Sandoval completes state GOP sweep

Erin Neff

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002 | 11:19 a.m.

Republican Brian Sandoval handily beat Democrat John Hunt on Tuesday and returned the attorney general's office to the GOP for the first time in 12 years.

Sandoval's early entry into the race, combined with plane-hopping from his Reno home to the swarm of voters in populous Clark County, paid off as he won all 17 counties.

"We're just ecstatic," Sandoval said at Caesars Palace, with his wife and two children at his side. "I couldn't have done it without my campaign team and without my family."

The bitter campaign cost the candidates a combined $2.2 million and saw the emergence of an aggressive independent campaign for Hunt. But in the end Sandoval attributed his 24-point victory to good old-fashioned shoe leather -- and his frequent flights.

"There was no doubt in my mind that I'd have to spend a lot of time here, and I did," Sandoval said shortly before jetting back to Reno.

The victory puts Sandoval, 39, into an exclusive group of elected Hispanic state executive branch officials -- which numbered six before Tuesday's elections -- and will make him the only Republican Hispanic attorney general in the nation.

Hunt, 48, a Las Vegas attorney and political novice who entered the race months after Sandoval, said despite his loss he felt proud of his campaign for making it harder for Sandoval to be "anointed."

"The word impossible is just not in my vocabulary," Hunt said, alongside his family and supporters at the state Democratic Party gathering at the Riviera. "We've run a great race."

Despite strong labor support and personal help from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Hunt was never able to shed the images Sandoval's campaign portrayed in ads -- that of a divorce lawyer with alleged impropriety in campaign fund-raising.

Hunt's loss was especially tough for Reid, who had aggressively campaigned for Hunt and two of the other Democrats seeking election to the six statewide offices. None of them won.

"Brian ran a great race and he's a real shining star," GOP political consultant Pete Ernaut said. "I think the voters gave him a real mandate."

Sandoval, a former two-term state assemblyman and former chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, is hyped by the GOP for future bids at higher offices -- perhaps even governor in four years.

But on Tuesday, Sandoval had all eyes on the attorney general's office.

"This is just the end of a very long dream," Sandoval said. "I am honored that the voters agree with my message."

Sandoval pledged throughout the campaign that he would create a public integrity unit and a senior fraud unit within the office. The public integrity unit, he said, will oversee the state's ethics and elections laws.

Hunt had sparred with Sandoval over that proposal, calling it an added bureaucracy, and over a number of other issues after Hunt entered the race in March calling Sandoval "an empty suit."

Sandoval's campaign filed a complaint alleging $158,000 in campaign contributions Hunt had taken from Vestin Mortgage, its CEO Mike Shustek and other company officers and employees may have been illegally passed from officers to employees.

Hunt fired back with a television ad featuring a couple who claimed Sandoval's role in their adoption case "nearly ruined our family."

The two had lobbed additional barbs on television and in the mail for the past month, marking the close campaign with a nastiness rivaled only in Nevada's 3rd Congressional District.

"This was just an air war," Hunt said. "When they spend a ton of money on television, it just put us at unbelievable odds."

Shustek, however, added to the campaign by running his own effort to elect Hunt with TV and radio ads, mailers, mobile billboards and volunteers walking precincts. Shustek said he filed a campaign report Tuesday with the state -- a full week late -- showing he spent $142,000.

Independent American Party candidate Jonathan Hansen, a 31-year-old Las Vegas attorney, earned 4 percent. "None of these" got 4 percent.