Jon Ralston on how Randy Walker revealed in an interview his disappointment with lack of support from county leaders

Friday, Nov. 17, 2006 | 6:57 a.m.

Emptying out the notebook with some notable quotes from a long week after the election:

Walker: "If I would have been more hands-on with that stuff and done more, you can't say (for sure) because hindsight's always a good thing. Probably some of the mistakes that were made might not have been made.

"The problem I had is I just had no ability at that time to do that. I had a little project called the Regional Justice Center that I had been assigned by the county to go take care of and that was eating up a significant amount of my time.

"There were certain things at the airport that I did not have time to personally get involved in. When you have more than you can do, you have to prioritize."

Ralston: "Do you think you got the support you deserve during that whole thing from downtown?"

Walker: "No. I don't."

Ralston: "You don't? Why do you think that happened?"

Walker: "I think what happens is it becomes a public issue, a controversial issue and most people just want it to go away. You develop a process, say it's going to be different and then it goes away."

Jon: "Were you made a scapegoat in that?"

Walker: "No. I don't really think so."

Jon: "You say you weren't getting supported by the commissioners and downtown."

Walker: "I don't think so. I've been in this process for 27 and a half years. That's pretty much the way it happens when you have a public issue like that."

Jon: "The politicians run for the hills. Is that what you're saying?"

Walker: "I don't think it happened much differently than normal, so I didn't see it as an abnormal situation. It was a significant distraction at the time until we got through that because of all the other important things we had to do.

"That's been a couple of years passed. We don't think about it anymore. We've got too much other important work to do."

What's clear from this is how stung Walker, whose career had been unblemished, was by the land deal controversy and even more so - as he sees it - by being made to walk the plank, with the sword in his back pushed by then-County Manager Thom Reilly and a skittish board. At least I think that is clear.

Here's what he said:

"Prior to the alleged groping incident outside a Las Vegas restaurant, Gibbons was a shoo-in for governor. The fact that he won even as the newspapers were filled with stories about the incident shows two things: 1) he effectively defined state Sen. Dina Titus (D) as a Las Vegas liberal and 2) Nevada is fundamentally still a Republican-tilting state."

Hard to argue with that.

And yet despite all the pressure - or perhaps because of it - he uncorks what may be the Quote of the Year when discussing his relationship with fellow Sen. John Ensign: "It's not a 'Brokeback Mountain' situation."

Good to know.