Columnist Erin Neff: Special legislative session is mostly about PR

Erin Neff

Friday, July 26, 2002 | 4:03 a.m.

THE NEVADA LEGISLATURE should get into the spirit of the national political public relations game when it convenes Monday.

Every time President George W. Bush speaks to anyone anymore, there's this handy backdrop with a pleasant catch phrase designed to reinforce what he says (or more often in Bush's case, what he's trying to say.)

"Protecting the Homeland," pops up during talk of that giant bureaucracy he's trying to create in the name of America's defense against terrorists. "Corporate Responsibility" served as a backdrop during a speech to Wall Street as the network stock indices plunged.

Never one to let the GOP take ownership of a good idea, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota now discusses rising medical costs under the backdrop of "A Prescription Benefit in Medicare."

Apparently since the public needs such reminders, the catch phrases might also be helpful to the 63 lawmakers trying to plod through the nasty medical malpractice crisis.

After all, this whole session was, is and will be only about PR.

Sen. Ann O'Connell, R-Las Vegas, should only rise to speak when the backdrop is properly displaying "MICRA: Helping the Doctors."

And Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, should give press conferences under the banner: "Justice for our citizens."

What you won't see in the background is the average person, the whole reason lawmakers should be heading today to Carson City.

The little guys -- the pregnant women, the seniors and workers with rising health insurance -- are always upstaged by doctors and lawyers.

The whole medical malpractice crisis in Nevada has largely played out with hysterical stories, half-truths, untruths and other wonders of the PR industry.

A press release condemning the loss of 150 doctors from the state had to be corrected to reflect the 29 who have closed their practices and the 14 who have retired.

Doctors are apparently getting every penny out of the $3 million they're giving Brown and Partners to hype their cause. So far it's bought quite a few full-page ads, thousands of "Help Me Keep My Doctor" postcards and a database of pregnant women available for news stories.

And since they've already gotten plenty of Republicans to sign a pledge supporting the $250,000 non-economic damage caps on jury awards, it only makes sense that docs throw a little money to the Republican-controlled state Senate for during-the-session PR.

The lawyers have famously controlled the Assembly Judiciary Committee in recent years, shuttling amendments to Chairman Bernie Anderson, a Democrat from Sparks. They've also packed the hearing room with the victims of the day. In the past two sessions, it has been homeowners with construction defect problems.

The trial bar was slow with the PR assault this year -- only running newspaper and television ads in the past few weeks. But since they've consistently lined the Assembly Democrats' re-election campaign coffers, they haven't had to spend as much during the current crisis.

Political campaigns, whether for a particular office or an issue, have dumbed down rapidly into three-word bits.

It's no wonder the complexities of the medical malpractice issue have created a doctor-versus-lawyer debate with no real talk about the insurance companies.

The poll-tested "Nevada families" and "fighting for families" surprisingly hasn't made it into this debate. Maybe that's because families have been the last thought all along.

If there were a true compromise that mattered the backdrop behind the politicians might say something like Support for Patients. That's some PR that might last after this week ends.