Strategist takes blame for bungled Bunker bid

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

Top political strategist Billy Vassiliadis blamed himself Wednesday for Richard Bunker's stunning Senate primary loss.

"Richard Bunker didn't lose this race," Vassiliadis said. "His consultants did. I was the one Richard trusted. I bear the primary responsibility."

Four-term Las Vegas Assemblyman Dennis Nolan defeated the high-powered Bunker by 147 votes in Tuesday's Republican primary in Senate District 9, even though Bunker spent twice as much and had the backing of Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno.

Vassiliadis, who has lobbied for the gaming industry with Bunker over the last decade, said he has never been as baffled about losing a race in his 22 years of running campaigns in Nevada.

"I can't make any sense of this," said Vassiliadis, who owns R & R Partners, one of the premier advertising firms in the state. "I've been in losing campaigns, but I could always tell you why. Nothing here adds up. I'm on a personal mission to find out what happened."

Vassiliadis said a poll he commissioned by national pollster Glen Bolger three weeks before the primary election showed the 68-year-old Bunker 30 points ahead of Nolan.

As a result, Vassiliadis said, he made the decision to pull positive television ads and campaign mailers promoting Bunker the last two weeks of the race to save the money for a battle with Democrat Terry Lamuraglia in the Nov. 5 general election.

"Obviously, it was a huge mistake," he said. "If I knew what we know now, I don't think I would have done that. I don't think one person in this town thought Richard Bunker was going to lose. I don't think Dennis Nolan thought Richard Bunker was going to lose."

Bolger, who runs Public Opinion Strategies in Washington, said that like Vassiliadis, he was "perplexed" over Bunker's loss.

"This is the first race in Nevada I've had where the election results were so different from the pre-election poll," he said.

Bolger, who also does polling for Gov. Kenny Guinn and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said his survey of registered voters in the district, which was taken on Aug. 11 and 12, showed Bunker ahead of Nolan by 46 to 16 percent with 38 percent undecided.

Nolan said his own poll the last couple of weeks before the primary had him down 15 points with 40 to 45 percent of the voters undecided.

But while Bunker decided to back off, the 41-year-old Nolan, a former paramedic, cranked up his campaign a notch.

"We knew we had to make up the difference," Nolan said. "So we just kind of started a grass-roots charge again the last week. We walked the district, put up more signs and made phone calls."

"We knew we were up against a guy who had an open checkbook. We just had to be a lot smarter and more creative about things."

Bunker had raised $214,525 by the Aug. 22 cut-off for the first contributions report and had spent nearly $175,000, the bulk of which went to Vassiliadis' R&R Partners.

Nolan had raised and spent just under $85,000 in the same period.

But Bunker's fund-raising edge disappeared in the voting booth, where Nolan did enjoy the power of incumbency.

Senate District 9 includes a majority of Nolan's old Assembly district -- a district in which voters chose him four times.

Joe Brezny, executive director of the Senate Republican Caucus, which endorsed Bunker, said he saw Nolan campaigning on street corners in the waning days of the primary with supportive police officers and firefighters at his side.

"The guy's a campaign machine," Brezny said. "He just never stops. If he works the general election the way he worked the primary, come Nov. 5 his name will start with 'Senator.' "

Raggio, who plans to back Nolan in the general election, also praised Nolan's workmanlike strategy.

"He was in the trenches," Raggio said. "He ran an effective campaign."

Nolan said he got the impression during the race that the Bunker forces were "leaning" on voters too much, telling them they expected their vote.

That may have backfired, he suggested.

"The voters don't like being told who they're going to vote for," he said. "They like to have choices.

"I think we were successful in getting the message out that our opponent was 'anointed.' "