1.) Nevada Republicans don’t mind copying the Democrats, if they see the Democrats have a good idea and are getting all the attention. This, and the fear that the Democrats would develop a better get-out-the-vote operation, was behind the push to move up the primary.

2.) Republicans are totally screwed.

Why screwed? Well, as we understand things, almost 20 states are planning to hold their primary elections or caucuses on Feb. 5, a Tuesday, potentially including California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan … oh, hell, we don’t need to go any further, do we? (If you want to find out more, check out the very helpful website of the National Association of Secretaries of State; that list says Nevada’s GOP primary will be held Feb. 5, however.)

Anyway, with candidates going after such delegate-rich states as those, how much time do you think any of them will spend in Nevada? The Silver State is almost guaranteed to get short shrift from Republicans as candidates look for votes, and for money, in more populous places.

And let’s not forget that if the calendar falls the way it looks like it will, the GOP nominee will likely have sewn up his delegates by the time all the Feb. 5 votes are counted. And that’s another reason there will be few visits from the GOP presidential hopefuls.

But at least the Republicans will get to have an early caucus of their very own! Do you think temporary state Republican Party chief Paul Willis still believes, as he did as late as this week, that an early primary "is a gimmick and a scheme and a sham"? Do you think he still thinks "it’s a lot of hype"? Or that "I don’t think myself that the Republicans should stoop to the gimmickry that the Democrats are doing"?

Such is the case with the city of Las Vegas and the Tennis Channel Open. Although city taxpayers were promised landing the Tennis Channel Open would cost them about $300,000, it ended up costing $1.4 million! And all revenue from the event went to the Tennis Channel! (Credit to the Review-Journal’s David McGrath Schwartz for following up on this.)

But wait, there’s more: The city’s contract also requires it to provide Tennis Channel Open VIPs with helicopter rides to the Grand Canyon, ski lift tickets to Mount Charleston and rides on F-16 fighter jets out at Nellis Air Force Base.

What?

"We didn’t know what we were getting into," admitted Councilman Larry Brown, who is known as a budget "hawk" on the City Council. Gee, that’s funny: We never knew hawks took all the food from their nests, flew it over to the fattest, richest birds in town, and gave it away. We totally need to watch more Discovery Channel. Right after we order those new T-shirts featuring Brown’s photo and the phrase, "We didn’t know what we were getting into."

But Brown went on to defend the deal, because he apparently thinks taxpayers are stupid. "It’s such a positive event. From the city’s side, there’s phenomenal exposure for the community. Players speak positively about it. People who attended last year spoke positively about it," he said.

Well, so long as people are speaking positively about it, everything’s cool! You know, we’d probably speak pretty well of the city if Brown dropped by our offices in a nondescript industrial building near McCarran International Airport and handed us a check for $1.4 million. That’d be good for at least a couple of weeks of positivity!

But we can’t help but wonder: The city of Las Vegas’ taxpayers subsidized the Tennis Channel Open, but did the attendees stay in the city? At downtown casinos? And eat at restaurants, inside city limits? (There are plenty of great ones, to be sure.) Did they gamble in Las Vegas casinos? Or play some golf on courses within the municipal boundaries?

Or did they most likely spend most of their time and money in Clark County?

We’d forgive spending a little money to attract a game like the Tennis Channel Open. (Actually, the city had to fix all the tennis courts at the center where the games were played anyway, since they were shoddily done in the first place.) But $1.4 million? So the Tennis Channel can get all the cash, and city taxpayers can send VIPs flying to the Grand Canyon?

To hell with that. At best, it’s misappropriation of public funds, which, last we checked, is a crime.

Besides, if Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world, the place that everybody knows about, regardless of where in the world that they live, why don’t we try a new paradigm. Why don’t we ask event organizers who want to stage their gigs in Las Vegas to pay us? Or at least cover the expenses related to their events. Then, at least, we’d really know what we were getting into. 

» Speaking of public subsidies, do the math on this one: The county’s auditors say that 7.5 acres of land — which land broker Scott Gragson seems to have mysteriously acquired for free in a separate deal — is worth $654,489. But the county’s attorneys are insisting that Gragson should be able to get the land for just $407,500. That means, if the County Commission accepts the deal next week, the county’s taxpayers are eating $246,989, or enough to pay the annual overtime costs for two whole firefighters!

Gragson should totally send the taxpayers a fruit basket for their generosity. But taxpayers should bitch to the commission about this one.

» So university chancellor Jim Rogers has told state lawmakers that he supports a bill to make the regents appointed, and not elected. We couldn’t agree with him more: Elections have produced what some wise commentators (OK, us) have characterized as the worst public body in America.

Our only question is, why is Rogers late to the party? He opposed a plan authored by former Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani that would have shrunk the board from 13 to nine members, and would have seen six of those nine appointed by the governor. (The other three would have been elected.)

In a 2004 speech, Rogers opposed the plan because he said it would lead to a board less responsive to the public. But in today’s Las Vegas Sun, Rogers says the system will function better with a strong chancellor and and appointed board. If the governor appoints regents, some kind of qualification system could be established, instead of a take-all-comers-from-the-unwashed-masses approach that has left us with … well, the regents.

We agree with the Rogers of 2007, and disagree with the Rogers of 2004: It’s time to appoint regents like they do in the grown-up states.

Instead of releasing disappointing and ever-falling ridership numbers every month, the monorail will instead make its reports quarterly, thus cutting the negative headlines from 12 per year to just four. "We’re a private company. Current management doesn’t feel it’s necessary to release the numbers monthly," said monorail spokeswoman Angela Torres.

Ah, yes, the monorail is a "private" company. That’s one of our favorite lines of bullshit in covering Las Vegas politics for the last 13 years.

See, the monorail could only have been built with tax-exempt bonds issued by the state of Nevada. (Real "private" businesses, like casinos, are built with private, taxable bonds.) The monorail doesn’t pay its sales or property taxes like a real private business, because it convinced a majority of people on the state Taxation Commission that it is a "charity," which provides a service that government is required to provide. (Of course, government is already providing that service, via the more popular and useful CAT bus system.) And in its original corporate structure, the monorail was run by a non-profit board of directors appointed by the governor. Does that sound "private" to anybody?

But we’re not surprised that current management doesn’t feel it’s necessary to release the numbers monthly. (After all, current management thinks oceans of red ink, declining ridership and an inability to ever turn a profit adds up to a "bright future"!) Back in December, when the monorail last reported its ridership numbers, it carried 15,430 riders. In all of 2006, it carried an average of 19,219 riders.

When it was founded at the behest of casino moguls, founder Bob Broadbent promised an average of 50,000 riders per day, and dismissed critics who said it would be half that. It turns out, the critics were way too optimistic. (Broadbent was only off by 30,781 average riders per day.)

We’re told that there’s nothing to worry about, since the poor suckers who bought the original monorail bonds are the ones on the hook, not the public. (Ditto for the suckers to whom the monorail is marketing new bonds, with which to extend the system to McCarran International Airport.) But the late Broadbent said more than once that he envisioned the county eventually taking over the system. It would be a final, cruel irony if he was proven right beyond the grave.

But we’ll have to wait for the end of the month — and the first quarter of 2007 — to see how bad things are going this year. We’ll save Torres the trouble and insert the obligatory quote here: New marketing initiatives that are just around the corner will turn things around, and this monorail will be the bestest thing ever! Ah, "new marketing initiatives." That’s another of our favorite line of bullshit.