Finally conceding defeat to New Hampshire in the Republican calendar stare-down, Nevada’s GOP on Saturday voted to move its caucus date from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4. 
 
 New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is now expected to set his state’s first-in-the-nation primary for Jan. 10. He will not make any announcement before Monday, his office said Friday. 
 
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 The Nevada GOP’s much-anticipated move, formalized at the party’s Central Committee meeting in Las Vegas, came after 10 days of prodding from the Republican National Committee, presidential campaigns and the New Hampshire political establishment. 
 
 “We want to make sure that Nevada’s voice is strong,” Nevada GOP Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian said of the move, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “This has become a distraction. It’s time to move forward. … We will be the good guys in the end. We don’t need to be New Hampshire’s pinata.” 
 
 “This change ensures that Nevada retains its prominent national role, as the first contest in the West and it restores Nevada’s full slate of delegates to the Republican National Convention,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “With this decision Nevada will receive the attention it deserves, and the national spotlight will focus clearly on the devastating effects that President Obama’s economic policies have had on the Silver State.” 
 
 Awarded one of four coveted early-state slots by the Republican and Democratic national committees, Nevada Republicans sought to maximize their influence in the presidential nominating contest by legally changing their bylaws to tether the date of their caucus to the Saturday after New Hampshire’s primary. 
 
 But Gardner, the custodian of the New Hampshire primary since 1976, refused to play ball, declining even to speak with Tarkanian. Citing state law that requires at least seven days between his primary and the next “similar election,” Gardner vowed to wait Nevada out. 
 
 When the Nevada state GOP could wait no longer, party leaders – who favored a Feb. 4 date, but were overrun by donors and grass-roots activists who wanted to stay ahead of Florida’s Jan. 31 primary – announced Oct. 5 that caucuses would be held Jan. 14. ||||| Bill Gardner just flipped the Republicans the bird. Again. 
 
 In a three-page statement released Wednesday afternoon, the New Hampshire secretary of state reiterated his independence and said he’ll move the primary up as far as necessary to maintain first-in-the-nation status and comply with state law. 
 
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 “If Nevada does not adjust its caucus date to a later time, I cannot rule out the possibility of a December primary,” Gardner wrote. “If Nevada does not accept a date of Tuesday, January 17th or later for its caucus, it leaves New Hampshire no choice but to consider December of this year. The dates of Tuesday, December 13th and Tuesday, December 6th are realistic options, and we have logistics in place to make either date happen if needed.” 
 
 But Gardner didn’t make that point directly to Nevada GOP Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian, who learned of the statement from POLITICO. 
 
 She replied, via text message: “WHAT??!!!” 
 
 Complete control over setting the nation’s first primary date has made Gardner a quirky fixture of presidential politics for four decades. But with this year’s suddenly upended calendar, Gardner’s disinterested approach is infuriating other early state chairs and the Republican National Committee, who can’t even get him on the phone. 
 
 “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said former Ohio GOP chairman Robert Bennett, a member of the RNC’s delegate selection committee. “What are you going to do, have a suspension over the holidays of presidential campaigning? Every operative that I’ve talked to said it’s the worst thing that could have happened.” 
 
 A lot hinges on Gardner’s decision, which took on new importance after Florida moved its primary to Jan. 31 and South Carolina and Nevada moved up their dates in response. If he schedules the primary in December, ahead of Iowa’s caucus, he could unilaterally alter the the entire nature of the campaign, giving an advantage to Mitt Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, who’s remained far ahead in local polls. 
 
 But Gardner, who’s so set in his ways that he doesn’t use a cell phone or e-mail, has shown no interest in negotiating. Nor was he involved in the regular conference calls held by those responsible for setting the primary calendar for the other early-nominating states. Tarkanian said that after her party’s initial efforts to speak with Gardner were unsuccessful, she reached out through an intermediary. That person told her Gardner had no plans to set his date until the New Hampshire filing period for candidates to get on the ballot begins Oct. 17. 
 
 Ultimately, Nevada last week announced its caucus would be Jan. 14, eliminating Jan. 10 from Gardner’s potential options because New Hampshire law requires the primary be held at least seven days before any “similar election.” 
 
 “We were hoping to get a specific date out of them but that didn’t happen,” Tarkanian said. “We decided, ‘This is crazy, we can’t sit around and wait any longer.’”
– New Hampshire may be forced to hold its GOP primary as early as Dec. 6, and it will be all Nevada's fault for moving up its caucus date, the Granite State's top election official warns. Secretary of State William Gardner says New Hampshire has no intention of surrendering its tradition of being the second state to choose a nominee, and the combination of state laws and the Christmas holiday make Dec. 6 or 13 the only realistic dates for a primary if Nevada refuses to move its date back by at least three days, Politico reports. Iowa's caucus is set for Jan. 3, and Nevada's is schedule for Jan. 14. The parties "can discourage other states from trying to leapfrog onto our tradition," Gardner said in a statement. "Right now, the problem is the date of Nevada. We cannot allow the political process to squeeze us into a date that wedges us by just a few days between two major caucus states." Mitt Romney is expected to win in both New Hampshire and Nevada, but an early December win in New England will leave a long time, and probably a big loss in Iowa, between victories, notes Nate Silver at the New York Times.