Working well with others is his style

By J. Patrick Coolican

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

Dean Heller likes to talk about his customer service record, his reform of Nevada's voting system, his awards from the International Association of Commercial Administrators. (Yes, there is such a group, and they give out awards.)

Nevada's secretary of state, who's running for Congress as a Republican, seems to think voters in the 2nd District are looking for a competent problem-solver, someone who can negotiate with Republicans and Democrats, manage people and get things done .

"Your job is to solve problems. Take an issue, take an idea, figure out how to solve it. I believe we lack problem-solvers in Washington," he says.

Heller, 46, is running in the GOP primary against Assemblywoman Sharron Angle and Dawn Gibbons, the wife of Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who's vacating the seat to run for governor. The winner will take on Democrat Jill Derby, a university regent, in a district that is reliably Republican.

Heller seems not to have noticed the whole recent tenor of American politics: If you're not with me, you're against me. He clearly has very little taste for the culture wars, for partisan accusations and ideological purity.

And that, some think, is what may keep him from winning the Aug. 15 primary.

Fewer people vote in primaries than in November elections, and those who do tend to be more ideological, says David Lublin, an American University political scientist who studies Congress.

Nevada is holding its primary in August for the first time; so no one knows how many voters will turn out.

Angle is running as a favorite of conservative activists in Washington, including the Club for Growth, which is running ads calling Heller a "big taxing liberal," citing his Assembly career. In 1991, Heller voted to support two-thirds of an eventual $300 million tax increase. He says it was needed for schools.

Even though he has been a prominent figure in Nevada politics for more than a decade, serving in the Assembly and three terms as secretary of state, Heller is running against Angle as an outsider, capitalizing on the country's sense of unease and dissatisfaction with the status quo.

He refers to the "do-nothing Congress" and says, "We have a lot of people in Washington who don't want to take responsibility."

America's predicament in Iraq is "a mess," Heller says, but he is against any timetable for bringing American troops home. "Clearly, as soon as we can get the Iraqi police to take control, we've got to get out of there."

He decries pork-barrel spending and says he won't be a party to it. (Though he concedes that one person's pork is another's vital road project.)

The outsider pose is a funny tack for a candidate who says when he arrives in Washington, he'll start going along to get along for Nevada. "It's far more important that the person be able to work with other members of the delegation on Yucca Mountain, water, grazing fees. Solve problems for Nevada," he says, touting his ability to work with someone like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada's powerful senior senator.

Pete Ernaut, a lobbyist with R&R Partners, describes his old friend Heller's persuasive powers: "People who have the ability to make deals do it two ways: fear or love. Dean uses the latter. He has such a likable personality that people want to get involved with his projects."

Democrats say the same thing. Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani was chairwoman of the elections committee and, as such, dealt with Heller, who developed an electronic voting system. The two also allied to fight for tougher campaign-finance laws, she says, and she thinks the state would be well-served by Heller.

So committed is Heller to becoming an insider once he gets to Washington that he is already talking about a leadership role.

First, he says, he will try to get on the resources and transportation committee. After that, a chairmanship, and then leadership. He calls it a 10-year plan.

"You play your cards right, do your constituency service, you can be there as long as you want."

Somehow, this bald-faced ambition doesn't come across as off-putting as it sounds, perhaps because Heller always has a big goofy grin and frequently laughs at himself.

"You always get the sense from Dean that he could walk away at any time and be happy doing something else," Ernaut says.

While Heller walked a precinct in suburban Reno recently, a man in a doorway asked whether Heller is a Democrat. When Heller said no, the man slammed the door in his face.

Heller laughed uproariously.

Back in his office, Heller says that he would have voted for the House immigration bill passed last year, which would make all illegal immigrants and those who assist them felons. He calls it a "place to start negotiating." If and when the border is secure, Heller would welcome a guest-worker program, but no path to citizenship for America's 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants.

Heller, a native Nevadan, studied finance at the University of Southern California and worked on the Pacific Stock Exchange before returning home and taking a job in the state treasurer's office. The experience is relevant, he says, to fiscal issues, with which he seems most comfortable.

He supports allowing people to divert part of their Social Security taxes to private accounts, as President Bush advocated last year before the plan died for lack of support. Heller says that he would pay for the plan, which would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, with a line-item veto for the president and a balanced budget amendment to take on pork-barrel spending.

The Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto a few years ago, and no one gives a balanced budget amendment any chance of passing. Moreover, pork makes up a tiny percentage of the federal budget.

Ultimately, Heller turns back to his resume:

"It's all about what problems you're able to solve, what difference you can make and what you've done in the positions you've served in."