Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006 | 7:36 a.m.
With less than a week to go before the primary, the race for lieutenant governor is looking more like a dinner party orchestrated by Comedy Central than a contest for the No. 2 position in state government.
Among those on the guest list: Bob Stupak, a former casino king who once paid $100,000 to play two minutes with the Harlem Globetrotters; his ex-girlfriend, Janet Moncrief, the only Las Vegas City Council member ever to be recalled; Barbara Lee Woollen, a conservative businesswoman whose company one of her opponents says has ties to the adult-film industry; and Lonnie Hammargren, the eccentric neurosurgeon who once held the office.
Oh yeah, there's also Thomas Jefferson. He's a retired auto parts salesman - and no relation to the Founding Father.
The spectacle is not lost on two more-traditional candidates, Republican state Treasurer Brian Krolicki and Henderson developer Bob Unger, a Democrat.
"Dig down deep enough for the filing fee, and you too can be a candidate," Krolicki says. "It certainly makes it a lot more entertaining."
But in a race that at times seems just a step away from a carnival sideshow, Nevadans might do well to remember what John Adams, the nation's first vice president, said two centuries ago about being No. 2: "I am nothing, but I may be everything."
Often derided as powerless figureheads, lieutenant governors are generally seen as little more than "standby equipment," good to have around in case the governor dies or otherwise leaves office, says Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
"It's a frustrating job," Sabato says. "In most states, it's like the fifth wheel of a wagon and about as useless."
In the last 20 years, however, many states have put their No. 2s to work - albeit in a limited capacity. In Nevada, the $50,000-a-year, part-time job oversees the state's economic development and tourism programs.
Few in the state's political establishment take the job seriously. Witness the stalled campaign of outgoing Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, one of three Republican candidates for governor. Hunt is running on her record as lieutenant governor, but has failed to raise money and political support from Southern Nevada's key players - the Strip, developers and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. She's also running without the endorsement of her boss, Gov. Kenny Guinn.
Still, the job has been a steppingstone for previous officeholders in Nevada, most recently in 1989 when then-Lt. Gov. Bob Miller succeeded Richard Bryan, who left the governor's office to serve in the U.S. Senate. It has traditionally attracted the politically ambitious.
"Nobody runs for lieutenant governor to become lieutenant governor," Sabato says. "They run to become governor."
Krolicki fits that mold. Term-limited as state treasurer, Krolicki, 45, is hoping to ascend the political ladder. One of five Republicans vying for lieutenant governor, he's the odds-on mainstream favorite.
Krolicki rebuffs the conventional wisdom that the office has negligible power and responsibilities, emphasizing the constitutional pecking order.
"You better care who the lieutenant governor is," he lectures. "Things do happen - whether it's a phone call or a bad day at the doctor. To denigrate the office does a great disservice to a critical role."
Citing 16 years of experience in state government - eight as chief deputy treasurer, eight as treasurer - Krolicki says he's ready to fill that void if necessary. In the meantime, he has plans to keep Nevada competitive, mainly through the formation of a research initiative, based on the Georgia Research Alliance, a public-private partnership that he says will help retain the state's scholars and attract new industries. It would be funded with $100 million in economic development bonds, he says, not taxpayer money.
Despite the endorsements of such political heavyweights as Guinn, Sen. John Ensign and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Krolicki - the anointed candidate - has seen his lead disappear in recent weeks, mostly because of an all-out television ad blitz from Republican rival Woollen.
The conservative businesswoman, who owns a lighting equipment rental company, has gone in a few short months from unknown also-ran to front-runner in the GOP primary. A poll, commissioned by the gaming industry and conducted by Washington, D.C., pollster Peter Hart, last month showed Woollen leading Krolicki by 3 percentage points - 21-18, with 37 percent undecided. That's a statistical dead heat, but still an indication of her ad campaign's impact.
Part of that surge could be owed to the controversial centerpiece of Woollen's campaign: illegal immigration. Critics have taken aim at her use of a hot-button, federal issue in a campaign for a relatively toothless statewide office.
"They're grossly uninformed," Woollen says of her immigration detractors. Besides, she claims voters raised the issue first. "Citizens didn't want to hear about economic development," she says of her campaign travels. "They wanted to hear what I was going to be able to do about illegal immigration."
In reality, the answer is nothing. But Woollen has said that, if elected, she - as president of the Nevada Senate - would introduce two pieces of legislation per session regarding immigration and work to reduce, and in some cases eliminate, state benefits received by illegal immigrants. Woollen also advocates using the National Guard to secure the border.
To counteract that momentum, Krolicki went negative with an ad that links Woollen's company, Cinelease, with the adult-film industry. In fact, the company provided equipment to adult productions, but Woollen has said her company had no control over, or prior knowledge of, the movies' scripts. She's endorsed by Nevada Concerned Citizens, a faith-based conservative group.
