Columnist Jeff German: Perkins didn’t have a chance

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 10:26 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins left a lot of people hanging this week, including himself, when he pulled out of the race for governor the day before he was supposed to announce his candidacy.

In hindsight it appears that his campaign was doomed from the beginning.

"It's hard to see where Richard's natural base was," says D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union, the most politically active labor organization in the state.

The other two Democratic candidates had strong constituencies within the party that gave them an advantage over Perkins in the primary and a better chance of making it to the general election.

Senate Majority Leader Dina Titus of Las Vegas had support from the Democratic faithful and the liberal end of the party, while Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson was drawing in conservative Democrats.

"All Perkins had to do was count the numbers, and the numbers didn't add up," explains Don Williams, a veteran political consultant, who has no horse in this race. "Titus had half the party and Gibson had the other half."

Making things worse for Perkins, a deputy police chief in Henderson, was his poor showing in the early political polls.

Even though he was the most powerful person in the Assembly, he had little name recognition in Southern Nevada and the rest of the state. And he likely would have had trouble raising the kind of cash needed to up his profile.

Perkins also had fallen out of favor with Democratic-friendly labor leaders here, including Taylor, over his mishandling of an 11th-hour legislative push by big gaming to weaken the neighborhood casino law. Labor opposed the effort and was able to beat it back without help from Perkins.

"He certainly didn't help himself with us," says Taylor, who acknowledges that his union was unwilling to make a political commitment to Perkins in the primary.

So Perkins resorted to doing what Williams called "a lot of bluffing" in recent weeks to make it look as though he had a viable campaign and plenty of money flowing into it.

His biggest asset was having R&R Partners CEO Billy Vassiliadis, maybe the most powerful political consultant and lobbyist in the state, in his corner.

The strategy, which is not uncommon, was designed to scare the other Democrats out of the race.

"Usually, what he was doing would be enough to get people to think, but it didn't work this time," Williams says.

All of the chest-pounding, Williams says, didn't deter Titus and Gibson from moving forward with their campaigns.

Titus continued to stump day and night across the state, and Gibson began putting together a nationally recognized campaign team in anticipation of his announcement next month.

In the end, knowing that he had no real chance of winning, it was Perkins who backed down.