DeLay and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell held a recruiting meeting Tuesday night in Henderson for the Coalition for a Conservative Majority, a technically nonpartisan group devoted to supporting conservative candidates and issues at the grass-roots level.

Tuesday's meeting was not open to the media, but DeLay said he hoped about 100 people would show up and at least 25 would sign up to get the group going. Earlier Tuesday, DeLay and Blackwell spoke to the Review-Journal editorial board.

After he left Congress in 2006, DeLay said, "I looked at where the conservative movement is, and it's pretty pitiful." While liberal groups had been building a powerful coalition of activists, bloggers, issue groups and think tanks, conservatives had "good think tanks, but no action tanks."

The Las Vegas area was picked as one of nine media markets the group is entering initially because "I think Nevada will be a political hotbed," he said. "You're going to have some good races here."

DeLay cited Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who is expected to have one of the hottest congressional races in the country this year. Members of the group would be active in the community to support Porter and push him to take conservative stances, he said.

Porter recently has changed his tune on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, voting with Democrats to expand the popular project and override vetoes from President Bush. DeLay suggested those votes, which Porter says weren't politically motivated, might have been different had Porter been hearing a chorus of conservative voices in his district.

"I don't think he would have voted for SCHIP if he had a CCM chapter here to support him," DeLay said.

Similarly, the group will bolster Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., whose nonaggression pact with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., prevents him from gunning for the biggest Democratic target in the state, DeLay said.

DeLay and Blackwell were spending some time in Nevada courting potential donors. They did not meet with Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson, "but he's certainly a target," said DeLay, who remains under indictment in Texas on campaign finance charges.

But the group's main emphasis is rank-and-file conservatives, not marquee names or money men. It hopes to bring together a fractured Republican Party by emphasizing what conservatives have in common rather than their differences, Blackwell said.

"Unity without uniformity is the argument we have to make," he said.

The coalition doesn't expect to hit full speed overnight.

"We cannot today be MoveOn.org," Blackwell said. "But in four years, they're going to see they're in a dogfight."

Nevada Democratic Party Deputy Executive Director Kirsten Searer said she wasn't surprised to see Republicans worried in Nevada. She pointed to the 116,000 Nevadans who attended Democratic caucuses Jan. 19, compared to 44,000 Republicans.

"We're seeing a huge wave of Democratic momentum," she said. "We have thousands of volunteers we mobilized on caucus day who we will deploy through the election."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.