Columnist Susan Snyder: Candidate takes us to school

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000 | 2:50 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Tierney Cahill is teaching us all a lesson.

It's one about our political system and a government "of the people."

Cahill is the Democratic candidate for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District seat, which is held by her opponent, Republican Jim Gibbons.

The 33-year-old Reno sixth grade teacher is a single mother with three kids under the age of 11. She isn't a career politician. She's a soccer mom.

She decided to run last fall while teaching her class that the U.S. government is run for us, by us. Our political system was set up so that anybody could run for office, she told them.

Her pupils called the bluff. They asked her to run. So she tossed her name into the hat and emerged from the primaries as the only Democrat willing to run against Gibbons, who is seeking a third term and ran unopposed last time.

District 2 encompasses all of Nevada, with the exception of Las Vegas' most urban areas. It includes the region west of Durango Avenue, north of North Las Vegas, south of Tropicana Avenue, plus Henderson, Boulder City and all outlying areas of Clark County.

But it's not a district the Democrats ever expect to carry. So Democratic Party officials offered Cahill no financial support and no publicity until the past couple of weeks. They, like their opponents running Gibbons' campaign, considered her efforts a joke. Somehow, District 2 voters didn't merit a choice.

More than once Cahill was told that without $1 million in her war chest she "wasn't viable." Her campaign coffers topped out at $5,000. At one point she was down to $50. Right now she has about $650. None of it is enough to buy the billboards or TV time that Gibbons can purchase with his $500,000 and change.

Still, Cahill was here last week greeting constituents at area shopping centers and meeting community leaders. And she had a message for those who doubt her resolve or viability: Public office belongs to the public.

"To empower people you shouldn't have to be wealthy," Cahill said. "This has really been an aristocracy. It's for those who are well-connected."

Cahill supports abortion rights but says minors shouldn't have access without a parent or guardian's knowledge. She doesn't believe in taking away people's guns but wants to know who owns them. She says taking money from public education and giving it to private schools isn't good for all students.

"And I don't want nuclear waste here ever, ever, ever," Cahill said. "I would fight that to the last straw."

But few people here even know her name. The Democratic Party -- which offered Cahill support about the same time National Public Radio started work on a story about her -- didn't even care if the 89,583 Clark County Democrats in District 2 had a choice on Nov. 7.

Cahill lives on $1,600 a month, rents her home, volunteers in her community and runs her kids to soccer practice and Brownie-Scout meetings. You don't get more "of the people" than that.

But elections aren't about that anymore. We get the best representation we can buy.

Cahill may lose this race. But she's one heck of a teacher.