Group files petitions for recall of Gates

Jeff Schweers

Friday, May 8, 1998 | 9:58 a.m.

A citizens group financed by Venetian resort owner Sheldon Adelson has filed a stack of petitions with the Clark County Elections Department seeking a special election to remove Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

"I don't think we should sit idly by letting elected officials abuse their position," Charles Bennion, spokesman for Citizens for Honest and Responsible Government, said Thursday before delivering an estimated 7,500 signatures to the Elections Department.

That's 3,000 more than the 4,380 signatures needed for a recall election. The signatures must be verified by the secretary of state's office before an election can be called. After doing an independent check, Bennion said he was confident the signatures would be certified.

Some 25 Culinary Union members crowded the elections office, holding signs in support of Gates, when the petitions were delivered.

"This is simply Adelson's attempt to use his position to buy the County Commission," Culinary Union Political Director Glen Arnodo said. "Should there be an election, the votes will show him that they're not going to let him buy a commission seat."

Gates has called the recall drive politically motivated. She said Adelson is retaliating for her vote against his hotel-casino project because it did not address traffic concerns.

Bennion said he has collected $70,000 to mount the recall drive, most of it from Adelson and companies he controls. The petitions alone cost $2 a signature, or $15,000, Bennion said.

Whatever the dispute is between the Culinary Union and Adelson, Bennion said, he wouldn't have gotten those signatures if there wasn't public discontent with Gates.

The Culinary Union countered the recall drive by sending out 3,000 recision cards for people who want to take their names off the petition, while Gates sent out 17,000 recision cards on her own.

The registrar's office had received 268 cards as of Thursday before the recall petitions were filed.

Bennion was outraged by the recision cards Gates sent out, saying the information on them was misleading and inaccurately portrayed his group as outsiders and mercenaries.

Bennion has been a resident of Las Vegas since 1996 but registered to vote in Gates' district only in January -- after the state Ethics Commission reprimanded her for being less than forthright in describing her role in trying to obtain a casino lease for a frozen daiquiri stand.

Likewise, Terry Akers, a chiropractor who said he would run against Gates in the event a special election is held, did not move into her district until after the Ethics Commission's ruling.

Bennion, who sat through the two-day hearing, said he was outraged by Gates' constant dissembling and lying.

"I don't think her first concern is for her constituents," Bennion said. "This has been government of Yvonne Atkinson Gates, by Yvonne Atkinson Gates and for Yvonne Atkinson Gates."

Ted Pappageorge, a nephew of political lobbyist John Pappageorge, said he followed the hearings and felt Gates "had her legitimate side."

Several residents alleged that petition gatherers were using pressure tactics and misleading information to get signatures. North Las Vegan Ernest Wright said he heard one worker tell his mother-in-law that the petition was to reinstate Gates.

"I said, 'Don't sign, the man is lying,'" Wright said. He is a retired New York Transit worker who has lived in Clark County for four years.

Bennion said he had heard those allegations and checked with the National Voter Outreach company.

"To have people out there intimidating or misrepresenting what we're circulating would be hypocrisy of the highest order," Bennion said.