City Council members face elections, ethics charges

Erin Neff

Monday, Jan. 22, 2001 | 10:52 a.m.

Filing

Filing opens at 8 a.m. Tuesday and closes Feb. 2. The primary election is April 3 and the general election is June 5.

To some, Tuesday opens the official campaigning time for four Las Vegas City Council seats.

Others see Tuesday as the start of the silly season, with ethics complaints filed against three of the four incumbents and sudden interest from a former pol.

Incumbents Lynette Boggs McDonald, Michael Mack and Lawrence Weekly have never won an election, but have already amassed decent war chests and strategists to help the three appointed council members win votes.

Larry Brown, who won a tightly contested 1997 race by a narrow margin, faces his first re-election.

But so far, only Weekly has any serious competition.

Last week Bob Nolen, a former city councilman and constable, decided he would run against Weekly for the Ward 5 council seat.

"It was the craziest thing," said Nolen, 59, the general manager of the Olympic Gardens topless club. "I came to work last Friday and I had no thought in my mind about it.

"But some people came in to meet me and said, 'Bob, we need your help,' " Nolen said.

Nolen just moved back into the ward after selling his home so he could keep his grandson in the same school. He said his decision to run was literally happenstance.

Weekly got the news about Nolen the day he held his campaign kick-off. When Boggs McDonald launched her campaign last Thursday, she was greeted with an ethics complaint.

She, Brown, Mack and Mayor Oscar Goodman are all named in a citizen's complaint alleging the council members granted a special favor to political consultant Sig Rogich in an April 2000 tavern license vote.

Boggs McDonald, who was joined by Gov. Kenny Guinn at her fund-raiser and party, said she thinks the complaint is simply "dirty politics."

Mack is now wondering what's going to happen the day he officially launches his campaign.

Some at City Hall believe Councilman Michael McDonald is attempting to harm his colleagues' political future as payback for their strong words and testimony against him during his own ethics hearing last year.

Regardless, the incumbents are raising money -- some in excess of $300,000 already -- to retain their seats.

The Ward 2, 4 and 6 seats are four-year terms. Weekly's Ward 5 seat is a two-year term to help stagger future elections, since wards 5 and 6 were only added in 2000.

Billboards and roadside signs are also popping up around town for the Municipal Court races.

Judges Betsy Kolkoski, Michelle Fitzpatrick, Cedric Kerns and Jessie Walsh all face election. Walsh and Kolkoski were appointed to their seats.