Political culture creates two-timing consultants

Saturday, June 24, 2006 | 7:50 a.m.

It would be astonishing - wouldn't it? - if Karl Rove began working for Sen. Harry Reid. Rove, who is President Bush's closest political adviser, has long been an architect of Republican ascendancy, and the odds of a Democrat hiring him are way long.

By the same token, there's no way Republican Sen. Bill Frist would ever hire Democratic high-roller consultant James Carville to advise him on his presumed presidential run.

Like so much else, however, those rules don't apply in Nevada.

Here, Mike Slanker is working for Sen. John Ensign, a conservative Republican who recently said Americans criticizing the war in Iraq should be quiet. Slanker is also working for Myrna Williams, the Democratic Clark County commissioner.

Democrat Billy Vassiliadis worked for the election of Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn.

This practice of switch-hitting is classic Nevada. It's a function of the state's small political culture, where friendships matter more than parties.

It's also the result of the sheer clout of the casinos and developers, who are more interested in electing candidates - Democrat or Republican - who protect the interests of their shareholders than in any ideological agenda.

Some believe this two-timing helps create healthy bipartisan dialogue of deal-making - a cure for political gridlock. But critics think it's a closed loop that feeds public cynicism and a view that our politics aren't a real clash of ideas and principles.

"I can explain it by one word, and that's money," said Gary Gray, who's one of the few consultants in Nevada who works only for Democrats.

With so few big, expensive campaigns, consultants have to go fishing across party lines, said Steve Wark, a Republican who works with Billy Rogers, a former Democrat who works for Republicans and Democrats now. That's the demand-side argument.

Gray follows up with a supply-side argument: With so little political consulting talent, candidates are more likely to hire across the aisle, he said.

In a world of few players, everybody gets to know one another. They become friends.

"We're still a very small state. And friendships transcend politics," said Greg Ferraro, a Reno Republican who's supporting Catherine Cortez Masto, who's running for attorney general as a Democrat.

"Loyalties transcend politics," Ferraro said. "So here you may see people who are registered Republican or registered Democrat, but they work with someone on the other side they like and trust."

Then there's casino and development interests.

"The tone of the political work has been set by gaming, and they've been very bipartisan," Wark said. "In other states, you have far more fidelity to the parties."

Wark noted that Nevada is one of the few states with a dominant industry that is also heavily regulated by local, state and federal government. That dominant industry, gaming, is primarily interested in elected officials who will continue the friendly relationships between casinos and their local, state and federal overseers.

"So, gaming has set the foundation for why people work both sides," Wark said.

In other words, gaming interests care less about whether a candidate is Republican or Democrat; they just want their people in place, and they'll hire Republicans or Democrats to make it happen.

So, the Strip is said to be backing Myrna Williams, the Democratic county commissioner, which is how she has amassed such a blue-chip roster of bipartisan consultants, to include Republican Slanker, Rogers and Jim Ferrence, a former Republican who's now a Democrat who sometimes works for Republicans, if you follow. (Williams' opponent in the Democratic primary is Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, whose husband is the aforementioned Gray.)

The history of the bipartisan power broker goes back even before gaming was the dominant trade here, noted Michael Green, a Nevada historian.

In the early 20th century, George Wingfield owned most of Nevada's mines, banks and hotels. He was a Republican who spread the fat around to the Democratic lobbyists and political pros of the day.

Sen. Pat McCarran, the Democrat, helped Republicans much the same way, Green said.

The state's long history of bipartisan booty, which continues into the present, has been an important factor in Nevada's continuing development, many political insiders said.

"That familiarity lends itself to people working together," Ferrence said.

With such big issues facing the state, such as water, growth management and the use of public lands, bipartisan deal-making is crucial, said Pete Ernaut, president of R&R Partners government relations division. He's a Republican who has always backed Harry Reid. In that, he's like another influential consultant, Sig Rogich, another Republican Reid-backer (and former owner of R&R.)

Craig Walton, president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, said the 2003 tax increase is an instance when casino interests - and its favored consultants - stepped up and supported the public interest.

"Gov. Kenny Guinn bit the bullet," Walton said. "He was trying to put the whole state in a budget frame to give us what the state needed. And the casinos defended Guinn."

But Walton also decried the entire consultant style of politics - the slicing and dicing of the electorate into voter blocs, the packaged candidates and messages, the vicious negative attacks.

"It destroys dialogue," he said.

Gray's criticism of the system is hard-edged.

"I'm baffled by the acceptance of it, by everybody who participates in it," he said.

He said it contributes to public cynicism about politics.

"It's harder to argue that politicians aren't all the same when so many of them have the same sources of funds, the same consultants, the same advisers," he said. "As a voter, you wonder how Dario Herrera, Erin Kenny, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, Lance Malone - how they all got elected," he said, referring to the group of disgraced former Clark County commissioners all convicted or indicted for corruption.

"You look at the funding, the backing, the consultants, and it's all the same people," he said.