Friday, March 25, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A drive to remove the statue of controversial former Nevada Sen. Pat McCarran from the U.S. Capitol has not emerged, despite renewed discussion.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., at a news conference Thursday said she is in favor of removing the statue that has stood in the halls of Congress since 1960.
"Having learned about Sen. McCarran, his racist views, his anti-Semitic views, I think perhaps the time has come to retire him gracefully and leave that (statue) opening for perhaps another outstanding Nevadan that will come in the future," Berkley said.
But state lawmakers, who hold the power to order a statue replaced, do not seem to have an appetite for it, and Gov. Kenny Guinn has no immediate plans to get involved in the issue.
An 1864 federal law allows each state to send two statues of important state figures to Washington for display in the Capitol. Nevada just added its second statue earlier this month -- Indian rights advocate, author and educator Sarah Winnemucca.
McCarran, who served on the Nevada Supreme Court and in the U.S. Senate from 1933 until his death in 1954, was an influential advocate for Nevada as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He was considered a leader in Congress on aviation issues. The international airport in Las Vegas bears his name.
But McCarran is also remembered by many as a racist and reactionary, and for red-baiting, anti-communist crusading. Among his targets was Winnemucca's Paiute tribe, historians say.
An 818-page book published last year by author Michael Ybarra, "Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt," shined new light on McCarran's stances and his political battles.
Removing a statue requires a resolution approved by a state legislature and governor, but no one has introduced such a resolution in Nevada, and no one has shown much interest in it.
Sens. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, and Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, said they have not heard of any movement to remove the statue.
Greg Bortolin, press secretary to the governor, said the governor knows this is "a sensitive topic."
"I know the governor has some problem with some of the things Sen. McCarran stood for," Bortolin said. "We will see how this progresses."
Bortolin noted that the airport and a major street in Reno were named for McCarran.
"There are lots of ramifications," he said. Bortolin added there were "valid reasons" to take another look at the statue honoring McCarran.
Townsend, chairman of the Legislative Commission, said he doesn't "know her complaint" referring to Berkley's comments.
"If you're around long enough, aren't they going to write a book that you're a good guy and then you're a bad guy?" said Townsend, chairman of the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, in reference to Ybarra's book. "It's happened to any person who has served in any legislative process."
McGinness said he would not favor removing the McCarran statue.
Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said she doesn't want to remove the statue of McCarran, but she wants to change the name of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. She says a better name would be Las Vegas International Airport.
The Winnemucca statue effort and Ybarra's book have created a "buzz" about whether McCarran should be replaced, but no one seems to be taking an active role in pushing for it, state archivist and historian Guy Rocha said. The state just went through several years of effort to approve and commission the Winnemucca statue, Rocha said.
McCarran was clearly a powerful money appropriator for Nevada, but also a bigot and anti-communist leader even before Joseph McCarthy claimed the spotlight, Rocha said. McCarran is viewed as an anti-Semite who blamed the communist threat on Jews, Rocha said. Still, most Nevadans likely don't know much about McCarran, he said.
"I just don't hear any groundswell to remove the statue," Rocha said. "It would take a lot of work. I don't sense it's ripe right now."
Removing a statue is highly unusual -- only one statue has been replaced in the Capitol. In 2003, Kansas replaced a statue of former Gov. George Washington Glick with one of former President Dwight D. Eisnhower.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., was among those who advocated the change, not because Glick was controversial, but because he had become obscure over time. Tiahrt and others wanted a more widely recognized Kansan in the Capitol.
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