Sue Lowden

LAS VEGAS -In this YouTube video, Republican 1st Congressional District candidate Chris Dyer attacks Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden on the controversy surrounding the state Republican convention.

Dyer, a supporter of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Tex.) defunct presidential campaign, believes he was elected a delegate to the Republican National Convention at the previous attempt at a state convention.  He will be attending a Jun. 28 event in Reno that some other Paul supporters and disaffected Republicans hope to use as a vehicle to seat their own slate of delegates to the national convention.

Dyer is one of seven Republicans who hope to unseat U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Las Vegas) in November.

Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden.LAS VEGAS - Although the details of the special session next week remain murky, Gov. Jim Gibbons can be assured of at least some support of his call to cut state employees' and teachers' cost-of-living allowance increase. 

Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden released a statement this morning eschewing any talk of tax increases during this "severe economic downturn" and calling the scheduled COLA increase "unfairly and irresponsibly benefitting the government employees who work for [taxpayers]."

Friday, Gibbons announced that he would be calling for a special session of the legislature to address budget woes and that on the agenda would be a call to defer COLA increases for state employees and teachers.  Although the Nevada State Education Association and various news reports have estimated the increase as 4 percent, Lowden estimated the COLA increases as "nearly 10 percent."

LAS VEGAS-With the announcement last week by the Nevada Republican Party that it has chosen Jul. 26 to reconvene its first, unsuccessful convention, controversies remain for Ron Paul supporters and previously voted-on delegates that could lead all the way to the Republican National Convention in September.

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) hope to host a form of make-up convention on Jun. 28 and believe that if they achieve a quorum of the previous Apr. 26 convention attendees they may be able to elect a slate of delegates that could be seated at the national convention. 

The effort, which is thus far being bankrolled by Reno dentist and Paul supporter Dr. Wayne Terhune, is sanctioned by the Ron Paul campaign and is being organized largely over Web sites like Meetup and Digg.com.

In order for their Jun. 28 date to have any chance of electing delegates that will actually be seated, however, Paul supporters will have to overcome enormous strategic and legal hurdles that will test the burgeoning power of netroots-fueled movements like Paul's.

LAS VEGAS-Meeting tonight behind closed doors, the Executive Board of the Nevada Republican Party elected July 26 as the make-up date for the state GOP's aborted convention.  Like the previous convention Apr. 26, this will be held at the Peppermill Hotel and Casino in Reno.

The Apr. 26 convention was recessed following the election of several Ron Paul supporters as delegates to the national convention. Paul is the only remaining Republican candidate against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

LAS VEGAS-In a press release titled "Where was Dina??," the Nevada Republican Party hit 3rd District congressional candidate and state Sen. Dina Titus today for missing last Friday's meeting of the Interim Finance Committee.

The committee approved $236 million in cuts including to the Nevada Check-Up program which was one of Titus' signature legislative accomplishments.

"Titus, the Democrat's fifth choice to take on Republican Congressman Jon Porter, is clearly avoiding politically sensitive votes in the run-up to the November election," read the release.  "Even in her absence, Nevada's taxpayers are owed an explanation on where she stands on these cuts." 

I would get carpal tunnel trying to put this ongoing Ron Paul Circus into one post, so I had always planned to spread it into several different posts with different aspects of the fiasco.  A circus does have three rings, after all.

The original plan was to have the candidate and his views first, then the operatives, and then the supporters.  But recent on-the-record correspondence with Jeff Greenspan, the Regional Director of the Ron Paul campaign has vaulted him ahead of his candidate in the pecking order.