Friday, May 21, 2004 | 6:10 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
May 22 - 23, 2004
A wife files against her husband on the last day, but Sharon Shaffer doesn't really want to beat her spouse, Ray, the state senator. She wants to excise his primary opponent and if she accidentally wins, she and Ray, in effect, can share the office.
A state senator, Mike Schneider, who has floated his name for a raft of higher offices in the last few years draws a challenger, Danny Tarkanian, who has done likewise, including expressing interest this year in prospects as disparate as a U.S. Senate seat and a City Council vacancy.
An unprecedented five county commissioners are on the ballot -- one who doesn't have a race (Bruce Woodbury), one who shouldn't have a prayer (Mary Kincaid-Chauncey), one who hasn't run in her district before (Lynette Boggs McDonald), one who is facing a state senator who seems to have filed as a lark (Yvonne Atkinson Gates) and one who faces an aggressive opponent who regularly accuses him of conflicts (Chip Maxfield).
Three legislators (Assemblymen David Goldwater, Tom Collins and Vonne Chowning) show how little their institution is regarded and how highly the County Commission's power is by trying to move up by going down from the state to local government -- and two former backbench lawmakers (Dianne Steel and Lori Lipman Brown) are seeking an unimportant little position called state Supreme Court justice.
A pivotal state Senate race includes four African-American candidates (Cedric Crear, Steven Horsford, Linda Howard and Bert Mack) vying to replace a black icon, Joe Neal, while a white candidate (Terri Malone) may be the sleeper. And in two other critical state Senate contests one anti-tax icon (Ann O'Connell) will be portrayed as a profligate spender and another (Bob Beers) will be depicted as a wild-eyed wacko. Welcome to Nevada politics, ever-mercurial, occasionally laughable and seldom boring.
As Campaign '04 officially commences (with the close of filing 10 days ago), the usual fog obscuring the view to November is thicker than usual with a variety of shadows hanging over the silly season.
The partisan hues this cycle will mostly be painted by the presidential race here, which will feature unprecedented spending by both the candidates and outside groups seeking to influence the election. Nevada is one of the so-called battleground states and plenty of partisan soldiers already are on the ground. The George W. Bush-John Kerry contest will affect races down the ticket and also will be influenced by turnout in those contests in smaller political subdivisions such as Assembly, state Senate and County Commission.
With only one of Nevada's four federal races considered even remotely competitive -- Rep. Jon Porter's attempt to win a second term -- the parties have set their sights lower in 2004, with control of the Legislature in striking distance for the Republicans and a desire to reverse the hemorrhaging of 2002 the prime goal of the Democrats -- with an eye toward setting their sights higher for 2006: an open governor's seat.
The rest are minor, albeit potentially entertaining and bloody skirmishes in the campaign war -- some of the more interesting contests are outlined in the thumbnails on Page 5D. But from Kerry-Bush on down, the shadows enveloping Campaign '04 will darken some prospects and likely determine the outcome of some races.
Here's what they are:
2002 was the year that Democrats would like to forget and never see repeated. That's why Sen. Harry Reid, who is on the ballot in 2004, blanched when he saw the results of Campaign '02 and immediately began revamping the party's apparatus, bringing in two outside operatives (Sean Sinclair to run his campaign and Rebecca Lambe to run the party) to rebuild the crumpled organization. He did it for selfish reasons -- his re-election and the prospect of a formidable contender, Rep. Jim Gibbons -- but what was good for Reid certainly was good for the Democratic Party. But now that Gibbons has turned his lust away from the U.S. Senate and to the allure of a committee chairmanship in the House or the governorship in '06, one of the seminal questions of Campaign '04 is whether the Democrats will still rev it up.
All early signs say they will.
You cannot underestimate the searing experience for Reid of almost losing to John Ensign in his last election. So it is more than just a cliche that he takes all candidates seriously, including the relatively unknown and presumably marginal Richard Ziser, who led the anti-gay marriage effort here in successive cycles.
Led by Sinclair and Lambe, the Democrats remain unrelenting in their desire to build the party for the future and, unlike 2002, the so-called coordinated campaign really will be coordinated and not hampered by internecine fighting and embarrassing Balkanization of campaigns and players. They have to be helped by the GOP being dispirited by the reluctance of Gibbons to get in -- he could have beaten Reid -- and the ability of the senior senator to be free to do what he does worst when he doesn't have the time but that his people can focus on because they can -- meddle in other races.
