Letter: Partisanship not motivation for governor

Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2000 | 10:39 a.m.

To hear the press talk, if a Democrat likes Coke and a Republican prefers Pepsi, it must be due to partisanship. There apparently is no longer any room for simple, honest or philosophical disagreement in the body politic.

Case in point: In his "Where I Stand" column on Nov. 9, Brian Greenspun attributed Gov. Kenny Guinn's television attack advertisements against Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada's 1st Congressional District race to "ugly partisanship." But the truth is, as anyone who has followed this saga clearly knows, Guinn's decision to get involved in that race had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Republican and Berkley was a Democrat.

It was purely personal.

As we are increasingly coming to learn, our governor can be a bit thin-skinned whenever someone disagrees with him on an issue, and takes such public-policy criticisms very personally. Berkley voiced opposition to the governor's prescription drug plan for seniors, and the governor struck back at her out of personal pique, not ugly partisanship. As an unapologetic Republican partisan myself, I wish it were otherwise. But I've seen little or no evidence that Guinn has a partisan GOP bone in his body.

I encourage the media to be a little more circumspect in its overuse of the "partisan" card, lest the word become as hollow in meaning as the word "liberal."

CHUCK MUTH

Chairman, Nevada Republican Liberty Caucus