Candidates chosen for NAACP election

Jace Radke

Monday, Dec. 7, 1998 | 11:07 a.m.

The members of the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP now know that they will have a new president on Jan. 9. Three candidates have been selected for the election that day at Kelly Elementary School.

Behind closed doors, a meeting Friday night resulted in three choices to replace the suspended branch president, the Rev. James Rogers.

The Rev. Jesse Scott, Gene Collins and Louis Overstreet will vie for the job of bringing the embattled branch back to respectability after claims of unapproved fund-raisers, mismanagement of funds, sexual misconduct and alienation of members were made against Rogers administration.

About 65 members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People members showed up at the meeting at the West Las Vegas Library, where an election day was set. The meeting was closed to the media and non-members by Edward Lewis, the president of the NAACP Tri-State Conference, which oversees all the branches in Utah, Idaho and Nevada.

Afterward, the candidates laid out their qualifications.

Scott said that he feels he can bring experience to the office having served as branch president from the late 1980s to 1993.

"I feel that there is a need for my experience and that I can share that and help take care of some problems," Scott said. "I've also served in the West Coast region of the NAACP and had 30 branches under me at one time."

Scott, who lost a bid for mayor of North Las Vegas in 1989, said he believes schools and prisons are two main areas that need a sharp focus: to provide better education to children and work skills for inmates.

He added said that he feels that the Las Vegas NAACP branch needs to hire trained employees instead of using volunteers to run the office and keep the branch's records.

Rogers and his executive board was suspended in August for failing to file a year-end financial report for 1996.

Gene Collins was a state assemblyman from 1982 to 1986, and lists economic, education, social and family issues as areas that he would address as NAACP president.

Collins said he has formed a committee of young adults to look at the NAACP's history and to help decide what direction the organization should go in the future.

During his last stint in public office, Collins worked through a 1984 guilty ruling on two misdemeanor counts of failing to file income tax returns in 1979 and 1980. He was fined $1,294 in prosecution fees and was given five years of probation.

Overstreet, a writer and member of the Clark County School District's Bond Oversight Committee, is running on a six-point platform.

His goals include reestablishing the image of the Las Vegas NAACP branch, bringing the group's focus back to civil rights, promoting voter registration, initiating a fund-raising campaign to build a permanent home for the branch, publishing a monthly newsletter and broadening membership and encouraging diversity.

"I believe that the legacy of the branch is totally worth preserving and its image should not continue to be besmirched by highly publicized internal bickering," Overstreet said. "My candidacy represents a continuation of a lifelong commitment to community service."

Overstreet presented a complete list of executive officers and board members whom he intended to run with as a ticket, and he intends to file a letter of protest over Lewis' decision that candidates must run as individuals and not on a ticket.