Voters noticeable by their absence

Mike Trask and Mark Hansel

Thursday, April 5, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

There was an election Tuesday. Seriously, city leaders were picked.

The thing is, almost nobody showed up to do the picking.

In Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, the turnout was a dismal 15 percent. In Henderson, it was even worse, only a pitiful 11 percent.

Even so, Tuesday's primary settled most local elections. There will be no need for a June general election in Henderson, and North Las Vegas and Las Vegas will have only one and two contests, respectively, on the June 5 ballot.

Candidates conceded that, given the traditional low turnout in primaries, no one had really expected to have to install speed bumps around polling places for voters' safety. Still, few expected the turnout to be this low.

"We had people walking, calling, letting them know it was important, and it still remained a low turnout," said Laurie Bisch, who lost the Las Vegas Ward 1 race to incumbent Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian. "I had people in the ward that donated money to me and still didn't vote."

In searching for explanations for the low turnout, many point to the Las Vegas Valley's transient population, saying it takes years for people to get interested in local issues.

Some nonvoters seem to prove the point.

"I just moved here in January," Angie Steinmetz, a 26-year-old Las Vegan, said. "So I have no idea what's going on."

If many residents' lack of deep roots poses problems across the county, that is particularly so in places like North Las Vegas, the nation's second-fastest growing city, where Councilwoman Shari Buck kept her job Tuesday by beating three challengers in Ward 4, an area marked by new master-planned communities.

"I was disappointed the numbers weren't higher," said Richard Cherchio, who finished second . "They were nowhere near what they could have and should have been. There is no sense of concern until after the fact. There's a sense of, 'What's the point? I've got to go to work.' "

Poor as the turnout numbers were, they can legitimately be seen as a success of sorts in some suburbs. North Las Vegas nearly doubled its turnout in the first race since switching from citywide to ward-only voting. Henderson's turnout also increased 2 percent since the last primary, after changes were made to allow voters to cast ballots at any one of 15 voting centers.

Yet by any objective standard, a 15 percent turnout is a failure, especially considering that early voting gives voters more than two weeks to cast a ballot.

Some argue that the apparent apathy is not disinterest , but rather reflects voters' satisfaction with the incumbent. The flaw in that argument, however, is that if the premise is accepted, a few more voters might be expected to give their beloved officeholders an atta-boy at the polls.

A glance around the valley exposes another major crack in that theory.

"You look at Southern Nevada and see problems with traffic, crime, water, the effects of growth, and you see things are far from perfect," said Gary Gray, a political consultant who worked with candidates in three Las Vegas elections. "These are municipal-county issues that the people they elect can have an effect on."

The aberration Tuesday was Boulder City, which lapped its larger neighbors with a 43 percent turnout. That, too, reflects a longtime pattern, because in the city of only about 15,000, people seem to take a more personal interest in politics, consistently producing higher turnout numbers than elsewhere in the region.

In Boulder City, Councilmen Mike Pacini and Roger Tobler will face each other in June's general election for mayor after finishing ahead of lawyer Roger Harris and homeless man Gary Kallam in the primary. And June's City Council race will feature incumbent Karla Burton, lawyers Linda Strickland and Travis Chandler, and hair salon owner Kathey Ditzler, with the two top finishers being elected.

Amid the low turnouts throughout the valley, most incumbents easily retained their seats.

In Las Vegas, Tarkanian, Mayor Oscar Goodman and Councilman Gary Reese will return to City Hall. And in the 10-candidate primary for the Ward 5 seat vacated by Councilman Lawrence Weekly when he accepted an appointment to the Clark County Commission, Tuesday's contest narrowed the field for June's general election to Ricki Barlow and Stacie Truesdell.

In Henderson, incumbent Steven Kirk ran unopposed in Ward 4. Ward 2 produced the only squeaker among Tuesday's elections, with Councilman Andy Hafen defeating Tom Wagner by only 169 votes, 6,411 to 6,242. And in Ward 1, the city's only council race without an incumbent, Gerri Schroder soundly defeated Don Griffie.

Wagner, who said late Wednesday that his campaign team was considering calling for a recount, acknowledged that he also was disappointed by the low turnout in the city of more than 250,000.

"I just think people just don't see that local politics affects them," Wagner said. "But it's the first line that does."

Other explanations - or excuses - for the low turnout range from the election coming during spring break to complaints that the news media did not do enough to publicize the elections.

And Jo Cato, who finished last in the North Las Vegas race, heard a lot of this one the day after the election.

"I'm getting calls today, people saying, 'Oh we forgot,' " Cato said.

On the bright side, at least no one said the dog ate his voter guide.