Columnist Erin Neff: Payback is as certain as death and taxes

Erin Neff

Friday, Feb. 7, 2003 | 5:06 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Grudges can last a lifetime in politics and paybacks are as much a part of the system as favors to cash in.

The 2003 Legislature began last week with two recent political stews still simmering enough to possibly boil over into the tax debate.

Some Republicans are still fuming about the outcome of last summer's special session to address the medical malpractice crisis and are looking to get back at Gov. Kenny Guinn for not siding completely with the doctors.

Democrats are hopping mad about an election challenge to one of their freshman Assemblymen and are hoping to pay back the Republicans responsible for the allegations.

Although the tax debate -- the biggest issue facing the Legislature in years -- has just begun, medical malpractice and the election dispute have become serious enough distractions that they could become wedge issues.

That means they'll be used by lawmakers trying to change the agenda in the tax debate. And they'll have to be addressed, considering legislative rules that require two-thirds of each house to vote in favor of new taxes.

At the height of the malpractice special session, when a compromise plan appeared to have support, some Republicans, led by then-Assemblywoman Barbara Cegavske of Las Vegas, wanted a different version.

Cegavske, although not named, was who the governor had in mind when he mentioned certain "idiots" trying to get in the way of the compromise.

Needless to say, she and other Republicans -- ones the governor has since called heartless or irrelevant -- could hurt the governor's proposal.

There are powers in small numbers in the state capital these days.

Suddenly those irrelevant ones can make a big difference in the tax debate. It takes just eight of them in the Senate or 15 in the Assembly to block any tax proposal.

The strength in numbers has given some of the individuals a bit more bravado. Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, has stepped out the most since the special session.

Back during election season Beers was trying to build support within the Assembly GOP caucus to take on Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick. That meant getting as many of his Republicans elected to Assembly seats.

One of those, Francis Allen, lost by 134 votes to Democrat Marcus Conklin.

So Beers drummed up an elections contest, claiming 160 of the votes in that Las Vegas Assembly District were fraudulent. The only problem was he didn't have any real proof to substantiate his claim, which was pulled by his friend just days before the session began.

Democrats had already suffered their worst Election Day in recent memory and nearly lost control of the state Assembly in the process.

Paying back the Republicans for that nightmare might not come until future elections years from now. But paying Beers back for his little stunt has already begun.

Beers was the loudest critic in the tax debate before last week.

But Democrats are already using the election issue to shut him up, by not so obliquely hiding their distaste for him by going ahead with a hearing into a withdrawn election contest.

Democrats also helped distribute copies of an e-mail he sent to a constituent in which he railed on service workers.

And you can bet Democrats will have their own payback for his election stunt in the coming weeks.

The question for Beers will be whether his caucus, led by the man he tried unsuccessfully to oust, will stand behind him. After all, Beers' voice is the clearest of his party's in the anti-tax debate.

But just as Republicans fled from U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the Carson City GOP might not wish to have any of their ideas, tax or otherwise, associated with Beers' anti-service worker rant.

One thing certain as the tax debate continues, is that so, too, will the paybacks.