By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

Moapa Valley Republicans arrive at the registration station on Saturday morning before entering precinct meetings to cast their ballots in the Nevada Republican Caucus.

Despite reports of widespread confusion at many Clark County precincts, the Nevada Republican Party Caucus ran smoothly and without incident on Saturday morning at Moapa Valley High School for the six local precincts. Local volunteers reported that the registration process for Republican voters had gone quickly with only a moderate wait in line at the door to the main hall of Moapa Valley High School.

After registration, voters were directed to one of several rooms where their assigned precinct was to meet. Precinct meetings were all underway on time at around 9:00 a.m. and most meetings were finished by no later than 10:30, party volunteers said.

Local Republican turnout was low for this year’s caucus. A total of 324 Moapa Valley voters participated in the caucus across all six of the local precincts. That amounted to only 12% of the 2,668 registered Republicans in the community.

Of those participating, the overwhelming majority voted for frontrunner Mitt Romney. Romney handily won the caucus among Moapa Valley Republicans with 78% of the local vote. Ron Paul came in a distant second with 14% of the local vote. Newt Gingrich was third with 5% and Rick Santorum came in last with only 2% of the local votes.

Though Nevada state Republican party officials were still scrambling to count votes throughout the weekend, the final results announced Monday showed that Romney had carried 50.1% of the votes statewide.

In Clark County alone Romney ended up with 57.6% of the vote. Other Clark County results were similar to Moapa Valley precincts with Paul taking second place at 19.2% of the vote. Gingrich came in third with 16.2% and Santorum last at 10%.

Romney won a decisive victory in almost all of the Nevada counties. His greatest margin of victory occurred in nearby Lincoln county where Romney took more than 83% of the vote.

Romney fell short in only three of the Nevada counties. In Nye and Esmeralda counties, Paul came out as the frontrunner. Paul took 45.8% of the vote in Nye county and 34.5% in Esmeralda. Gingrich won in Mineral County with 37.9% of the vote.

Local caucus site coordinator Terry Stump said that he was generally pleased with how the caucus was conducted locally. Remembering the relatively large local turnout from the 2008 caucus, Stump who had never acted as a caucus site coordinator before, admitted to having been worried about making sure that things ran smoothly this year.

“Especially since one of our local precincts has the highest number of registered Republicans than any other precinct in Clark County,” Stump said.

Precinct 2476 which spans the middle segment of the lower Moapa Valley has 918 registered Republicans. But only about 120 of those were in attendance at the caucus, Stump said.

Stump said that his small team of volunteers had put significant advance efforts into organizing and preparing for the event to run smoothly. This was somewhat difficult because the caucus materials were not delivered to him until only the day before the event, Stump said.

“We remembered the last caucus here (in 2008) that it didn’t go that great,” Stump said. “So we made plans to avoid some of the pitfalls that happened then. I think, all things considered, it went fairly well.”