Columnist Benjamin Grove: Sometimes state’s contingent agrees to disagree

Benjamin Grove

Friday, March 1, 2002 | 4:29 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada's Democrats and Republicans in Congress often unite when it comes to two issues: Yucca Mountain and gaming. But not always. Consider last week.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., started the week by firing a shot at President Bush, vowing to join a lawsuit against his Republican administration. Reid said he planned to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the General Accounting Office, which sued to obtain information about secret meetings between energy industry executives and White House officials. The administration has refused to release the documents.

Reid said he wants to know if nuclear energy industry officials inappropriately pushed the Yucca Mountain project on the administration. Of course, the move was also designed to score a few political points by tweaking the Republican White House again for being close to the nuclear industry, and for endorsing the Yucca project this month.

Reid put Nevada's Republican lawmakers, Rep. Jim Gibbons and Sen. John Ensign, in an awkward spot. Should they join Reid and attack the administration? Or pass up an opportunity to demand documents that may illuminate Bush's Yucca Mountain decision?

In the end, Reid didn't make them choose -- he didn't even ask the two if they wanted to co-sign his brief, Gibbons and Ensign aides said, and they quietly let the matter pass.

(Gibbons, for the record, supports Reid's lawsuit, just not enough to sign it. Ensign never came to work at all in Washington last week, remaining in Nevada to sort out an undisclosed "personal matter.")

Somewhat more strangely, Reid also didn't ask his Democratic ally in the House, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., to join him in signing the amicus brief -- at least not initially. By week's end Berkley said she would join Reid, after Reid had gobbled up all the media attention.

It's not clear if Reid's press machine accidently jumped without Berkley, or if Reid wanted the spotlight to himself. One Reid aide said he was secretly hoping CNN pundit Robert Novak or some other conservative mouthpiece would slam Reid -- thereby garnering the Nevada senator even more attention as a brave Democratic maverick.

Of course, outside Nevada circles all this stuff hardly matters in the grand scheme of things -- the court doesn't care if an amicus brief is signed by Nevada Democrats or Republicans, as Gibbons press secretary Amy Spanbauer noted.

And the GAO lawsuit itself may be yesterday's news. In a separate lawsuit filed by an environmental group, a federal judge last week told the Department of Energy to turn over the agency's records about the energy task force's meetings, giving the department until March 25 to comply.

In another development, Berkley created some political friction when she announced she would form a "Casino Entertainment Caucus" to complement the House Gaming Caucus, a lackluster group of 14 lawmakers who meet occasionally.

Congress has more than 100 caucuses, mostly informal groups of lawmakers with similar interests who band together. Some have serious, far-reaching policy goals (Black Congressional Caucus, Pro-Life Caucus), others are more narrowly focused (Bicycle Caucus, Beef Caucus, Portuguese American Caucus).

Berkley irked Gibbons, who said her new group would duplicate the work of the bipartisan Gaming Caucus. Gibbons is chairman of the Gaming Caucus (Berkley is a member, too), which embraces a variety of issues, including jai alai and horses.

Gibbons aides chided Berkley for launching a Democrats-only club. Berkley staffers shot back that anyone could join, and insisted that there was plenty of room in the House for a scrappy new caucus specifically focused on casino issues.

Meanwhile last week Gibbons held a campaign event on Capitol Hill for Berkley's opponent, Lynette Boggs McDonald.

Is it any surprise this is an election year?