Bush, McCain, Obama to visit Reno this week

With presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat in Nevada heading into the Nov. 4 election, both candidates will visit Reno this week.

President Bush will also make an appearance in the biggest little city.

Last week the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza reported that the gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in Washoe County had decreased since the 2004 election.

In 2004 there were 233,813 registered voters — 101,000 of whom were Republicans and 84,000 were Democrats. According to the Washoe County Registrar of Voters office as of last week, there were 84,705 Democrats and 87,971 Republicans. There are just over 215,000 voters registered in Washoe County said Registrar of Voters Dan Burke.

When Bush won Washoe County by 7,000 votes in 2004, Republicans had a registration advantage of more than 17,000.

Meanwhile, in Clark County, there are about 100,000 more Democrats registered than Republicans.

That’s about twice as many as the margin in 2004.

Obama visit:

Democrat presidential candidate Obama will speak 8 a.m. Tuesday at a rally on the Quad of the University of Nevada, Reno.

The event is free and no tickets are required, campaign officials said. However, they are encouraging attendees to RSVP at their Web site because space will be limited and made available on a first-come first-serve basis. The site is NV.barackobama.com.

Campaign officials say it will mark his 18th visit to Nevada.

McCain visit:

Republican John McCain plans to visit Reno on Thursday. The time and place has not been released.

Bush visit:

President George W. Bush is scheduled to deliver a speech Friday in Reno to the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy at the Silver Legacy Resort Casino.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.