Pall of Nevada fracas hangs over Democratic contest

LAS VEGAS (AP) — As Oregon and Kentucky queue up to vote in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, the pall of a divisive state party convention in Nevada hangs over the race.

On Monday the ugliness continued as the Nevada Democratic Party kept its offices closed for security reasons and wrote a letter to the Democratic National Committee warning of what it called the Sanders campaign's "penchant for extra-parliamentary behavior — indeed, actual violence — in place of democratic conduct in a convention setting."

The Nevada dissension does not change the likely outcome of the Democratic nominating contest, in which Clinton holds a commanding lead in pledged delegates and is expected to lock up enough to clinch the party's presidential nomination following primaries on June 7.

Anger swelled further after a credentials committee disqualified nearly 60 would-be Sanders' delegates, saying they didn't provide proper identifying information or were not registered Democratic voters by a May 1 deadline.

In a statement, the state party accused the Sanders campaign of deliberately sharing misinformation about how the convention operates to get people riled up.

Tick Segerblom, a Nevada state senator and Sanders backer, said in an interview Monday that he didn't think the state party did anything improper but that it needed to reach out to the Sanders' supporters.