Presidential spotlight shines on a suffering Nevada

LAS VEGAS — In Nevada, people could once buy homes and feed their families with money earned from free-spending tourists who flocked to Sin City for relaxed gambling and liquor laws.

But things have changed dramatically in the four years since the White House race last came to this state.

Now, Nevadans are struggling with the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the nation, their woes creating a dour landscape as Republican candidates compete for votes ahead of Saturday's GOP caucuses.

"Unemployment is such a big problem here. It affects everybody," said Josh Dobbins, a Las Vegas accountant and a father of four.

A Republican, Dobbins isn't certain that President Barack Obama is to blame for the joblessness and frustration that pervades Nevada. But he is fed up with an economy that has reduced his suburban home on the desert's edge to a liability. Only four years after he bought it, it's worth $80,000 less than he paid for it.

It's a story that echoes across the mountains, plateaus and deserts of this battleground state. And this single-minded focus on the economy is sure to dominate the general election in November, when Obama will have to defend his job-creation policies against the eventual GOP nominee in a state where Democrats barely outnumber Republicans and independents decide elections.

Nationally, the unemployment rate dropped last month to 8.3. But in Nevada, there has been little improvement after a record economic bust that saw bustling construction sites abandoned and master-planned communities overtaken by foreclosures. The unemployment rate was 12.6 in December, compared with 8.7 when Obama won the state in 2008.

"This is a very tough time for the people of Nevada," GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said while campaigning in Las Vegas on Thursday. So tough, in fact, that the former Massachusetts governor used the state as a backdrop to unveil his jobs plan last year. He did it in North Las Vegas, where one in every 82 homes is in foreclosure, the highest rate in the state.

Just south of there, the swank cocktail bars, high-roller gambling lounges and glittering casino towers along the Las Vegas Strip have long belied Nevada's economic misery.