City folk crowding in

Thursday, July 6, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Mel Jackson had rolled in through the front door of the Pahrump Western shop naturally - a cowboy hat perched on his ears and chaps slung loosely over tight jeans. Jackson, who clinks when he walks, says that he was searching for new spurs, rounding an aisle when his friend noticed a clerk shadowing them with a gun, "you know, behind his back."

A Metro cop living in Pahrump, Jackson flashed his badge and, after some private negotiation, got the weapon in his hands and a Nye County sheriff's deputy dispatched to the store. The clerk - a man in his 60s - admitted he thought the two black customers, both Metro officers, were there to rob the place, Jackson says.

Three years later, Jackson is running for Nye County sheriff.

"I figure I can come in, reorganize, change things around," says Jackson, sitting on a bench, legs bowed, in the house he built down a dirt road full of pockmarks. One part city cop and one part old West, Jackson signifies changing times in Nye County, where an influx of new residents are rousing the rural old guard.

"And I'll be honest with you," Jackson says. "It's kind of scary because, you know, a lot of times there's resistance to change."

Nye County's population swelled about 24 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to U.S. Census estimates. Like Jackson, more and more people are coming from Las Vegas - "over the hump into Pahrump." They are searching for cheaper homes, bringing new roads and city sensibilities where once there was just sagebrush and rural sentiments.

The big city indeed may be encroaching, but directions sometimes include - as it did for Jackson's place - "turn left at the goat pen." (You've missed the turn, by the way, if you hit the brothel just down the road.)

Jackson, a twice-married horseman with a 13-steed stable, moved to Pahrump in 1999 for the space and the pace with his wife, Kelly, a Nye County sheriff's deputy.

He worked a graveyard detective shift for Metro and commuted the 60-odd miles each way between work and home until last month, when he retired after almost 30 years to run for sheriff. He says he is utterly convinced that Nye County law enforcement is so inept, corrupt even, that voters will look beyond his race if it means a new lawman will bring order.

"The people that live out here, they're tired of the good old boys," Jackson says. "You can't get nothing done because of the good-old-boy system, and I'm as far removed from the good-old-boy system as can be."

His new-broom approach sweeps up a lot of old dust.

Incumbent Sheriff Tony DeMeo, who moved to Pahrump in 1999 after being a police officer for several years in New Jersey, ran in 2002 because he wanted to bring "credibility and legitimacy" to a sheriff's office that he says suffered from arrogance and mismanagement.

DeMeo got 64 percent of the vote to oust three-term incumbent Wade Lieseke, in what some think was a sign that a new wave of Nye County citizens wasn't much on maintaining the status quo.

DeMeo wants to keep his job, saying he is eager to continue the programs and promises that wooed voters four years ago.

"The problem was at the top," DeMeo says. "The good-old-boy system is dead. There are no more special favors."

Lieseke, the sheriff for 12 years, wants things back his way and has entered a crowded six-candidate race.

Still, the small-town feel remains. District Attorney Bob Beckett goes home for lunch every day, the VFW parking lot is plumb full on a Tuesday afternoon, and at a local gas station counter, a woman slowly counts out $57 in nickels, dimes and quarters while people wait in line without a huff or a sigh.

Shoved into the pitch at four-way stops are campaign posters for all three men: Jackson, DeMeo and Lieseke. There are also signs and mailings from other sheriff hopefuls such as Ray "The Flagman" Mielzynski, who DeMeo calls a "perpetual candidate." Mielzynski regularly promotes his passion for the Second Amendment by sitting at a public throughway with a flag in hand and a firearm at his waist.

There's also Jeanette Smith, who DeMeo says is running for sheriff on a grudge - she's upset that deputies Tasered her husband. Smith's husband has threatened to shoot police officers in the past, DeMeo said.

In Nye County, distrust of government is, for some, a big reason to live in the rural desert, Brian Kunzi says.

Kunzi ran for Nye County district attorney in 2002 and attributes his loss, at least in part, to the fact that he works for the Nevada attorney general in Las Vegas. Despite a permanent address in Pahrump, he says, voters just couldn't trust a commuter.

"There is a lot of anti-establishment feeling in Pahrump - a lot of distrust for government. There is definitely a feeling that everybody is corrupt, everybody is on the take," Kunzi says.

"When things don't go someone's way, there's an inclination to think, 'well, somebody got to them'."