Campaigning on a "conservative, pro-growth and pro-family agenda," Woollen also has promised to work to pass a ballot measure "to guarantee that marriage can only be between a man and a woman" and "to protect and strengthen the rights of the unborn." Nevada passed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2002 and voters decided the abortion debate in 1990 with a ballot initiative that protected abortion rights.
While acknowledging those issues are moot in Nevada, Woollen says her positions show voters her values: "Values and character are important to every political office. I could wake up governor one day."
Then there's Hammargren, the erstwhile lieutenant governor and prominent local neurosurgeon who gave up his practice rather than pay the $275,000 in annual malpractice insurance it would have cost him to keep practicing. On a "sabbatical" since last year, he was a close third to Woollen and Krolicki in the Hart poll, garnering about 14 percent.
"I can do a better job this time," says Hammargren, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Bob Miller from 1995 to 1999. He caused a dust-up when he appointed a county commissioner while Miller was out of the state. Among the accomplishments he cites from his previous term are brokering a deal to get direct flights from Europe to Las Vegas, and marketing Nevada to Asia. He lost a bid for governor in 1998 and a run for the Assembly in 2002.
Hammargren, 68, says he will continue to promote Las Vegas as "Hollywood East" in the hopes of attracting more television and movie productions to Southern Nevada, and will promote in-state tourism, particularly to rural Northern Nevada.
Other than distributing a collection of his own folk songs - about 30,000 CDs in all - Hammargren says he's not spending a dime on advertising or polling. "I'm not going to join the contest of trivia and unrelated subjects that my opponents are engaged in," he said. "They're trying to slant things to make dirt. I'm more of a lover than a fighter."
Disgraced former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Moncrief and Reno business consultant Greg Kao show up as blips on the polling radar for Republicans. Moncrief, who pleaded guilty to misreporting her campaign finance statement in 2004, has said she hasn't raised any money and isn't running a campaign.
If the 2006 lieutenant governor's race has a sideshow element to it, then Moncrief's ex-boyfriend Stupak is certainly the carny barker of the Democratic primary. Stupak insists his candidacy is legitimate, and that this campaign is different from his failed bid for Las Vegas mayor in 1987, not to mention an unsuccessful stab at Clark County commissioner.
"I got lucky," Stupak says of losing his attempt to lead the city. "I wasn't qualified to be mayor. That's a job job."
The man who built the Stratosphere, and who now plays in big-cash poker games, does have a handle on the job's responsibilities. "The lieutenant governor is more of a goodwill ambassador than anything else," Stupak says. "This job was made for me. There's no part of the description that I'm not qualified for."
Well, except for the part about assuming the powers of chief executive if the governor dies or otherwise leaves office.
"I'd be in charge for about a week until we found another replacement. I don't think I'd be qualified to be the governor. That's beyond my field of expertise. But, realistically, the likelihood of the governor dying - that's a 10-million-to-1 shot."
Stupak, for the most part, has let his name do the work. He estimates he's spent about $100,000 of his war chest so far, most of which went to an eight-page mailer - complete with press clippings, family snapshots and photos of Stupak with a number of local and national celebrities, including Hammargren - and a gala at the Stardust.
For Henderson developer and rival Democrat Unger, however, campaigning is hardly a party.
Unger says he's had trouble raising funds outside his circle of friends, and the recent Hart poll had him sandwiched between Stupak and Bob Goodman, a former state official who seems to be benefiting mostly from voter confusion over his last name. (He's no Oscar; they are not related.)
Still, with all three leading candidates polling at less than 10 percent, it's anybody's game, and Unger is optimistic.
The lieutenant governor's office has potential, he says, particularly in public-private partnerships: "It can be an important, critical role if somebody plays it right. I'm going to try to prove everybody wrong and make it a real job."
Unger says the state needs more corporate outreach, with the lieutenant governor as the point man for recruitment, walking companies through each step of the process. It's a role Unger has played before, first as owner and developer of the Showcase mall on the Strip, then as a key player in a $500 million redevelopment deal in Henderson, turning an abandoned gravel pit into the Tuscany residential community and golf course.
To diversify its economy, he says, Nevada should not only help develop renewable energy sources but also target security companies for relocation.
Goodman, a state economic development director in the 1970s, counts his last name as his greatest edge in the Democratic primary, seemingly promoting a connection to Oscar Goodman by posting news articles about the popular Las Vegas mayor on his Web site.
And Reno's Bill Montgomery, who runs a Teamsters' truck driving school, has been all but invisible in the race and hangs at the bottom of the Democratic polls.
Running unopposed on the Independent American Party of Nevada ticket, Thomas F. Jefferson, a retired auto parts salesman from Elko, gets a pass to the general election.
Among his causes is a reprocessing plant for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
And his reason for running? "The office of lieutenant governor," according to his statement on the IAP Web site, "should not be as exciting as kissing one's sister."
Rim shot, please.
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