Campaign to recall Guinn loses spokesman

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003 | 9:48 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The effort to recall Gov. Kenny Guinn has lost one of its top spokesmen, who says he's disenchanted with the leadership. And another key advocate of the recall says he doesn't think it will be able to obtain the necessary signatures to force a recall election for Guinn.

Sandy Harmon, who handled the public relations for The Committee to Recall Gov. Guinn, said Wednesday he has resigned.

"I walked away about two weeks ago," Harmon said.

His reason: "The leadership sucks," he said, referring to political consultant Tony Dane who leads the effort to gather 128,000 signatures of registered voters to force an election.

Dane did not return four telephone calls to his Las Vegas number.

Chris Hansen, one of the leaders in the recall effort, said today, "I don't believe we can make it in the time left because of what the government did." Hansen said he has not given up and is continuing to collect signatures.

He suggested the recall proponents will go to court to seek an extension of the Nov. 25 deadline, arguing that backers were initially prevented from setting up in government buildings to gather signatures.

Harmon, of Tonopah, complained he could not get any information on how the recall was progressing.

"We don't know what's going on," said Harmon. He also complained that Hansen was making comments he shouldn't.

"We told him to keep his mouth shut," said Harmon.

Hansen said there were disagreements between the two from the start of the movement. "He (Harmon) didn't seem to like my public persona." He said he thought his differences with Harmon were minor.

Hansen, who is a Henderson resident, said he would be in Reno on Saturday to obtain signatures at the homecoming football game between the University of Nevada Reno and Louisiana Tech.

Hansen also has said he doesn't know how many signatures have been collected. He said that job was up to somebody else. He said he communicates almost daily with Dane by e-mail.

Harmon said the leadership by Dane "has blown a good deal." He said the recall effort "was cooking" and calls were coming in hot and heavy after Guinn said there would be a major deficit in the budget in 2005 after the $836 million tax increase this year.

"We would have made it," Harmon said. There are a lot of good people around the state working to obtain the signatures, he said. But the leadership has failed to communicate with them.

The latest count, disclosed about one month ago, was there were 12,000 signatures, far short of the more than 128,000 valid signatures needed for a recall. When the recall started, the backers said they would shoot for 180,000 to make sure there were enough valid signatures.

Hansen said there's been a "tidal wave of pressure" from the gaming industry against the recall movement. He said people are afraid to join or contribute money now because of what happened in the "Budweiser" case.

After beer distributor Kurt Brown testified about the tax plan supported by the gaming industry in the Legislature, Harrah's Entertainment Co. canceled its contract with Brown's Capital Distributing that provided Budweiser to Harrah's three casinos at Lake Tahoe.