Democrats pick up more clout in state Senate

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.

Democratic gains in the Nevada Legislature will give the party another seat on three powerful Senate committees, but lawmakers from both sides said Wednesday they don't expect major changes in Carson City because the majority party in both the Senate and Assembly remained the same.

Some lawmakers said that Republicans losing seats in both the Senate and Assembly shows that voters weren't upset by the $833 million tax increase adopted last year.

And Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, said the party difference in the Senate probably would have remained unchanged, except for the massive Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts that she said swung at least one Senate race to the Democrats.

Tiffany, the assistant majority whip in the Senate, said Republican candidate Danny Tarkanian was leading incumbent Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, by 5 percentage points in a poll taken Friday by his campaign. Then, during the final days before the election, Democrats swept through the city promoting presidential candidate John Kerry.

Although Kerry lost Nevada, Tiffany said she thinks the voters encouraged to go to the polls by Kerry's supporters voted for the other Democrats on the ballot, pushing Schneider over the top.

Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, and a volunteer co-chairman of a state Kerry campaign committee, also said he thinks the Kerry backers going door-to-door and making thousands of phone calls to voters helped all of the Democrats on the ballot.

With Schneider keeping his seat and former Democratic Assemblyman John Lee beating incumbent Republican Sen. Ray Shaffer, the Republicans dropped their edge in members from 13-8 to 12-9, which will result in changes to the makeup of some committees.

During the last Legislative session, the Senate Finance, Government Affairs and Taxation committees were made up of five Republicans and two Democrats, while the other committees were a 4-3 party split with the Republicans in the majority.

With another Democrat in the Senate, all of the Senate committees will be made up of four Republicans and three Democrats.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said the change will make a big difference for Democrats in the Senate.

Schneider said the Democrats will now have a stronger position in those committees because they will only have to convince one Republican to go along with whatever legislation they are pushing.

"Especially when it's Southern Nevada issues, it will be a lot easier to pick one off," Schneider said about convincing a Republican to back an issue brought by the Democrats.

But Tiffany said: "I don't expect a big change, it's only one seat."

She said the switch in the Assembly might be more important, because it brought the Democrats closer to the two-thirds majority needed to approve any tax or fee increases.

The need for that majority became a key issue in the 2003 Legislature, when legislators tried to put together a tax increase to balance the state budget and came up one vote short on several compromises. The state constitution required a two-thirds majority for a tax increase.

In Northern Nevada Democrats Debbie Smith and Bonnie Parnell took over seats held by Republicans, and in Las Vegas Democrat Susan Gerhardt won the seat vacated by Republican Josh Griffin.

The changes give the Democrats 26 Assembly members and the Republicans 16 seats. Fifteen is the minimum needed to block any tax or fee increases.

But Tiffany and other lawmakers said they don't expect the two-thirds issue to come up during the coming legislative session because no lawmaker is calling for additional tax increases.

Titus said perhaps the Republicans will have more trouble keeping their own party members in line than they will dealing with the Democrats in the Senate.

"Maybe after the impeachment I'll be singing a different tune," Titus said, referring to impeachment proceedings against state Controller Kathy Augustine, which are expected to start Wednesday.

State lawmakers interviewed Wednesday said they don't expect partisan politics to affect the impeachment proceedings, noting that Augustine, a Republican, was investigated by a Republican attorney general and the special session for the impeachment was called by a Republican governor.

Augustine admitted to the state Ethics Commission that she should have known that some of her staff was spending state time on her 2002 campaign, and was fined $15,000 by the commission. But she has said she never intended to break the law or breach any rules of ethics.

Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, said he doesn't expect the dynamics of the Assembly to change either.

"We were in the minority before and we're still in the minority now," Hettrick said about the Republican Party in the Assembly. "It's always nice to have a bigger majority, but any majority rules."

The 63-member Legislature will have 19 women, one more than in 2003 and 11 rookies who have no previous legislative experience.

The makeup of the 42-member Assembly includes 13 women and 10 without previous experience. There were 11 assemblywomen in 2003.

The 21-member Senate will have six women, down from the seven that served in 2003.

In the 2003 Legislature, there were 16 freshmen. This time there will be 10 in the Assembly and one in the Senate with no prior legislative experience.