Neal survives recount, refocuses on gaming tax

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2000 | 11:38 a.m.

Maverick state Sen. Joe Neal can concentrate on his quest to increase gaming taxes, now that the North Las Vegas Democrat has survived a recount of his narrow Sept. 5 re-election victory.

The recount requested by District 4 Democratic challenger Uri Clinton turned up no changes Monday in the final results that handed Neal his eighth four-year term.

Neal, sporting a cowboy hat and boots, grinned as he emerged from the recount that was done in a stuffy North Las Vegas warehouse where Clark County's voting equipment is stored.

"The guy should remember the story of Icarus," Neal said of Clinton, a political novice.

"One of the things you have to know is when you start out you don't pick out the top guy when you want to win. When you fly too close to the sky you might crash."

Clinton, an attorney, was gracious in defeat. He shook Neal's hand and said afterward that he may take another stab at politics.

"I congratulated the senator," Clinton said. "The vote remained the same so he is continuing as senator. I have a lot of things I can do in the community."

The official record will show that Neal received 2,034 votes, compared to 1,820 for Clinton and 201 for fellow Democrat Christopher Montanez. Because no Republicans or third-party candidates were in the race, Neal needed to earn at least 50 percent plus one vote of the 4,055 cast to avoid a runoff with Clinton in the Nov. 7 general election.

Neal avoided the runoff by getting six more votes than the majority he needed.

Before the recount, Clinton argued that a voting machine at Cheyenne High School registered two more activations than voters who signed in, meaning that Neal had only four more votes than a majority. But county Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax stood by the official vote totals.

The recount performed by the county's election department will cost Clinton about $1,000, Lomax said.

Under state law, Clinton was permitted to select three of the Senate district's 50 precincts to be recounted by hand. The three precincts accounted for 652 votes.

The votes were then recounted using the computer records generated by the voting machines in those precincts. Had the hand count turned up a discrepancy of at least five votes from the original count, the county would have been required to expand its hand count to all 50 precincts.

It turned out that one vote was missed during the hand count, but Lomax said the computer count that followed verified the previously announced official results. While conceding that the hand count is more prone to error, he said the overall result proves the accuracy of the electronic voting machines.

"I've always had confidence in them," Lomax said.

The target Neal is aiming for now is 44,009, the number of valid signatures he needs by November to get the Nevada Legislature next year to consider his proposed gaming initiative. If lawmakers defeat the proposed tax increase as expected, the measure would be decided by the public on the November 2002 ballot.

"We're working on it," Neal said of the petition drive. "But we're not telling how close we are."