Neal may be preparing for political shift

Kirsten Searer

Friday, April 2, 2004 | 11:32 a.m.

State Sen. Joe Neal spent three decades as the Legislature's biggest burr in the gaming industry's saddle.

He made two lackluster bids for the governor's mansion. He took heat from Republicans and Democrats for his sometimes strident speeches.

Yet it was the long road that finally prompted Neal to announce last week that he plans to leave his post in Carson City. He used to drive to the state capital with his wife, Estelle, but she passed away from breast cancer in 1997.

"It got a little bit lonesome," he said. "I looked at it and said, 'Maybe it's best that you leave and sit back and watch what they're going to do without you.' "

"I'm 68 years of age," said Neal, who still lives in the North Las Vegas home he bought for $19,500 in 1967. "My life is passing me by."

It might be time, Neal said, to take his battle home -- and to run for the Clark County Commission.

He is toying with the idea of challenging County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who has held the seat for 12 years and won a decisive re-election victory in 2000.

"I'm very serious," Neal said. "I'm going to take a serious look at it."

Atkinson Gates said she was surprised by Neal's announcement. But now that the cat is out of the bag, she said she expects Neal to press on with his bid for her seat.

"Knowing Joe, he will," she said.

In his 32 years in Carson City, Neal, with his slight Louisiana accent and famous white cowboy hat, was dismissed by some as a single-minded crusader out to tax gaming.

It got to the point, said Nevada Resort Association President Bill Bible, that Neal was regarded by some as sounding like "a tired old record that was played out."

Neal argues that millions of tourists come to Nevada each year to use the state's roads, hospitals, police services -- even social services for people who are addicted to gambling. Gaming, he said, should pay higher taxes to help provide those services.

"We're too soft," he said.

Bible disagrees.

"Tourists do use some services, but they don't consume services to the extent that local residents do," Bible said. "The senator never acknowledged that fact, or never seemed willing to acknowledge that fact."

As a county commissioner, Neal could do more to control the industry.

While he wouldn't have the power to tax gaming, as he did in the Legislature, he would have control over licensing, and zoning issues along the Strip as well as over "neighborhood casinos" in unincorporated parts of the county.

But Neal argues that his legacy in the state Senate goes far beyond regulating gaming and into issues of civil rights and consumer protection -- "people-type issues," he said.

Neal's website says he is "unbought and unbossed." He sometimes spoke his mind so vehemently that he was asked to apologize on the Senate floor.

In 1972 he became the first black elected to the state Senate, taking a seat newly carved out after the 1970 census. Districts in Nevada changed after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling said that states could no longer allot one Senate district per county.

"This (the redistricting) was an opportunity to give African-Americans districts they could win," state archivist Guy Rocha said.

Already, Republican Woodrow Wilson, a black man, had won an Assembly seat. But Neal was the first to crack into the more elite Senate.

"One of my biggest accomplishments was getting elected," Neal said. "We managed to do that very well and stay there for 32 years."

His tenure is currently tied as the longest in the state Senate. Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who was elected the same year as Neal.

In his tenure, Neal continued to press for civil rights, fighting to monitor racial profiling. He pushed for a bill that would allow car owners some compensation if they couldn't make payments and their cars were impounded. And over the years he publicly defended several blacks whose civil rights, he said, were violated by police.

Black leaders learned to appreciate Neal for being well-researched and willing to stand up for issues he believed in, said Cordell Stokes, a spokesman for the Caucus of African-American Nevadans.

"He also understands that civil rights continues to be at the foremost of issues for African-Americans," Stokes said.

In 1980, Neal embarked on what many call his most important legislation.

"I was driving to work and I saw this smoke billowing out of the hotels and the helicopters hovering, trying to get people out," he said.

The MGM Grand Hotel was on fire -- 84 people died and 679 were injured. In 1981, Neal successfully pushed a bill that required all buildings used by the public that could hold more than 150 people to retrofit with sprinkler systems.

He also has been a critic of privatization and deregulation of government. In 1992, he pressed against the deregulation of electricity in Nevada. Long before the problems in California associated with deregulation, Neal said he realized that it wouldn't lower power costs for consumers.

"We stalled them enough until we could get a picture of what happened in California," he said.

After that, Neal traveled the country "to go wherever I could to speak against Enron," he said.

Atkinson Gates said she'll argue that she is a proven leader in the district and that working on the County Commission is much different that working in the Legislature.

"You have to know how to work with your other six colleagues in order to be effective," she said.

Still, she said, Neal could be a formidable opponent "only because of his name recognition."

"Obviously we're going to be going after some of the same people," she said of the pursuit of votes.

Neal said he's confident he could win if he chooses to challenge Atkinson Gates, and that he'll attack her for any casino contributions that she takes.

"You don't have to run against Gates," he said. "You run against the people who support her."