Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004 | 9:35 a.m.
Hollywood star and Democrat Ed Asner urged health care and Clark County government workers to fight for what he called the most important election of his lifetime.
Speaking Wednesday night before about 200 members of the Service Employees International Union, Asner bluntly attacked the Republican Party and President Bush for "the dumbing down and destruction of America."
He also saluted the union "that has the testicular fortitude that George Bush tried to project when he put on his monkey suit and did his half-constipated walk and posed in front of that sign on the carrier that said 'Mission Accomplished.' "
"No one can tell me that in terms of American politics it has ever been this bad," Asner said. "No one can ever tell me we have had such a lying president."
He targeted the administration's Iraq, environmental, fiscal, energy, tax and labor policies during his 20-minute talk to the union members.
"These are terrible times for our country, for all of us," Asner said.
Asner urged the union members to work from the grass roots, following a plan that he said the Republican Party hatched after the sound defeat of Sen. Barry Goldwater in his presidential bid of 1964.
He pointed to Clark County Commission candidates Tom Collins and David Goldwater and to District 37 Assembly candidate for re-election Marcus Conklin.
All three are facing tough election fights, as is Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. All three also received $5,000 contributions from the union, as well as promises from dozens of members to walk in two upcoming door-to-door drives planned by the union.
"No election has been more important than this election," Asner said. "You are an important regiment of the working people of this land. ... George Bush would destroy the most important union, which is the union of the United States.
"You in Nevada are on the pivot point of making or breaking the next four years. ... Bush ain't dumb. He's evil. For Bush and his political guru Karl Rove, labor is domestic enemy No. 1."
Collins, Goldwater and Conklin, although not as fiery as Asner, mirrored the basic sentiments of the actor.
"There's a big struggle here in Clark County as well as the United States," Collins said, "to elect Democrats that care about the country and the people."
Collins, who with Goldwater and Conklin served in the Assembly during last summer's tumultuous session of the Legislature, defended the trio against attack advertisements suggesting they were the key votes for a record package of tax increases.
The $833 million tax increase passed by one vote when Assemblyman John Marvel, R-Battle Mountain, joined the Democrats and a handful of other Republicans to support the measure.
"We put the tax on big business the best we could," Collins said.
Goldwater urged the union members to fight in the upcoming election with their dollars, time and energy.
"When you're a working man or woman, you have to fight every day," Goldwater said. "If we don't fight, we get knocked back 10 yards."
He referenced his election focus of slower growth in the county.
"We're packing it full of more and more people, more and more development, and we're asking our cops and firefighters to do more with less," Goldwater said, adding that the population growth is threatening the region's water, air quality and schools. "It's not much different that what we're doing in our hospitals, in our Quick Cares."
Conklin said upcoming door-to-door efforts in his district and throughout the county are critically important in the Democratic and labor effort to reach the remaining undecided voters.
"We need to reach every house not once, but twice," he said. "This election will be won on the streets."
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