Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.
Clark County Sheriff candidate Jerry Airola has a lot to get done in the next two months.
He's got to find a new political consultant - his current adviser is leaving for Turkey.
He's got to come up with a campaign strategy sharp enough to slice through polls that show he's reached a point-of-no-return negative opinion.
Finally, Airola must convince the voters that he's a man of integrity despite a hyped-but-thin law enforcement resume, allegations that his companies have had some shady dealings and, most recently, charges that three years ago he fudged his educational achievements.
Accomplishing everything will require outspending the competition - Metro Undersheriff Doug Gillespie - but without spending so much that it draws even more accusations he's buying the badge.
Meanwhile, the navel-gazing gallery of local political consultants and pundits are at full froth, grumbling and gloating that Airola's campaign seems to be in some state of crisis - hiring and firing the help because the house isn't clean. And all this with the general election less than eight weeks away.
Airola brushes all of it off as a juggling act. He has interviewed four campaign consultants and says he'll make a final pick - no problem - within the next couple of weeks.
"We are still in the middle of doing our research," he says. "We didn't start this until a week after the (primary) election."
Gillespie seems unfazed by whatever Airola plans: "There are certain things that you have control over and certain things that you don't have control over. What Mr. Airola is doing in regards to his campaign is really not a concern of mine. I have got my own campaign to run."
Airola's first order of business will be to replace George Gorton, the California consultant who guided him to a distant second-place primary finish. He leaves the campaign in October to manage a long-planned election campaign in Turkey, Airola says.
Gorton, who orchestrated the political campaigns of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Boris Yeltsin, will do some consulting for Airola from afar, but has phoned colleagues in Washington and New York to help find a stateside replacement, Airola says.
Gorton, who lives in California but rented an apartment in Las Vegas to conduct Airola's primary campaign, could not be reached for comment.
Local political consultant Billy Rogers, whose campaign management firm Southwest Strategies earned almost $300,000 from Airola during the primary, says his company is not under contract with Airola for the general election. Still, Rogers says, he is "supporting Jerry." Beyond that, however, Rogers would not comment.
Airola says there wasn't a contentious breakup with Rogers because there wasn't a contract - just a series of short-term work agreements paid for one at a time. If needed, Airola says, he'll hire Rogers again.
"We use a lot of people," Airola says. "It's kind of funny because everyone is concerned about the fact that they haven't heard much from our campaign. Had we come out on the general as we had on the primary, everybody would be saying that I am spending too much money."
Airola spent about $1.7 million on the primary and got about 22 percent of the votes. Gillespie spent about $600,000 and led with almost 38 percent.
The Gillespie team hopes to raise at least $700,000 for the second round of commercials and media marketing, campaign adviser Kent Oram says.
"If (Airola) wants to continue to go out and spread millions, I have to spend hundreds of thousands reminding voters about this guy, who he is and who we really are," Oram says. "I will spend every dime. This is not like a savings club here."
This is the seventh campaign for sheriff that Oram has advised. The political consultant says he hasn't released poll results in 33 years, but deigned to hint that his campaign's own calculations weren't too far from a poll described by political commentator and Sun columnist Jon Ralston last week that showed 41 percent of 409 Southern Nevada voters surveyed by a national polling firm had negative feelings toward Airola.
"A guy like Airola will probably want to stay on ethereal things, but the second he wants to talk about crime, Doug's going to mop him," Oram says. "There is always going to be that 20 percent who are going to buy anything from a snake-oil salesman, but you take your 20 percent and I'll see you at the elections."
This is news to almost no one - even Airola knows some people don't trust him.
"I have to go back out into the community and show them who I really am and that I am not a liar and I am not this terrible person that the administration says I am," he says. "There is a feeling within the community that I am a silver-spoon rich guy who is looking for a toy."
Airola says he hasn't read the article local TV investigative reporter George Knapp wrote last month about the candidate's questionable academic credentials. In 2003, the article says, Airola allegedly claimed he had degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry. Neither degree has ever existed, Knapp says.
Airola denies he's ever made inflated academic claims.
Gillespie is filming new commercials this week and Airola says he's watching to see how much TV time his opponent buys so he can plan a counterstrike.
"They will barrage me with free media and every time they do we just have to be ready and able for those 11th-hour attacks," Airola says.
Every ad, however, must be cautious, says political consultant Steve Redlinger, who represented Bill Conger in his fourth-place bid for sheriff. Airola squelched most of his 18 primary competitors with early and heavy advertising, but for a candidate whose brand name recognition isn't necessarily positive, there can be too much of a good thing.
"There is a law of diminishing returns at a certain point," Redlinger says. "There is only so much you can throw on TV, only so many helicopters you can fly around with banners behind them."
Laurie Bisch, a close third after Airola in the primary, is campaigning for Gillespie and says she thinks the businessman doesn't stand a chance. Still, she is not getting complacent .
"You can never underestimate your competition," says Bisch, who trailed Airola by just 3 percentage points.
The valley can expect to hear more from Airola in the next two weeks, says campaign manager Nancee Gerber: "We have been strategizing, and we have come up with a very aggressive plan."
Airola says he's inclined to hire an in-state consultant, "some local talent" to help navigate the waters of the "good-old-boy network" in Clark County. That network is a campaign bullet he regularly fires at the Gillespie campaign, which has been aggressively promoted by Sheriff Bill Young and heavily backed with casino contributions.
"I'm not running against Doug Gillespie, I am running against an establishment of the existing sheriff and a group of people who have always selected who the sheriff should be," Airola says. "It's really an interesting story. This would make a great book, but nobody would believe it."
Neither Gillespie nor Oram believe it, and neither thinks Airola can ride the "good-old-boy" horse to victory.
"I have gotten very little what I would consider to be negative feedback from the public in regards to what is looked at as the good-old-boy network," Gillespie says. "I really don't know what that is, to be quite honest."
And Oram, whose wife called him the "oldest of the good old boys," just asks: "What's so wrong with being good?"
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