Nevadans mostly ignoring survey

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 10:33 a.m.

A national organization that surveys candidates on their positions convinced only one-third of all Nevadans running for Congress or the state Legislature to complete its questionnaire.

The survey is conducted every two years by Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan Philisburg, Mont., organization founded by prominent former Republican and Democratic politicians. Founding members include former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, as well as former presidential candidates George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and the late Barry Goldwater.

Project Vote Smart tracks about 13,000 candidates nationally and provides the public with information on congressional votes, campaign financing and issue positions.

But only 55 of the 164 Nevadans running for state and federal legislative races this fall participated in the organization's survey of issues such as budget priorities and taxation.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., responded but the state's leading U.S. Senate contenders, former GOP Rep. John Ensign and Democrat Ed Bernstein, did not participate. Neither did Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., or her chief foe, Republican state Sen. Jon Porter.

"That's not very good," said Project Vote Smart spokeswoman Kristina Saleh. "You have some candidates who don't return the survey because they're worried about opposition research. They don't want their opponents to see their survey, or they say it's too long.

"I had a woman tell me she couldn't complete the survey because she was in the middle of a septic tank explosion."

Only two of the 10 incumbent Nevada state senators running for re-election returned the survey. Participation from incumbent assemblymen also was slight. This also occurred two years ago when participation figures from candidates for the Legislature and Congress were 33 percent and 45 percent respectively.

Gibbons stated his opposition to partial-birth abortions or public funding of abortions. He would greatly increase defense funding, and slightly increase federal spending on law enforcement and medical research. But the congressman would slightly decrease funding for the arts, international aid and welfare.

State Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, and Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, both want slight increases in education funding. But Dini wants to greatly increase funding for health care as well as transportation and highways.

Raggio seeks only a slight increase in money for health care and would maintain current levels of transportation and highway funding.

The complete responses from Nevada candidates is on Project Vote Smart's website at vote-smart.org as part of the organization's year 2000 National Political Awareness Test.