LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- It seems this town is still recovering from its hangover after the bender that was the 2010 Senate race between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle. Democrats are still celebrating, and dazed tea partiers are still wondering what hit them.

The 2012 open-seat Senate race is poised to feature Republican Rep. Dean Heller against one of several Democrats, but it's still fuzzy to most political operatives whether Rep. Shelley Berkley will take the plunge, and they say they'll be scratching their heads for another month or two. And a full nine months before Nevada voters decide who will succeed retiring two-term Sen. John Ensign, Republican caucus-goers will get an early say in the GOP presidential nomination.

The Silver State is on the roster of early primary states, and in the coming cycle, its results will be both binding and proportional. But even with that change, Nevada voters are not jumping at the chance to tear themselves from the lights of Las Vegas and pull themselves back into the more mundane world of politics.

At the moment, that's a good thing for Mitt Romney, who enjoys high name recognition and solid favorability here. He isn't battling the same kind of problems in Nevada he is in some other states where he's expecting to do well, notably New Hampshire. Here, his support appears to run both wide and deep.

While Romney has yet to set foot in Iowa this year, he's already been to Nevada several times for multiple-day stays, meeting with donors and giving speeches. He's been locking down financiers in the state and has some of the same top team members from his 2007 operation.

His likely competitors for the nomination aren't planning to cede the state to him entirely, but neither are they coming here and predicting a big upset. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour visited the state two weeks ago, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gave a speech in Reno in January. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at an event with Sharron Angle last October, but he hasn't been back this year.

Like Romney, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty also has been to Nevada a couple of times, but mostly for fundraising. He has another event planned there later this month. And sources in the state say that Mike Slanker has done some work for Pawlenty and might join his team as a consultant in Nevada.

Slanker, a partner at November Inc., has a long history in national GOP politics and in Nevada and would be a nice get for Pawlenty. He served as the political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee under Ensign and has run Ensign's campaigns. In his role as a consultant, he contributed his talents to President Bush's successful Silver State effort in 2004, as well as Gov. Brian Sandoval's race last year.

Aside from Pawlenty and Romney, every other campaign seems a long way away from getting boots on the ground in Nevada. The possible candidate who figures to compete here is Jon Huntsman, the former governor of neighboring Utah. But Huntsman, still the U.S. ambassador to China, can't legally launch a campaign for another month or so. But it's unlikely that those three candidates will have Nevada to themselves: Lovers of the television cameras -- and that includes not a few of the emerging Republican field -- will take note that CNN has announced it will host a presidential debate for the Republican contenders on Oct. 18 -- to take advantage of the Western Republican Leadership Conference taking place there. So the GOP candidates should at least be spotted on the Las Vegas Strip then.

And for those Republicans looking ahead to November of 2012, Nevada offers one other inducement: President Obama moved Nevada's five electoral votes into the Democratic Party's column in 2008. But next year, the state will jump to six electoral votes.