Mesquite hangs in the balance

Tuesday, June 5, 2001 | 10:46 a.m.

Politicians will readily confirm that elections in Nevada can be rough.

But even by statewide standards, the tussle in Mesquite stands apart.

In today's election, three members of Mesquite's Committee for Checks and Balances are trying to gain control of the five-person City Council. The group backs controversial Mayor Chuck Horne, a former Las Vegas assemblyman and far-right Independent American Party candidate for governor.

Three candidates who emphatically don't support Horne, including two incumbents, are competing for the three open seats. The ticket is split into two camps: pro-Horne and anti-Horne.

The candidates and issues are bringing the city's voters to the polls in heavy numbers, the Clark County Department of Elections reported. Before the polls opened this morning, 2,141 of the city's 4,776 active voters had mailed in their ballot or voted early last week.

County Registrar Larry Lomax said the percentage of people voting -- 45 percent even before today -- was the highest rate in the county.

"That's a pretty significant turnout."

Countywide, only about 8 percent of the active voters had voted before today.

This morning traffic at polling places was moderate, and voting was going smoothly, Kedric Bassett, team leader for the Elections Department, said.

A heavy turnout would favor the pro-mayor camp, Horne said Monday.

"We believe that's a good thing," he said. "Our figures show a very positive turnout of our supporters."

Those on the other side also predicted victory in what is essentially a showdown of the mayor's goals and policies. The council race isn't the only ballot question that focuses on the mayor.

Mesquite voters also are choosing from two competing city charter proposals. The first, backed by Horne, would give the mayor a clear administrative role in the city.

The second on the ballot, titled "Not the Mayor's Charter," would keep the city council-city manager form that is common among Clark County governments.

In several recent elections, both factions have charged -- unsuccessfully -- the other side with electoral transgressions. To ensure that there are no problems, several of his staff will be at the polls to stay on top of the situation, Lomax said.

"They're ready to deal with whatever goes on," he said.

Lomax said he realizes the importance of this vote to the people of Mesquite.

"It's literally control of the town."

Horne has been embroiled in controversy with other council members and the city staff since he was elected in June 1999. He has sued the city government at least three times since his election and is now involved in a lawsuit to stop a land-use deal between a developer, Mesquite Vistas, the federal Bureau of Land Management and the city.

The deal is expected to go to court this summer.

The Chamber of Commerce and others also championed an unsuccessful recall election against Horne last summer, a foretaste of this year's brawl.

Opponents of Horne argue that the mayor and his supporters are threatening economic development, a big issue in a city that has grown 402 percent over the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The election "is the most important thing that's ever going to happen to this town," said Kirk Lee, president of the Mesquite Chamber of Commerce and director of sales and marketing at the Oasis Resort, one of three big casinos in the city of about 10,000.

If Horne's supporters, dubbed "the People's Choice" slate, win the election, "Our growth stops," Lee said.

Horne said he and his supporters aren't against growth.

Although the economic development strategies may have worked in the past, Horne said, the city now desperately needs economic diversification, including a higher-education campus.

Charges that he is hurting the city's prospects for future growth are "bunk," he said. "Total, unadulterated, political bunk."

"Those that spin that story feel that control is slipping from their hands,"' Horne said.

Horne also has championed "managed growth," an incongruous position for an Independent American Party activist. The party generally champions individual property rights and gun ownership but condemns the United Nations, Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service, homosexuals and environmentalists.

Although Mesquite City Council and mayoral seat are nonpartisan, Horne's party affiliation is an issue.

"Some of the mayor's ideas, I'm sure, are fine," Lee said. "It's the idea of getting all the power that scares us.

"The Independent American Party -- that's a little scary," he said. "I get visions of Waco, I get visions of Timothy McVeigh. These folks are just a little too intense for me."

Horne said his political affiliation shouldn't be the issue.

Despite coordinated opposition, Horne and the People's Choice ticket have clearly struck a chord with Mesquite's voters, including many in the growing population of retirees filling the tract homes in the desert community along the Virgin River.

"We think there is an awful lot of influence at City Hall by special interests, big money people," said Richard Strohl, a retired postmaster from Wyoming who's been in Mesquite for about six years.

He is one of the three People's Choice candidates.

Strohl said the land deal with Mesquite Vistas, in which the developer would receive 3,105 acres of BLM land and the developer would give the city 600 acres, bothers many people.

"The city needs to render the fruits of that land back to the citizens," he said. "The only thing we're concerned with is that those things need to be above board and to the highest bidder."

Horne and his supporters have condemned what they call backroom deals and an entrenched political establishment.

A member of that establishment is Cresent Hardy, an incumbent councilman fighting to hold onto his seat. He said the campaign has been bruising.

"It has been one of the most difficult things that I have ever been through," Hardy said.

The worst part of the controversies over the past several years is that they have brought nasty, big-city politics to a small town, Hardy said. Developers and businesses are avoiding the city because of the political instability, he said, and others say they would have stayed out instead of coming to Mesquite within the past several years.

"The business people are concerned. I am a business person, and I am concerned."

Horne, however, said those concerns are political fodder and nothing else.

"It's get the mayor, and that's what drives them."