"No," Romney said quickly. "That's one thing I don't do."

Family matters

Romney is usually surrounded by family members on the campaign trail, and Thursday night's stop at a campaign call center set up in a Las Vegas office building was no exception.

Before going onstage to rally volunteers, Romney waited in a stairwell with his son, Josh, daughter-in-law, Jen, and their three young children. Including Wyatt, who has a crouplike cough and a constantly running nose.

Romney asked his son about Wyatt's cough and helped his daughter-in-law settle into a chair with his sleeping granddaughter, Gracie. Then the candidate handed Wyatt a miniature John Deere tractor, no doubt a souvenir from the Iowa campaign.

But when Wyatt reached out to grab his grandfather, Romney laughed and stepped back. "Oh, no," he said. "I'm not catching what you've got."

Pop star?

Wyatt and his siblings weren't the only children at the evening rally. Many of the volunteers — a group that included many Mormons — brought their own children to meet Romney. Former Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Romney supporter, looked out over the crowd and said with a smile, "I thought I was at a Hannah Montana concert."

Duh-VAD-uh

Gambling and prostitution are nothing here — Michelle Obama committed the real local sin by mispronouncing the name of the state.

She was introducing her husband, Barack Obama, by saying how happy she was to be in Nuh-VAH-duh. The crowd at the University of Nevada Reno immediately burst into heckles.

Locals don't like it when visitors pronounce the state by using a soft a, like in "baccarat."

Michelle Obama immediately realized her mistake. "Nuh-VAD-uh! Oh, no," she said, putting her head in her hands in recognition of her blunder.

"I've been in South Carolina too long!" she said, a reference to her campaigning the primary state that comes next after Nevada's caucus today.

"It's nice to be here Nuh-VAD-uh! Nevada, Nevada, Nevada!" she said, making the politically correct pronunciation over and over again to applause from the crowd.

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Deseret Morning News staff writer Lisa Riley Roche and the Associated Press combined for this report.