I tried it some more in 1.5beta, with icons toned down, and I ran into no problems for a while. But eventially I did still run into situations where I couldn't select a state, even in an open area. Here's a picture to help demonstrate:

Even when I click in the great big space around the HQ in PA, it took many, many clicks to select it in this situation. I couldn't select WV, and I can't remember if I could finally click OH, or if it took many, many clicks as well. (And I am clicking in open areas where I see no icons).
I'm running into a new problem now. Several times when I play a campaign in 1.5b in this mode, it'll scroll to one side of the screen all by itself until only half of the country is shown. And when I try scrolling to where I want, with the mouse, keyboard, and zooming with the rolling mouse button, it keeps moving to the side. Until I restart the game. Then it may work fine for the rest of the game, or it may start out fine but within a few turns start scrolling to a different side by itself.
And sometimes some of the icons are invisible, like ads or my candidate
-thanks