Half a million reasons not to worry

Sam Skolnik

Thursday, Sept. 7, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

His fundraising list reads like a Who's Who of Las Vegas luminaries: Andre Agassi gave him $1,000. So did boxing promoter Bob Arum and former Desert Inn President Burton Cohen. Peter Eliades, owner of the Olympic Garden topless club, ponied up $5,000.

From Jan. 1 through early August, District Judge Michael Cherry raised a cool half-million dollars for his race for Nevada Supreme Court. That's at least $200,000 more than any of the four other candidates running for Supreme Court seats, according to campaign filings.

One big difference, though: Cherry is unopposed.

Although Cherry appears to have cast a wide net since announcing his candidacy Dec. 20, two groups have given the bulk of Cherry's contributions: lawyers and law firms, and the gaming industry.

The Las Vegas personal injury law firms Mainor Eglet Cottle and Crockett & Myers and the construction defect firm Feinberg Grant Mayfield Kaneda & Litt each gave Cherry $10,000, the maximum allowed under state campaign finance laws. So did such megaresorts as Bellagio, Mirage and the MGM Grand - all owned by MGM Mirage.

(Daniel and Robin Greenspun each gave Cherry $5,000, according to state records. Susan Greenspun Fine contributed $1,000, and the "Greenspun Group" donated $500. The Greenspun family owns the Las Vegas Sun.)

So why does a candidate running without any competition need to raise $498,068 from 381 businesses and individuals?

In some cases, candidates try to assemble a huge campaign war chest early on to scare off potential opponents or to prepare for the possibility of competition. In Cherry's case, he amassed about 90 percent of his funds before this year's mid-May filing deadline.

The judge declined to comment for this story, and several contributors did not return calls.

Cherry, 61, is well regarded in the legal community and has an impressive resume. A licensed lawyer in Nevada since 1970, he opened his own law firm in 1977. In 1997, he was appointed to run the newly created Special Public Defender's office, which handles death-penalty cases. The following year, he won a District Court judgeship, and was re-elected in 2002.

Craig Walton, a UNLV ethics professor and president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, says the way the Nevada system is set up, even the most well-meaning judicial candidates raise money from those who may end up appearing before them in court, thus tainting the system.

The only reason for people to give money to an unopposed Supreme Court candidate, he says, "is to curry favor, or at least to not curry disfavor" with the judge.

"It has to make the public wonder what the money is for," says Walton, who has lobbied Gov. Kenny Guinn and Chief Justice Robert Rose of the Nevada Supreme Court for changes in the way the state's judges are selected.

Advocates of change are promising to push legislators to address the issue early next year.

Randy Mainor, Mainor Eglet Cottle's senior partner, says Cherry's character would prevent the judge from giving Mainor special treatment should his firm appear before Cherry in a Supreme Court case.

Mainor says he has known Cherry for decades and that he is "experienced, honest and capable - a good lawyer and a great judge, simple as that."

During the January-August reporting period, Cherry's campaign expenditures totaled just $87,776. That represents less than 25 percent of what he raised, and pales in comparison with the 70 percent spent by three of the four candidates in contested Supreme Court races.

Almost half of Cherry's expenses, $40,000, were paid out in several $5,000 chunks to Paragon Communications, a Las Vegas campaign consulting firm. No one from Paragon could be reached for comment.

According to the state's Code of Judicial Conduct, Cherry will have few options for the money remaining in his coffers after the campaign is over. He can return it to contributors; donate it to the state's general fund or to a tax-exempt nonprofit organization; or he can hold it until his next campaign, presumably six years from now.

Historically, Cherry is not the first unopposed candidate for the Nevada Supreme Court to raise large amounts of seemingly unnecessary money.

In 2002, then-District Judge Mark Gibbons raised about $270,000 for his uncontested race.

Two years earlier, incumbent Justices Robert Rose and Myron Leavitt raised $177,000 and $209,000, respectively, for their solo races.

Leavitt has since died, and neither Gibbons nor Rose returned calls seeking comment.

Kathleen Swain, Rose's longtime assistant, said after speaking with the justice that he had raised the bulk of his money prior to the May 2000 candidate filing deadline - in large part to prepare for the possibility of competition.

In one instance, the donation to Cherry is easily explained. On Feb. 27, tennis great Agassi donated $1,000 to the judge's campaign.

Turns out, according to Agassi spokesman Rob Powers, Agassi has known Cherry for a long time. He was the judge, in fact, who married Agassi and Steffi Graf.