Beers: State not in tune with its citizens

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, July 7, 2005 | 10:54 a.m.

Sen. Bob Beers is easily one of the more colorful figures in Carson City.

The Las Vegas Republican lobs quick quotes to reporters, spouts details from the state's $6 billion budget and proposes ways to cut taxes that make some fellow Republicans squirm.

Though he has been labeled an obstructionist by some, even his harshest critics admit he is intelligent and witty.

With his announcement this week that he will run for governor in 2006, Beers is clearly hoping to capitalize on the attention he earned in the press as one of the state's most vocal opponents of government growth.

When asked Wednesday whether he was an obstructionist, Beers responded in signature glib manner.

"It depends, are you a socialist?" Beers said. "Because if you are a socialist, I am going to do everything I can to obstruct what you call progress.

"I like liberty. I like personal freedom and responsibility. I like equal protection under the law for all citizens. That's what's guided me to this point and will guide me from this point."

Beers hit conservative gold in the 2003 legislative session, when he was a leader of the so-called "Mean Fifteen" group of Assembly members who opposed the record $833 million tax increase.

Since then, he has consistently supported tax rebates and caps on government growth.

Many insiders speculated that the first-term senator would spend more time in the upper house before trying to make the jump to the Governor's Mansion.

But Beers said he felt an urgency to run for the office because of ever-increasing government budgets.

"There's a big disconnect between what our citizens think and what our state government has been doing," Beers said. "I do not believe that the citizens support the wholesale expansion of our state government that we're in the middle of doing."

As a senator, all he could do to slow state spending was propose a Colorado model of capping government growth at the rate of population growth plus inflation, he said.

As governor, he said, he would set the budget agenda. And Nevada's state Legislature rarely makes major changes to the governor's proposed budget.

"It all starts with the governor's proposal and the premise that no Legislature changes the governor's budget by more than 3 percent," Beers said.

Beers will continue to push the Colorado model as an initiative in the 2006 election, he said.

Beers' more conservative stances could prove helpful in a Republican primary that likely will include Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, said UNLV political scientist David Damore.

Reno Mayor Bob Cashell and university system Chancellor Jim Rogers are also considering runs in the Republican primary.

"In the primaries, you get the hard core of both parties who come out," Damore said. "That generally works against moderates, even though they may potentially be more electable in the general election. You get pulled to your base a little more."

Both Gibbons and Beers are widely viewed as fiscal conservatives. Gibbons is the father of the state's constitutional amendment banning the Legislature from raising taxes without approval of two-thirds of the lawmakers.

"They both sort of resonate with the hard-core Nevada voter, that anti-government, libertarian stance," Damore said. "It will be interesting to see how they fight it out."

Gibbons spokesman Robert Uithoven declined to say yet how the two candidates will differentiate themselves to voters, only saying "there may be some other issues that they perhaps may not agree on."

Gibbons has not yet officially announced his bid for the seat.

Beers promised Wednesday to focus on trimming the state budget and holding schools to higher standards.

"In Clark County particularly our system is failing our families," he told reporters at a news conference to announce his candidacy.

His ideal school district would include a high school, two or three junior high schools, eight to 10 elementary schools and a school board elected from the neighborhood, he said.

He would cut administration and have the principal of the high school fulfill the duties of a part-time superintendent.

But, Beers said, he would support any concept from the Legislature to cut the size of the Clark County School District.

"Anything to get the school process closer to the people and the parents and the neighborhoods that are served," he said.

Already, one of his bigger critics in the 2003 session, Gov. Kenny Guinn, said he's happy that Beers threw his hat into the ring.

Guinn said he didn't see Beers as "far right," adding that Beers voted for this year's budget even though it had millions more than Guinn himself proposed.

Democrats have blamed Beers for the one-day special session called at the end of the legislative session to resolve differences on the state's Millennium Scholarship program.

Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, said Beers held up a compromise to keep the scholarship solvent.

Giunchigliani said she's seen Beers want things "his way" since he was the hold out in the 2003 tax debate.

"I don't think Bob really tried to work hard to build the relationships that I think he was capable of doing," she said.

Assembly Majority Leader Buckley, D-Las Vegas, called the incident "emblematic of Bob," saying he has a career of shooting down more ideas than he proposes.

"He doesn't bring people together," she said. "He's not a consensus builder."

Beers denied causing the stallmate, saying Assembly Democrats didn't give senators enough time to review changes they made to the proposal.

"I've always been suspicious of people who spend their energy blaming others," he said.

Democrats were even more incensed by an e-mail Beers sent to a constituent in 2003.

The note said that children of casino industry employees "are prone to dropping out of school, reproducing illegitimate children, often while little more than children themselves, abusing drugs and alcohol more frequently, and even killing themselves more often than people who do value education."

"It was uncalled for an it was outrageous," Buckley said. "Certainly those comments will come back to haunt him."

At the time Beers said his comments were taken out of context.

Guinn did predict that fiscal conservatives like Beers and Gibbons will tone down their message once they get in office.

"When they get there, whoever it is, (they) will learn much like all the preceding governors I've known," Guinn said.

"When you're finally responsible, it's more difficult to make the decisions to pull the trigger on certain programs as opposed to being out there and saying, 'I disagree with it, I disagree with it,' and then vote for it and let it go," Guinn said. "So I think they'll all have to take a different view of it. But that's the process."