Reno Mayor Griffin ends campaign; backs former Lt. Gov. Cashell

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 | 9:28 a.m.

Griffin, who already had raised $100,000 for his re-election, said he had expected a "dog fight" in the nonpartisan election this fall against Cashell, a longtime Nevada politician and casino owner.

The mayor for seven years, Griffin said he decided to drop out of the race to spend more time with his family and because he was worried he may be dragging down some issues important to the city. He also cited his distaste for negative campaigning.

"I personally, in some sense, have become bigger than the issues I support," Griffin said at a hastily called news conference at city hall.

He explained that he fears critics who don't like him personally may be taking it out on issues he supports, like a controversial proposal to build a 2.3-mile train trench through downtown Reno.

Opponents of the rail trench submitted more than 15,000 petition signatures last week, which they say should force the question onto the ballot in September.

Griffin and other members of the city council had resisted public calls to voluntarily put the question to a vote of the people.

"The railroad project is not about me. It is about the future of this city," the mayor said, calling it the "most important thing in the history of this city, period."

The $231 million project would depress Union Pacific Railroad tracks through Reno, sinking them to a depth of 33 feet so that 11 streets can cross the tracks unimpeded by passing trains.

Backers, including the largest downtown casinos, say it is necessary to handle anticipated increases in freight train traffic to an expanding harbor in the San Francisco Bay area.

"It will not only transform this city, it is going to save this city," Griffin said Monday.

"I applaud the people who have gone through the initiative process. That is exactly what America is all about. ... I want to debate and talk about the issues, the challenges the community faces.

"To the extent that I, as a figurehead, or I, as a personality, took away from that debate, I have just taken that part of the equation and changed it," he said.

Griffin, who also drew the ire of historic preservationists for failing to do enough in their view to block the demolition of the Mapes Hotel, had taken a high profile in recent years in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, heading its criminal and social justice committee.

He said he's backing Cashell as "the only other candidate with a vision for Reno's future." Cashell currently owns two casinos in northern Nevada, the Alamo Travel Center in Sparks and the Topaz Lodge in Douglas County.

Others running for mayor include Mike Robinson, a leading critic of the train trench, former councilwoman Candice Pearce and Andrew Putnam, a U.S. Mail Service supervisor.

Cashell said he was "very surprised" to learn of Griffin's decision.

"You could have knocked me over with a feather," he told KRNV-TV in Reno. "When he called me and we talked about it, it took my breath away."

But Pearce told the Reno Gazette-Journal she was not surprised by the move.

"Everything I have seen has shown him in third place," she said. "The reason he is not running is because of his record."

The train trench petition "clearly shows that 15,000 people are not happy with what's happening," Pearce said. "Those people are not happy with being ignored at the local government level."

Griffin, who runs an import-export business in Reno, said he didn't have any immediate plans other than finishing out the last seven months of his term. He said he had realized since the first of the year "this was going to be a hard-fought race.

"I like to think I have distinguished myself by always taking the high road. I began to think in this kind of a campaign I wouldn't be given that luxury, in fact that I would find myself in a situation where I would have to consider a negative campaign," he said.

"I made a promise to myself and my wife in that first campaign in 1994, that I would never do that. ... If that's what it takes, quite frankly, you can have the job."