Columnist Erin Neff: Campaign ads aren’t attacking the real issues

Erin Neff

Friday, Sept. 20, 2002 | 5:38 a.m.

The 2002 election year is shaping up like the classic philosophy question about whether a tree that falls in the forest makes any noise if there's no one around.

Candidates are screaming at the top of their lungs, and with so few voters apparently listening, the cacophony has drowned out any utterance of the issues that matter.

What's important is Social Security.

Education.

And it's still the economy, stupid.

Yet the "issues" rising above the din have recently been: campaign contributions, how to hang the flag behind you on your billboard and who can throw more money down the television drain with alleged truths and thinly veiled attacks.

The state's biggest concern -- its very real $370 million deficit -- should make this season a referendum on the budget and taxes.

The sixth-largest school district in the nation, which can't hire enough teachers or pay for algebra books or middle school sports, can't even vie for time.

So imagine what it must feel like to be one of the 86 doctors in Southern Nevada forced to safely deliver 23,000 babies ... and counting ... without going out of business in the process.

Those issues can't vie for space with the attack ads, leaving the Nov. 5 election occurring in a vacuum.

Congressional District 3 will undoubtedly suck $3 million into the tube for negative ads and still give voters no clue about Jon Porter and Dario Herrera's philosophies, assuming either man can remember what those were.

Porter and Herrera are too busy launching attacks on each other to attack the issues.

It's gotten so ridiculous -- that with 45 days still to go -- the battleground for Nevada's debut congressional representative is already at Defcon 4.

The campaigns send out press releases decrying the opposing camp's misleading ads even as they put the finishing edit on their next 30 seconds of defamation.

The attorney general's race once offered a ray of hope. Two excellent candidates, each with his own strengths and stellar ability to communicate.

But unless you get one of them alone for an hour, you won't hear John Hunt and Brian Sandoval talking about law enforcement, states' rights and consumer protection.

Instead they're yelling about the critical importance of (in Hunt's case) a $250 donation Sandoval took from a power company executive and (in Sandoval's case) screaming about illegal campaign contributions that might have been given to Hunt, even though the allegation is denied and practically unprovable.

The governor's re-election coronation is continuing without voters caring that Kenny Guinn won't discuss taxes before the election and who wants to wait to see what the voters say before commenting on a) marijuana possession and b) public power.

Nevada has a slim chance to become the nation's only legal place to possess up to three ounces of marijuana. You'd think the attorney general candidates or anyone official -- maybe Guinn -- could muster up something.

But that would be an issue and there's no time in this election for that.

With less than seven weeks to go, Guinn can't convene a task force to tell him how to vote on a ballot initiative.

And why hasn't every candidate for attorney general, district attorney and sheriff issued a statement on what is touted as a law enforcement issue?

That would take up valuable paper that must be saved to announce endorsements in hopes of getting more endorsements and, of course, more contributions to help really show the differences between the candidates.