represent opposition to all immigrants from south of the Border, legal or not.

But this doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t working to win Hispanic votes. Tibi Ellis, a Hispanic woman who belongs to the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, is working to educate members of her community about what  Republicans believe – that they are for “family values,” and for small business – both of which Hispanics prize.  She bristles at the idea that all Hispanics will flock to the Democratic Party.
 
As for the debate over immigration reform – and the fact that most of the Republican presidential candidates favor a tougher stand against illegal immigration and oppose a path to citizenship – Ellis insists that many immigrants don’t want to become U.S. citizens.  She says what they’re really after is a good-paying job, and contends many would be content to obtain documented alien status and retain the option of moving back to their home country, usually Mexico.

The main national organizations representing Hispanic immigrants take a different view, but Tibi Ellis is betting they’re wrong; just as Tick Segerblom is betting his man John Edwards will surprise the pollsters and the pundits.

-- By Judy Woodruff, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer