By Vern Hee – Special to the Pahrump Valley Times

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich came to Nevada in hopes of winning all 28 delegates in his bid for the presidency.

Instead, he came up short despite a strong message for Nevada.

Gingrich finished a disappointing second to former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney’s 50.1 percent of the vote during Saturday’s Republican caucus. Gingrich received 21 percent of the votes, or six delegates for his efforts.

While in Nevada last week he toured Las Vegas, Carson City and Reno.

One stop in Las Vegas was Stoney’s Rockin Country Bar, 9151 Las Vegas Blvd. Gingrich hoped to find an accommodating audience for his message.

In front of 300 enthusiastic supporters, Gingrich told Nevadans how he would bring jobs to a state suffering from 12 percent unemployment –16 percent in Nye County. He also spoke about how to improve the housing market in Nevada. He said Washington needed to get back on track.

“You cut taxes, … and you develop American energy, and you praise people who create jobs,” he said.

The mining industry received special attention during the speech.

“We propose 100 percent expansion on all new equipment, whether you are a factory, a farm, a mine, whatever you are, all new equipment is written off for one year, with the goal of making American workers the most productive workers in the world,” he said.

He then said to create more jobs in rural Nevada, two things had to happen. “The Bureau of Land Management, BLM, has to open up and allow more mining and ranching than you currently have and the second thing you do is bring down the price of gasoline, which makes it possible to for America to create jobs.”

Gingrich believes that President Obama’s policies are anti-mining and that he would simply reform the BLM to favor development.

“In your state, the federal government owns about 85 percent of the state, the BLM is anti-farming, anti-agriculture, and anti- development,” said Gingrich.

Also, Gingrich believes that President Obama’s current energy policies are hurting the economy in Nevada and the country.

“High gasoline is an indirect problem because every truck that delivers groceries, everything made of plastic, all this stuff builds up prices. This is what happens to the cost of food, this is what happens to the cost of electricity and so the president’s energy policy is a disaster.”

He went on to add that the president’s decision to not approve of the Keystone Pipeline led to less jobs in Las Vegas.

“There is a large manufacturer of forklifts and those forklifts would have been used to build the Keystone Pipeline …” Gingrich said he would sign an executive order to approve the Keystone Pipeline and bring those jobs back to Nevada.

To help people in Nevada deal with the housing crisis, Gingrich said Washington had to reduce regulations. One of the bills he would kill is the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Bill. One of the provisions in the act creates a new “independent watchdog” that would help Americans shop for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.

Gingrich sees this as hurting the housing industry. He feels this bill prevents the industry from rebounding, especially in hard hit areas such as Nevada.

Gingrich also told Nevadans that to get the economy back on track he would reduce taxes. More specifically, he would reduce the corporate tax to 12.5 percent.

“This will bring $700 billion locked up overseas back to America. It means businesses would be able to compete in the world market.”

He added that he would reform the tax code: “We adopt a 15 percent flat tax, where you say this is how much I earned, this is my dependents, here is the money, one page.”

In the end, Gingrich’s message didn’t resonate as well as Romney’s.