SENATE DISTRICT 11

Thursday, Oct. 14, 2004 | 1:23 a.m.

Senate District 11 is a largely Democratic area at ground zero of several key elections, including important assembly, county commission and congressional races.

Yet a Republican with a prominent name hopes he can win against the odds. Danny Tarkanian, the 42-year-old son of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, is running hard in the district.

Incumbent Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, is defending his seat by saying there's still much to be done. He was first elected to the Legislature in 1992, serving first in the Assembly and then two sessions in the Senate.

He graduated from Bishop Gorman High School and UNLV with a degree in hotel administration. The 54-year-old is a real estate investor.

Schneider said he hopes to look at issues involving long-term health care, saying so many seniors are moving to Nevada that the state could be facing a crisis. There are not enough gerontologists, nursing homes and clinics to accommodate the population, he said.

He also said he has been a longtime supporter of funding education at the national average, something he will continue to promote, and he said he is interested in examining different types of property-tax caps.

Schneider said he owns undeveloped property that has recently skyrocketed in value and he understands the need to design a property-tax bill with "something to level it out, to take the spike out."

Tarkanian graduated from UNLV, went to law school and entered practice in Nevada. He then coached with his dad at Fresno State University and returned to Las Vegas to pursue several business interests, including the Tarkanian Basketball Academy and a sports complex planned near Palace Station.

Tarkanian said he is knocking on thousands of doors to promote his agenda of working on a property-tax cap and re-examining education expenditures. He wants to look at where money is being spent to ensure that the first priority is the classroom, followed by teachers and the administration.

"We'll work on funding from the bottom-up as opposed to the top-down," Tarkanian said.

He said he's disturbed that students don't have books to bring home from school and teachers are paying money out of their own pockets for supplies.