The intangibles -- at least at this point -- also seem to favor the Democrats. The presidential race here has energized the party, not because of John Kerry but because of the president. Nothing organizes like animus -- and the partisans here, like elsewhere, are rallying against George W. Bush. Will that continue until November? If it does, Republicans are in trouble up and down the ticket.
With so-called 527 organizations such as America Coming Together expending resources here to elect Democrats and a possible ballot question on the minimum wage designed to enhance party turnout, the Democrats have reason for optimism. The question is how much of their sanguinity will be mitigated by ...
But another critical question for Campaign '04 is whether voters are still angry about what happened in Sessions '03, whether people are waking up every day and railing against a tax increase that does not affect their quotidian existences, and whether candidates reminding them of what happened will hit a raw nerve or play to deaf ears. The answer will affect many races, from two important state Senate primaries -- Ray Rawson-Bob Beers and Ann O'Connell-Joe Heck -- to a dozen or so Assembly races that will determine lower house hegemony.
Republicans obviously hope that the president can reverse his slide in the polls and that his overwhelming war chest will change numbers by November. And Republicans know what they always know -- it is harder for the Democrats to get their core constituencies (poor people) out to vote than it is for them (rich folk).
The ugliness of 2003 also could affect various political futures, including the incipient gubernatorial bid of Speaker Richard Perkins, who will not have that title if the Republicans pick up those three seats. It's hard enough to get headlines as speaker -- his name recognition is not impressive in any polls. Imagine how difficult it will be as minority leader.
The fracturing of the GOP caucus also will hang over the election season as Bill Raggio tries to maintain his hold on power with calls -- some loud and many whispered -- for him to give up some of his power as majority leader and Finance chairman. It has reached such a crescendo that some are talking about Raggio, worried about having the votes come Session '05 to be leader, proffering an olive branch to Minority Leader Dina Titus and asking for her help in exchange for the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee -- an unprecedented arrangement that she might see as a wonderful opportunity to promote her own gubernatorial aspirations.
And outside the elected officials affected by the fallout from the tax battle, the state's pre-eminent special interest also has something to prove in this campaign season, as evidenced by ...
And so, having the reality of not getting what they wanted on taxes and the perception that their influence has waned because lawmakers felt free to snub them, the gamers are looking to make a point in Campaign '04. Although it is always risky to talk about gaming as a monolith and the casino corps unity that defined the session has now fractured into out-of-sync battalions, in general, the industry would like to kill a few lawmakers.
But by putting targets on the likes of Bob Beers, Ann O'Connell, Chad Christensen and Valerie Weber, the industry is doing what it never likes to do in business or politics, which, ironically, is gamble.
If most or all of these folks survive to legislate another day in 2005, they -- and others -- will feel more emboldened than ever to take on gaming. What has simmered for many years in Carson City -- rebellion against the heavy hand of the Strip -- surely will boil over in Session '05. And if more money is needed to fill what could be a $200 million budget hole, the industry will be the prime target should its campaign efforts fail and its putative opponents return. The industry has been shielded from harm for years by virtue of the fear factor and friends in high places -- Majority Leader Bill Raggio and Speaker Richard Perkins are the most obvious examples.
But that dynamic will dramatically change if the fear is gone and their friends are weakened. How ironic that the first session with longtime gaming bete noire Joe Neal gone is also one where the industry could be at its most vulnerable. And while that may provide great fodder for vengeful or opportunistic lawmakers and frothing Fourth Estate commentators, the impact on the state could well be deleterious. And that brings us to ...
Not just the parties but many individual pols -- Perkins, Ensign, Titus, Gibbons -- have a large stake in the results this year. If the Democrats get crushed again and lose the Assembly, they will have little left come '06. And after being re-elected, Reid may not have the same zeal in '06 as he does this year, his Meddler-in-Chief bona fides notwithstanding.
But if the Republicans lose ground from top to bottom, the entire scenario for '06 could change, especially if Gibbons is tabbed as the House Intelligence Committee chairman by year's end, leaving the GOP with a free-for-all in the governor's race -- just as the Democrats have now.
And in the always unpredictable world of Nevada politics, the surprises of 2004 surely will create surprises for Session '05 and Campaign '06. I can hardly wait.
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